As a business you should have consent before you contact a prospect, whether that’s through an automated dialing system, SMS marketing, or email marketing. This is very critical when it comes to TCPA compliance, even for inbound leads.
Most marketers and business owners are okay at documenting very basic consent in their lead form. Typically near the submit button, you’ll see a little blurb that says something like, “I agree to be contacted by the company for sales and marketing reasons.” That’s just one side of the equation when it comes to TCPA. There is a whole other side, and that is documenting consent through the form of a digital certificate.
In many cases, lead buyers or certain types of clients will require this digital certificate to be generated with the lead, and they may even tell you to use platforms like ActiveProspect TrustedForm.
In this blog we will cover:
- What is ActiveProspect
- Why ActiveProspect is Important for Compliance
- How ActiveProspect Improves Lead Quality for Outbound Calling and Outreach
- What is ActiveProspect TrustedForm?
- How TrustedForm Works?
- How to Integrate TrustedForm into Your Lead Form
- Why Claim a TrustedForm Certificate
- How to Claim TrustedForm Certificates
What is ActiveProspect
ActiveProspect is a lead acquisition platform that helps businesses decide which leads to purchase or ingest, then delivers them to a dialer, CRM, or other system. Their goal is to make consent-based marketing the best channel for customer acquisition by providing visibility into the leads being generated or purchased, increasing conversion and supporting business growth.
Why ActiveProspect is Important for Compliance
Nobody wants to be spammed or be solicited for stuff that they never asked to be solicited to. Marketers don’t want to spend their marketing dollars in areas that don’t make sense. Consent-based marketing ensures that only consumers who asked to be contacted are contacted.
Whenever businesses get leads from a form on their website or from a lead provider there’s a few things that businesses need to make sure are in place especially as compliance gets tighter around TCPA, GDPR, etc. These things include:
- Ensuring proper consent language is present on web forms to comply with TCPA and other regulations.
- Documenting and storing that documentation in case of legal disputes you can so you can say we have the proof essentially that this person asked to be contacted
ActiveProspect as a lead acquisition platform capture the metadata and recording of that consumer’s experience on the web form including information like:
- Clicking and tabbing
- how much time do they spend on the page
- where did they fill out the form
- when did they fill out the form
- how old the lead is.
In the future when you run AI outbound calling campaigns and someone reaches out to a litigator and claims that I never asked to be contacted, it’s not enough to say well on our page there’s a text box that you clicked. In such a case, having that documented proof of consent is very important.
And if you provide data stored in your database as evidence, from a legal standpoint, that’s weaker proof because this data came from your own system and the opposition party can raise its concern as the system is totally controlled by you and you can temper it as you wish. So regulators or attorneys may not see that as strong independent evidence.
ActiveProspect is a trusted third party source. They are not monetizing your data and not tampering with that information. As record maintenance and keeping happen outside of businesses’ CRM, lead platform, and control, therefore regulators accept it as strong evidence and help you to stay compliant when you make outreach via AI outbound calling, text messages, or emails.
Explore More About: How to Properly Set Up Jornaya LeadID Using Growform for TCPA Compliance
How ActiveProspect Improves Lead Quality for Outbound Calling and Outreach
ActiveProspect improves lead quality for outbound calling and outreach via lead qualification, risk screening, and data enrichment. By doing so, it filters out risky and bad leads and passes on leads with ideal customer profiles for further outreach to businesses.
Lead Qualification
Lead costs are expensive and paying for unqualified leads increases cost per acquisition and creates tension between marketing and sales. Traditionally, when you buy leads you might only get a phone number, an email, a name, maybe a location and that’s it. Business has to sort it by itself whether this particular lead is ideal customer or trust their guts and hope this lead is a good one and might match our ideal customer profile
ActiveProspect figures out what are the characteristics of leads that are converting at a higher level and what are the characteristics that aren’t.
For lead qualification purposes, ActiveProspect performs real-time lead screening so that businesses end up with high quality leads that match their ideal or near ideal customer profile and return and reject the ones that are not fit for them in real-time rather than waiting for the end of the month. Real-time rejections allow vendors to reallocate leads immediately, reducing administrative burden and improving efficiency.
- The lead is bot generated / fraudulent or real by looking for cues like weird mouse/keyboard patterns, suspicious IP/location, VPN/proxy use, or repeated patterns that suggest a script or a click farm.
