The above research paper says one purpose of some of the emails was to collect email addresses. If you wanted to target a religious, military supporting, older

The above research paper says one purpose of some of the emails was to collect email addresses. If you wanted to target a religious, military supporting, older crowd this was a way to collect their email addresses. They are also intended to encourage faith, support the military, and support caring for those less fortunate. And perhaps to spread the occasional political message urging people to "write your congresspeople", etc. I remember getting a few that were obviously racist or which spread lies. I used to collect all the spam email I got and besides those pushing porn there were a lot of them that were twisted. Maybe those were early attempts to create "word of mouth", peer-to-peer communication channels.