New Regulations for Sales Auto-Dialers & SMS Marketing May Affect Your Business

Does your sales team use anything that could be construed as an “autodialer,” or are you thinking of buying one? Does your marketing team use SMS/text messaging campaigns?

If so, you need to become intimately aware of new regulations going into effect. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) was drafted in 1991, but new regulations have been folded in that could have major consequences on your sales & marketing operations.

In recent years, there’s been a sharp increase in class action litigation for TCPA violations. Obviously, I am in no position to deliver legal advice, so please refer to the excellent links to laws firms’ interpretations of the rules below.

Auto-Dialed Calls & Robo-Dialers

An “autodialer” is a phone dialing system that sales teams often use to rapidly accelerate the number of calls they can make at once. These systems also store and call telephone numbers using random or sequential number generators. Although Revenue.io customers are completely in compliance with the new laws, autodialers are common with many types of call center software.

Robocalls, meanwhile, are defined as an autodialer system used to deliver a pre-recorded telemarketing message. As we all know, these are tried-and-true tactics of most major political campaigns.

Klein Moynihan Turko offers an excellent interpretation of the new rules and associated penalties surrounding these issues.

Text/SMS

Changes to the law require that businesses obtain permission to send marketing-oriented SMS messages. And while “purely informational messages” are allowed, some form of consent is still required to send texts to wireless numbers.

Since most numbers are wireless, this applies to just about everyone you’d want to market to.

Specifically, “written consent” is required. What exactly counts as written consent? Perkins Coie provides an expert explainer here.