- It sorts out a duplicate lead that has already been purchased by business within the last five days or thirty days. If you already paid for that lead recently, buying it again is usually pointless so the system can reject it automatically.
- The platform uses third-party databases to screen leads and flag known litigators that frequently sue companies for compliance issues and people tied to Do-Not-Call complaints or high-risk profiles. ActiveProspect scores risk associated with such leads and blocks bad leads.
- It also verifies whether the number is real, formatted correctly, active, reachable, and sometimes what type it is (mobile/landline/VoIP). If it’s invalid or dead, the lead is basically worth nothing.
Data Enrichment
Once the lead qualifies as a good one for any particular business, ActiveProspect enriches and refines it with more finer details. Suppose for home improvement leads, it takes the phone numbers and does a reverse phone look up to get the name, address, city, etc. of the lead.
And then it can do an address append and get the property data like year the house was built, when it was last sold, property value, square footage, is the person’s name attached to that house as an owner or as a renter, what’s their estimated credit score etc.
ActiveProspect can do this data snowball to get you all this information that’s really powerful for the person that’s making the outbound call. Using this information, businesses can figure out where they need to send this lead like financing team, premium sales rep, etc. Given the high cost per lead, even small improvements in information can significantly increase conversion rates.
What is ActiveProspect TrustedForm?
Active Prospect has a TrustedForm product which automatically generates this digital certificate for you as long as you have their JavaScript SDK on your lead form or landing page.
The certificate includes information such as a
- Timestamp for when the prospect submitted the form,
- Time they spent on page,
- IP address
- Geolocation
- Operating system
- a session replay.
This is an advanced form of documenting and capturing consent, and it can be stored for many years if you push it into your CRM.
TrustedForm Products
- TrustedForm Certify documents lead events in the form of a TrustedForm Certificate that can be used as evidence to prove how leads were generated.
- TrustedForm Retain stores certificates and makes them readily available during the statute of limitations for marketing related laws.
- TrustedForm Verify helps check for prior express written consent to enable use of regulated technology and otherwise restricted actions.
- TrustedForm Insights allows you to make informed decisions to optimize lead-buying strategies and maximize your ROI.
How TrustedForm Works?
Insert JavaScript Snippet in the header of your landing page or lead form. When a prospect lands on your page and loads your form, the ActiveProspect TrustedForm SDK automatically generates a unique certificate for that prospect. When the prospect submits your form, the certificate is created and can be sent through into your CRM and various systems.
The certificate can then be stored and associated with the lead for many years to come, which can be really helpful if a lead comes back years later and files some sort of litigation suit.
How to Integrate TrustedForm into Your Lead Form
The integration of Active Prospect TrustedForm into your landing page or lead form consist of following steps:
Get the JavaScript Snippet
First, you need to have your Active Prospect TrustedForm account. Once inside your account, go to the section called JavaScript snippet. Copy your JavaScript snippet.
Add the TrustedForm JavaScript SDK to Your Lead Form
Add the TrustedForm JavaScript SDK. Make sure JavaScript code loads every time when the form loads. Paste it in the head section, not the body section because header section loads promptly as the page loads and TrustedForm needs to load early to properly generate the certificate. If added to the body incorrectly, it may not fire correctly.
Once the JavaScript is added, the process works.
Create a Hidden Field to Capture the Certificate URL
Next, create a hidden field to capture the unique certificate value that is created when the form is loaded.
For this purpose, open your lead form editor. Go to the section where you can add or manage form fields so that you can add a new field.
Now change the field type, name, and label. Set the field type to Hidden and leave the default value blank. The field name can be whatever you want like trusted_form_cert_url.
Contrary to field name, field label is exactly as required by TrustedForm integration: XX Trusted Form Cert URL and save the form.
You will not see it inside your lead form because it is a hidden field, but it will be available in the settings. If you need to change something, open the field again.
It does not matter what you name the field, but the field label must be XX Trusted Form Cert URL. This is where the certificate URL is created when the page or form loads. The hidden field grabs that value, which is the link to the unique certificate generated upon submission of the lead form.
Test the Form
After that, add the lead form to an actual live page and send a test lead through. When you send a test lead, you will be able to find the lead in your lead details section.
