As companies strive to build TCPA compliance into their lead generation and purchase initiatives, it can be tempting to save money by building an in-house solution to document proof of consent. Surely it’s as easy as adding video capture and replay to your website right? 

Not so fast. Ensuring that your TCPA compliance solution will hold up in the case of litigation takes more than a video replay. Read on to learn 10 reasons why third-party proof of consent is critical to your TCPA strategy. 

Legal Considerations

1. Independent – In a lawsuit, it is your word against theirs. Having a neutral, independent party provide evidence in your defense can make the difference. In-house documentation can raise the suspicion that the data has been manipulated. Data collected by TrustedForm Certificates cannot be manipulated by anyone – not by you or by your lead vendors. Therefore, it is far better evidence than anything internally produced.
2. Complex – If you are going to protect yourself, you should have the highest level of proof possible. The best proof is a video replay of what happened on the page. What phone number did this consumer input on the page? What did this consumer see on the screen? Did they really click the consent checkbox? TrustedForm captures every event on the page (form inputs, mouse movements, and clicks) and renders that activity in the form of a video.
3. Shareable – You need to be able to easily share documentation with third parties in a simple fashion. The goal is to never let a complaint escalate to a lawsuit. Complaints need to be addressed quickly with compelling evidence. TrustedForm certificates are easily accessed directly from the lead record in your database, then be reviewed and emailed to third parties. TrustedForm has proven highly effective at making complaints go away.
4. Verified – In order to ensure compliance, your TCPA solution must be able to automatically verify compliance in real-time. In addition to documenting what happened on the web form, TrustedForm allows you to scan the page in real-time to verify that your required consent language was present before accepting the lead into your CRM. 

Technical considerations

1. Compatibility – The solution must work with every possible browser and operating system combination that visits your website. TrustedForm is tested on a wide variety of unique browser and operating system configurations, and our years of experience mean that we have encountered and addressed thousands of unique situations that required custom handling.
2. Performance – It is critical to capture consent and maintain website performance every single time a lead submits a request form. If the service goes down, then the value during that time is zero. And as you grow, your TCPA solution must be scalable. TrustedForm processes over 15,000 user-generated events per second and boasts an 99.95% uptime. 
3. Storage – Proof of compliance must by law be maintained for five years. Building an in-house solution commits to at least five years of support and overhead, even if you change your mind later. ActiveProspect stores TrustedForm certifications for active customers for five years, so you can count on it being there when you need it.

Business considerations

1. Cost – Building a custom software solution at scale can be incredibly expensive. Beyond build and hosting costs, there is the added overhead of maintaining an application and supporting users – expenses that can take away investment in your core business. ActiveProspect has invested millions of dollars in TrustedForm. Documenting proof of consent is what we do – so you can concentrate on what you do.
2. Adoption – The lead vendors you work with must also agree to place your script on their web forms. This can be incredibly difficult, as companies are naturally averse to placing any third party scripts on their websites, and if you work with a large number of vendors, the difficulty only multiplies. Furthermore, lead buyers often compete with partners for the same web traffic, making it even tougher to gain permission to collect information that may be competitively sensitive. As an unbiased third party, ActiveProspect’s TrustedForm script has been adopted by hundreds of lead providers across thousands of websites. 
3. Data – TrustedForm is more than a TCPA solution – it is also an important source of data that you can use to optimize your lead generation campaigns. With TrustedForm, you get data like lead age, time on page, geo-location, browser, operating system, website domain, etc. All of this data can be used for real-time decisions or analytics.

Before you make your build-or-buy decision, learn the facts about TCPA compliance, and contact us to see if TrustedForm is right for your business.

The post 10 Reasons Building Your Own TCPA Solution Is a Huge Mistake appeared first on ActiveProspect.

For those not familiar with CASL, it stands for Canada Anti-Spam Legislation and it went into effect on on July 1, 2014. Unlike the US law governing email (CAN-SPAM), which is essentially an Opt-Out policy, the Canadian law imposes a much stricter Opt-In policy. This means you need to have prior consent before you send an email to a Canadian email address. This is not limited to just Canadian businesses, it also applies to US-based businesses sending emails to Canadians. CASL can be enforced not only against U.S. businesses, but their officers, directors and agents as well. For more background, Klein Moynihan Turco LLP provides a good overview of CASL.

Currently we haven’t seen much legal activity around this law because it can only be enforced by three Canadian federal agencies. However, I predict we will see lots of activity under this law starting in the middle of next year. The reason? Starting July 1, 2017, the private right of action provision of the law goes into effect. This means individuals and organizations may bring a lawsuit in court against someone who they allege has violated the law. In the U.S., there has been a ton of legal activity in the past couple of years around TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act) regulations. The reason is private right of action. While Canadians tell me they aren’t nearly as litigious as Americans, I think spam is so universally hated it will motivate even normally friendly Canadians to take action.

