Rules and regulations. They’re not everyone’s taste and in business there is a widely held view that there is far too much bureaucracy and red tape which simply holds SMEs back. But sometimes you need to see what happens when there aren’t any rules, to know just how important they are.

Let me explain…

India has the fastest growing mobile phone market in the world, with more than 700 million subscribers. Inevitably, many businesses want to target this massive audience with sales messages, but with no real regulation in place, mobile users are being bombarded with dozens of unsolicited text messages every day.

Many people have complained that they feel harassed by calls and text messages from tele-marketers trying to sell everything from credit cards to real estate to “slim sauna belts for weight loss”.

To try and tackle the problem, the telecoms regulator in India has put a cap on the number of text messages which can be sent from a mobile phone and under the new rules no-one will be able to send more than 100 texts in a day.

The new ruling is expected to be a big relief for millions of mobile phone users in India who are constantly plagued by tele-marketers.

In the UK, we are already well covered with regulations such as The Data Protection Act 1998 and The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003. In essence, these rules mean that users have to ‘opt-in’ and give you permission to send them marketing messages, whether that is by SMS or email and you should always give them the ability to opt-out. If they haven’t given you this permission and you send them an unsolicited email or text, they can complain to the Information Commissioners Office and you could be fined.

Which brings me back to the start. As a business owner, you simply want to tell people about your products and services, but the regulations stop you from broadcasting to everybody’s inboxes if they haven’t said you can do so. Which sounds like a classic act of business prevention from the red tape brigade.

However, if you think of it from a recipient’s point of view, you quickly see the sense in it.

So, next time you are planning a marketing campaign and come across the data protection and anti-spam regulations, don’t complain about the red tape. Just be thankful the rules are in place, because if they weren’t, you would probably spend more time deleting spam text messages and emails than it has taken you to read this blog.

Find out more at http://www.ico.gov.uk/for_organisations/sector_guides/marketing.aspx