Your leads will populate there, and you can click into a lead and see the TrustedForm certificate generated. You can copy the link and paste it into your browser to see all the associated data such as timestamp and session replay.
Why Claim a TrustedForm Certificate
The claim process is usually carried out by the lead buyer after purchasing the lead. Claiming the TrustedForm certificate is an important part of the process and makes everything official. It associates the lead with your system and gives you the ability to retain the certificate beyond the initial 90 days that TrustedForm provides. It also allows you to see lead data that cannot be viewed until the certificate has been claimed. This data include important information about lead qualification and enrichment discussed above.
Prerequisites for Claiming
To claim your TrustedForm certificate, you will need:
- A TrustedForm certificate URL. This is generated when the lead is submitted and is a unique link.
- An ActiveProspect account. ActiveProspect owns TrustedForm, and this account gives you access to TrustedForm and other products.
How to Claim TrustedForm Certificates
Let’s discuss how you make your leads official by claiming their TrustedForm certificates via:
- API Key/Zapier
- LeadConduit
Claiming Certificates via API Key/Zapier
It can be done without any programming knowledge. To claim lead certificates via zapier or API key you will need a paid account with TrustedForm.
Suppose you’ve got a bunch of unclaimed certificate URLs building up in your CRM or form builder and you want to retain every one that comes in either automatically or programmatically. We’re going to use zappier; a platform that connects different systems so when any change happens in one app it triggers an action in another.
First, you need to grab the API key from ActiveProspect or Trustedform. To get it, go to settings in the TrustedForm account and get the API key and save it.
Next, go to Zapier. If you don’t have an account, get one. Once you’re in zapier, create a zap. In Zapier, every Zap has triggers and actions. Choose a trigger app that can be your CRM, form builder, or lead capture tool. Wherever leads are collected and stored that system becomes the trigger app and initiates action that is getting the TrustedForm certificate URL from that submission automatically and sending it to TrustedForm to retain..
Claiming Certificates via LeadConduit
lead conduit is a lead distribution platform owned by ActiveProspect. It’s a very well-known and well recommended platform and is a great tool to look at if you are indeed Distributing or purchasing leads.
One of the many benefits of lead conduit is that it has a built-in integration with TrustedForm that lets you claim certificates as part of a workflow. In other words, if you’re using lead conduit as your lead distribution platform you can claim certificates from right within the lead conduit interface.
Unfortunately lead conduit is a paid service yet it’s one of the more affordable lead distribution Platforms but if pricing is a major concern you might be better off going the API route.
Use Zapier to send your leads to lead conduit. If you are using a form builder like GrowForm just set up a zap with Growform as trigger and lead conduit as the destination. When someone submits a lead form, Zapier sends that lead into LeadConduit automatically.
Once your leads and certificate URLs are in lead conduit configure TrustedForm inside LeadConduit through following steps:
- Go to the Flow Editor. It is a workflow builder for leads.
- Click Add Step
- Select Addon
- Choose the TrustedForm Add-on
- Click Add to Flow
- Click Retain
- Click Finish
FAQs about ActiveProspect and TrustedForm
1. What is ActiveProspect and how does it help with TCPA compliance?
ActiveProspect is a lead acquisition platform that helps businesses decide which leads to purchase or ingest, then delivers them to a dialer, CRM, or other system. ActiveProspect helps with TCPA compliance by ensuring that only consumers who asked via consent to be contacted are contacted.
2. What is a TrustedForm certificate?
A TrustedForm certificate is an advanced form of documenting and capturing consent. The certificate includes information such as a
- Timestamp for when the prospect submitted the form,
- Time they spent on page,
- IP address
- Geolocation
- Operating system
- a session replay
3. Why is documenting consent beyond a checkbox important?
In the future when you run AI outbound calling campaigns and someone reaches out to a litigator and claims that I never asked to be contacted, it’s not enough to say well on our page there’s a text box that you clicked. In such a case, having that documented proof of consent is very important. And ActiveProspect as a trusted third party source provides evidence that the consumer gave prior express written consent
4. How does ActiveProspect improve outbound calling campaigns?
ActiveProspect improves lead quality for outbound calling and outreach via lead qualification, risk screening, and data enrichment. By doing so, it filters out risky and bad leads and passes on leads with ideal customer profiles for further outreach to businesses.
