Did I pick a fight?

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Again, I'm not trying to beat up on you. We all misunderstand things; I've done it myself.

But this happens to be an area I do understand - any marketing list should be strictly opt-in. In other words, I visit your site or click on your ad or whatever, then explicitly ask to be added to your list. In fact, most reputable people add an extra step: I would then have to confirm my request to be added before my e-mail was included. That's to avoid ever sending such e-mails to anyone who doesn't want them. Anything else is spamming.

Any reputable business will drop the banhammer on you with little to no warning if you spam people in their name. That is the only possible policy they can have and still make it clear they don't condone spamming. Companies that don't have such a policy in place are not reputable. Period. I don't know about Avon (given their cruelty-free stance, I'm inclined to at least think of them as reputable in the absence of any other information) - but it seems likely you're doing things that would get you into trouble with them if they knew about them.

I joined one affiliate program, run by an author who is scrupulously honest. And I read her TOS carefully. She spelled it out clearly - if I'd done something like this, once, I would have been booted from the program, and never allowed back. Because to do that would be to stain her reputation... Since she also didn't want any of us getting in trouble by accident, she went to great pains to spell out exactly how e-mail marketing works and what is ethical and what is not.