Within the last couple weeks the Federal Communication Commision (FCC) has proposed new rules governing how leads are generated online. These new rules, if implemented, will have a significant impact on businesses and industries that have relied on online lead generation new clients and customers. The FCC has determined, and rightly so, that consent should be the priority when collecting and distributing personal contact information.

At the top of the list of affected parties, Private Education and Career Colleges may need to reevaluate not only where their leads are coming from, but also how they are collected. 

At its core, the intent behind these new rules are two-fold:

1. 1. Protect customers from unwanted spam, texts, and robocallers; and
2. 2. Encourage Service Providers to become more involved in protecting mobile users from illegal texts

If approved at the FCC’s meeting on December 13th, 2023, these new rules would likely go into effect by the end of summer in 2024.

Portals and Comparison Shopping Websites

The first and most relevant area of lead generation that will be affected by these new rules will be Comparison Shopping Websites or “Portals” which present a lead with a variety of sellers on a single page. These types of websites are popular because they present the buyer with all the options available to them, allow consumers to compare/contrast specifications & prices, and help multiple businesses promote themselves to a lead on the same page. However, throughout recent years a new problem, dubbed, the “Lead Generator Loophole” has emerged from the abuse of consent on these pages. While the lead may actively express their consent to have contact information shared to sellers, some of these sites have exploited consent laws and have used loopholes to distribute this information to anyone and everyone. 

Thus, many leads unknowingly consent to a bombardment of unwanted texts and robocalls.  This is exactly the kind of consent that these new FCC rules are attempting to solve.

In the Private Education and Career College sectors, these comparison shopping websites often exist in the form of “Education Portals”. Here, a potential student is presented with all the available colleges nearby. While the majority of these sites will only share contact information exclusively with the lead’s selected school of choice, some bad actors have given these types of portals a bad reputation. In some cases, a lead’s personal information is unknowingly sent to every single participating school in the portal. Obviously, this results in the unfortunate harassment of potential students.

The Solution? One-to-One Consent 

If finalized, these new rules will require comparison shopping websites to obtain consent with a “clear and conspicuous” disclosure to consumers. Furthermore, this consent must be obtained on a one-to-one basis. In other words, if an individual seller wants a customer’s contact data, the lead must actively select their seller of interest, rather than submitting consent for the entire comparison website. 

In the words of the FCC, “requiring one-to-one consent will end the current practice of consumers receiving robocalls and robo texts from tens, or hundreds, of sellers - numbers that most reasonable consumers would not expect to receive.”

What does this mean for Education Portals? The new rules could affect the way lead generators acquire education leads in one of two ways. First, we may see a shift back towards standard, branded landing pages that display a single brand/school/institution. Rather than figure out a way to get one-to-one consent in portals, marketers may opt to generate leads only from sites that clearly and conspicuously promote a single school. 

Alternatively, marketers and lead generators may simply adapt to these new rules and create a new evolution of Education Portals. Rather than a single consent opt-in, a new portal may allow leads to select from a list of checkboxes which institutions they wish to share their information with. It is the hope of the FCC that either of these alternatives will work to drastically reduce the amount of unwanted calls and texts received by consumers.

Opting-In to Email-to-Text

In addition to requiring one-to-one consent on comparison shopping websites, the FCC has also expressed a desire for service providers to get more involved in protecting consumers. While the FCC is not inclined to “force” providers into any action, they will “encourage providers to make email-to-text, a major source of illegal texts, a service that consumers proactively opt into. 

Essentially, the FCC has recognized that one of the primary sources of spam comes from messages that are sent directly by an email address to a consumer’s mobile device. In an effort to reduce such unwanted communication, providers will be encouraged to only allow email-to-text messages once the recipient proactively consents to receiving them. 

Naturally, this will directly affect businesses who employ email-to-text strategies to nurture their leads, promote products, and reach out to potential buyers. Marketers may need to revert back to email-to-email messaging or good old fashioned phone calls.

For more information on the FCC’s proposed new rules, click the link below:

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-398661A1.pdf