Terms of Use & Privacy Policy Follow

While all the following features live in CINC, your own legal counsel will give you the best advice for your specific situation. As much as we'd love to help answer legal questions, we'll stick to what we know best: Lead Gen and the CINC Platform.

In recent years we’ve seen an increase in class actions affect multiple companies in real estate with violations to consent to communicate legislation. As a result of increased litigation around gaining consent to communicate, CINC has created more tools to help you stay compliant. On this page we’ll dive into the new features and functionality as well as answer some of your questions about how that functionality works. 

First, what legislation exists that focuses on consent to communicate? TCPA is the United States focused law and CASL is the Canadian focused law. Both of these revolve around gaining proper consent prior to communicating with a lead. They also have some teeth to them. For example, if you violate TCPA you can be fined up to $1500 per text. The fines for CASL are even higher. So not staying compliant could have a real impact on your business.

Here’s a summary of two key areas to be aware of in both TCPA & CASL.

• Consent - You must have consent to communicate to the lead and it must be clear & conspicuous. Not all consents are created equal.
• Automated Communication - You cannot use any automated/marketing sms without a record of the above type of consent.

To help you with compliance in regard to this important legislation and avoid potential fines, we have implemented the below feature changes. 

• Automated dialer and texting upgrades - Unverified leads that have not provided proper consent are automatically excluded from mass texts and drip campaign steps that are texts. They can be included on dialer campaigns. The campaign will simply pause before automatically dialing the lead in the cue. The CINC User will need to press "resume" to continue dialing the unverified lead.
• Prompting leads for proper consent - We created a templated email called ‘Terms of Use Agreement’, that you can send to leads to request proper consent to communicate. If they agree, then you can communicate with them via automated texting & dialing
• Filter to find leads without proper consent - To find leads that have or have not provided proper consent, you may use the ‘Terms of Use’ filter.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the two types of leads?

Verified - Agreed to our terms & privacy policy OR from an acceptable terms source (ie. Zillow, etc.). All leads from that registered from the prompt on your site are OK for all types of communication.

Unverified - Never agreed to our terms & privacy policy OR do not have an acceptable terms from an approved source. Imported, manual, and 3rd party leads default to this status. This means that unverified leads can only be communicated to on a restricted basis as follows:

• Individual texts
• All email

Will this affect my CINC leads?

No, CINC leads have provided proper consent. Leads that this will affect are imported, 3rd party, or manual leads.

Which 3rd party leads are 'verified'?

At this time Zillow, Realtor.com, Trulia, and Homes.com are verified sources. We are continually evaluating other sources to add to the verified list.

How can I find leads who have acceptable terms of use for auto communication?

There will be a ‘Terms of Use’ filter to find leads that have agreed/not agreed to your terms & conditions.  Leads from approved sources will be included in this filter.

There will also be an exclamation icon next to the leads name if they haven’t agreed to the terms & conditions for your specific site.

What happens if I try to send a mass text to leads who haven’t agreed to terms?

In short, the message will be skipped. When you create a mass text, leads that haven’t agreed to terms will have a strike through their name & hover text that states, “This lead hasn’t agreed to terms of use.” These leads will either have to agree to terms on your site or receive one-on-one texts.

What happens if I have a drip campaign setup with texts in it and I assign a lead to it that hasn’t agreed to terms?

The messages that are texts will be skipped at the time they’d normally send. To receive automated texts the leads must agree to terms on your CINC site. Drip campaigns skipping because of this will have an orange drop and hover text explaining why.

What happens if I put leads who have no acceptable terms of use agreement in a dialer campaign?

These leads will now be included on your dialer campaign.  The dialer will pause once it reaches the unverified lead in the call cue. The CINC User will simply press "resume" on the campaign to initiate the call with the unverified lead and the call campaign will continue.

How can I request a lead to agree to terms?

You can send them the email template ‘Terms of Use Agreement’ or send a text/email with the ‘CHANGE_SETTINGS_LINK’ dynamic tag. In that email template there is a link requesting they update their preferences on the site. Once they click that link, they will be auto logged in and  prompted to agree to the terms. If they agree to the modal below, they will be available for dialer campaigns, mass texts, and drip texts.

If a lead replies ‘STOP’ to a text, how can they be resubscribed to text?

The lead can reply ‘START’ or send an email with the ‘CHANGE_SETTINGS_LINK’ dynamic tag. This tag will auto-login the lead to their communication preferences and they can adjust their texting preferences there.