Can I email my customer list in the UAE? What to check first

Email is the channel many owners reach for first, because they already have a list: past customers, enquiries, contacts from events. Before you send a campaign, the question to answer is whether those people agreed to receive marketing from you. This post sets out what two official UAE sources say, and where I stop. It is general information for the UAE, not legal advice, and you should take professional advice on your own situation.

What the UAE Government portal says

The UAE Government portal's page on data protection laws says that the Personal Data Protection Law (Federal Decree Law No. 45 of 2021) prohibits the processing of personal data without the consent of its owner, with some exceptions, such as protecting a public interest. The same page says the Consumer Protection Law (Federal Law No. 15 of 2020) protects consumer data and prohibits suppliers from using it for marketing, according to the UAE Government portal. The page does not explain how consent must be obtained, so it does not answer the practical question by itself.

What the telecoms regulator says

The Telecommunications and Digital Government Regulatory Authority (TDRA) publishes a policy on unsolicited electronic communications. The version I opened is 1.1, issued on 13 June 2022 (TDRA). It states that it applies to text messages with a UAE link. It defines spam as marketing electronic communications sent to a recipient without the recipient's consent. It says all forms of consent are acceptable as long as the consent can be stored and presented in tangible form when TDRA requires it, and that marketing text messages must include a means of opting out.

I opened that version and it is about text messages. I did not find in it a statement about email, so I will not claim one. Whether and how the policy reaches email marketing is a question for a lawyer or for TDRA.

What I would do in practice

None of this is advice on the law, but these are sensible habits whatever a lawyer concludes.

• Keep a record of when and how each person gave permission, and what they were told they were signing up to.
• Send only the kind of message people agreed to receive.
• Make unsubscribing easy and honour it quickly.
• Do not buy lists of strangers and email them as if they had agreed.
• Ask a lawyer, before the first campaign, to confirm which rules apply to your list.

Measure it like any other channel

When you do send, label the links so you can see what the campaign produced. Google Analytics says to always use utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign, and that missing values appear as "(not set)" in reports (Google Analytics Help). Use the same names every time, because values are case-sensitive.

Where this fits

Email is one of four channels, and consent is one reason it can be slower to start than it looks. The order of questions I would work through is in which marketing channel a UAE business should do first, the first channel launch checklist has a consent step, and the channel planner lets you score email against the others on your own weights.

A note on interest: I offer lead nurture automation, so I have a commercial interest in businesses messaging their enquiries. Check what I say here against the sources linked above.