I've never pm'd an admin about being staff or about an application, I wouldn't want to be an admin on a boring server anyway.
And about the email thing I've never gotten a response to a clearly worded and titled email, nor did I ever spam it, I just gave up waiting for a response.
The only time I actually got something I needed I had to ask a friend who was friends with an admin to ask him to do it for me. Its stupid and whoever is in charge of the emails suck.