So what does this mean for U.S. based businesses? At a high level, to make sure you are protected from potential CASL litigation in the future, you need to ask yourself two questions:

1. Do you have any Canadian email addresses in your database now or will you in the future?
2. Do you have documented proof of express consent for those email addresses? What constitutes proof of consent is debatable. But generally speaking, it should be easily shared and hard to refute.

If you answered yes to the first question but no to the second, you should take steps to minimize your risk.

For those not familiar, ActiveProspect provides a lead certification service called TrustedForm to verify and document proof of consent for companies to protect themselves from TCPA and CASL litigation. It plays back a video replay of the keystrokes entered on a form for every lead – the best defense if ever challenged with consent questions.

You can try it for yourself right now.

Will your company get ensnared in what could be a thorny CASL-driven environment? Why take the risk? Start documenting consent now by adding TrustedForm to your consent forms. It’s a simple and inexpensive step that could save you lots of trouble down the road. Remember that for CASL, “the onus of proving consent … rests with the person relying on it.”

The post Blackstone Learning gets schooled by CASL appeared first on ActiveProspect.

TrustedForm is ActiveProspect’s lead certification service that independently verifies the origin and authenticity of Internet leads by capturing information including the timestamp, IP address, browser, source URL, and a real-time screenshot of the web form as seen by the site visitor. Among other things, it allows lead buyers to verify and document proof of compliance on an individual lead basis for regulations such as the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) or Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL).

Masked certificates are exact copies of full certificates, except the lead source information (site URL and screenshot) has been masked. They still contain essential information about the origin of the lead, so lead buyers can independently verify lead authenticity and compliance with either full or masked certificates. For example, the page scan feature for masked certificates still works even though the page snapshot is not visible. This allows lead buyers to scan the page for TCPA disclosure language or the presence of other required language.

“TrustedForm introduced the concept of independent lead certification to bring trust and transparency to the online lead generation industry,” said Steve Rafferty, Founder and CEO of ActiveProspect. “Masked certificates are an important evolution in lead certification because lead sellers can now decide how much source information they want to share with each of their buyers on a case by case basis. In return, lead buyers can choose to accept masked certificates from some vendors but only full certificates from others. It gives buyers and sellers the ability to directly negotiate the amount of transparency needed for their particular situation.”

The masked certificate feature is available only to TrustedForm account holders. It doesn’t require any changes to the universal TrustedForm Script, which continues to issue full TrustedForm Certificates. When paid account holders claim a full TrustedForm Certificate, they also receive a corresponding TrustedForm Masked Certificate. Masked certificates have their own unique ID that is separate and distinct from the full TrustedForm Certificate ID. Account holders can then decide which buyers receive full certificates and which receive masked ones.

Lead buyers will need to contact their lead sellers if they need to see full certificates. It is the lead sellers’ responsibility to store full certificates, and to provide the certificates at their discretion to lead buyers who request them.

If you’d like to get started with TrustedForm Masked Certificates, contact sales@activeprospect.com.

The post Introducing TrustedForm Masked Certificates for Lead Sellers appeared first on ActiveProspect.

Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation goes into effect July 1, and American marketers who believe that compliance with the United States’ CAN-SPAM Act also will cover their activities in Canada could be setting themselves up for a rude and expensive surprise. Unlike the opt-out approach of the United States’ CAN-SPAM Act, CASL’s opt-in orientation prohibits all commercial electronic messages (CEMs) that are sent without proper consumer consent, including e-mail, text, social media, sound and image messages.

CASL defines a CEM as a business-related message sent by any means of telecommunication, including email, text, sound or image messages. Any individual or business entity that sends, or assists in sending, a CEM to a consumer in Canada is subject to CASL. And any CEM that is sent from, routed to or accessed from a device in Canada is subject to CASL regulations.

The monetary penalties that can be levied under CASL are exponentially higher than those of CAN-SPAM, and CASL will allow individuals to file private and class action lawsuits to collect statutory damages.

A Primer for CASL Compliance

To help businesses assess their online marketing practices for CASL compliance, we worked with internet marketing attorney David O. Klein, managing partner of Klein Moynihan Turco LLP, to write “CASL Compliance: A Primer on Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation.” This whitepaper summarizes the new law’s key provisions and identifies solutions for capturing and storing proof of consumer consent.

Creating a reliable, consistent system for recording proper consent that will hold up under legal scrutiny presents a significant challenge for marketers. ActiveProspect has solved this problem with its patent-pending TrustedForm Lead Certification solution. It is a simple way to achieve compliance, avoid business disruptions and maintain the ability to communicate directly with consumers.

The post Oh, Canada! CASL Anti-Spam Law Goes into Effect July 1 appeared first on ActiveProspect.