About Leads and TCPA Compliance

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) regulates telemarketing calls, auto-dialed calls, prerecorded calls, text messages, and unsolicited faxes. It also is the authority to create the National Do-Not-Call List.

Unlike cold calling and cold email, cold texting is illegal. The Telephone Consumer Protection Agency (TCPA) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have regulations that require businesses to get an opt-in from customers to text them. Failure to do so can result in substantial charges.

Consent

Before calling or texting leads using any automated technologies like Verse, you should ensure that you have the appropriate level of written consent.

Consent is typically provided by a lead when submitting a form on the web where they must agree to this consent.

However, consent is ALSO implied by an EBR (existing business relationship). Federal law in the US allows you to reach out to leads using automated technology like Verse as long as the lead has made an inquiry to your business within the last 90 days. Individual state laws can be more restrictive, however. The states of CA and CO limit the period to 30 instead of 90 days. And the following states have no such provision at all for the EBR based on inquiry (AR, ID, KS, NV, OR, ND, MI, NM, PA, NJ, WI, IN).

So long as the lead has not asked the company to stop contacting them since the lead made the inquiry, the company can use tech like verse to reach out to this lead within the 90 day window.

Leads Self-Generated from Your Website

Marketing tactics like email, SEO, CPC, social, and others can be a great way to drive prospects to your companies website where they can complete a webform and become an exclusive lead. You should require a submitter to provide their consent to be contacted. Here is some suggested language to accompany your webforms to get consent:

<check box> I authorize XYZ Solar to contact me at this number via phone and text using pre-recorded messages or automated dialing technology, even if my number is on a “DO NOT CALL” list. No purchase required. Message frequency may vary and data rates may apply. To opt-out at any time reply STOP or call us at xxx-xxx-xxxx.

Purchased Leads

These may be exclusive or shared with competing companies. Generally you can assume that any of your leads sourced from reputable third-party lead gen companies are TCPA compliant.

Referrals or other "Analog" sources

Leads generated via inbound phone calls to the business or walk-ins resulting from of any kind of analog marketing effort (referrals, TV, Radio, Print, Mailers, Events, etc.) or digital marketing efforts can be contacted within a short period of time if they have made an inquiry to your business. This falls under the category of ‘EBR (existing business relationship ) by inquiry’. If you do not have written consent, we advise not using any automated technologies to contact leads outside of this initial business relationship time period which varies by state. See "Consent" above.