In December 2023, the FCC released an order Targeting and Eliminating Unlawful Text Messages; Rules and Regulations Implementing the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991; Advanced Methods to Target and Eliminate Unlawful Robocalls. This order will have an impact on how some of the biggest players in the digital world operate — specifically pertaining to lead generation and consumer consent.

While the explicit impact on the real estate industry remains to be seen (stay tuned for more updates!), this new ruling got us thinking about the benefits of generating your own real estate leads and prioritizing consumer consent.

Lead Generation

With these FCC changes, selling consumer information to multiple places will be against the rules –  meaning that a lead can’t be shared amongst multiple agencies. 

At Union Street Media, we’ve always believed in the importance of owning your own leads. When a lead is generated for one of our clients, whether that’s through paid advertising or organically, the lead can only be viewed in the backend of our platform or from within the client’s integrated CRM. 

How We Help Our Client’s Generate Their Own Leads

• Facebook Lead Generation
• Forced Registration
• Call Ads
• Optimized Content
• Local Services Ads
• and more!

Consumer Consent

The FCC’s new rules also stress the importance of explicit one-to-one consent. Companies will need to get explicit consent from every user on their website on whether they are allowed to contact them via phone call or text message, as opposed to using general consent forms.  Moreover, consent only applies to the originally expressed interest, meaning that the purpose of contacting a user must align with the reason they reached out in the first place. 

Our Union Street Media websites make it easy and clear for users to opt-in to communications. We also regularly update our privacy policies to ensure we are transparent with users on how their data is used and shared. 

Any of our classic paid advertising campaigns bring the user to our client’s site where they can review a privacy policy. For example, with Facebook lead generation, a user submits a series of answers and is presented with links to both our client’s privacy policy and the Facebook privacy policy before they give final consent to submit. 

Real and genuine relationships are a cornerstone of real estate and these changes to the FCC rules solidify the importance of that more than ever. In 2024 we’ll continue to see protections being rolled out for consumer privacy. We’re making changes to our platform regularly to ensure we are staying ahead of the curve when it comes to tracking user data so that our clients don’t need to stress when rules change in the real estate industry. 

Looking to elevate your real estate digital marketing strategy? Contact us today!