On Jan. 27, new rules for contacting consumers kick in. If you’re not compliant, you’re at serious risk of fines and lawsuits. Just ask Keller Williams.
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Verify by Call Action is a lead verification solution.
Platforms: Web
Ideal for: Agents, teams and brokerages
Top selling points:
• Fast Do Not Call inclusion verification
• Email verification
• Follow Up Boss integration
• No onboarding
Top concern(s):
There may be some CRM integration challenges as the product continues to roll out. Potential users should reach out to ensure compatibility.
What you should know
Verify is designed to ensure agents and their brokerages don’t get their pants sued to shreds by an unverified lead who doesn’t like to be contacted by real estate agents or their preferred partners. If that last sentence is vague, then you likely need a product like Verify.
CallAction is sales automation and lead follow-up software that’s been behind the scenes of many agents’ success for years. Verify is an offshoot solution, a sister product, to specifically address the woefully underrated risk to the real estate industry that is the upcoming update to the long-standing TCPA, or Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which birthed the Do Not Call list, or DNC.
I wrote about the new rules in my 2025 trends piece, included below, but the ultimate source (the FCC) is here.
In summary, the January 27 rule activation will mean solicitors (real estate agents) must have express written consent to contact a consumer if using what is deemed a “regulated technology,” such as a power dialer, or Automatic Telephone Dialing System (ATDS), or mass texting systems. Voicemail drops and AI voice calls count, too.
Any sort of bulk lead list will need to be thoroughly vetted to determine if each record on it signed up to be contacted and ensure they’re not on the Do Not Call registry. If they are, and you call them, you’re on the hook for what could be a significant penalty per violation and law firms advertising ways to collect are planning their ad budgets.
Verify is set up to do this for you. The software deploys a straightforward user experience to not risk confusing the user on its intent. It’s only a couple of steps to scan an uploaded list for the purpose of determining if a record is on the DNC and to ensure the person is associated with active contact information.
The process is similar to a computer virus scan. It provides an initial audit of at-risk records, then proceeds with a full scan of the subject data. A number of pie charts color-code the percentage of records with DNC registrants. It looks at re-assigned phone numbers, too, which can also get you into trouble.
While a umber of existing CRMs — heck, likely all of them — do a good job of appending email addresses or authenticating physical addresses, Verify is specific to the person’s inclusion on the DNC and helps determine if they may be what’s considered a potential risk to act on being contacted.
The scan will flag appropriate records so you know how to take action; the best method for doing so would be to write the person an email and ask if they’d like to still be contacted. If yes, then great; that’s called a warm lead. If no, also good, because now your database is that much cleaner and your email open rate that much higher and less prone to getting punched by your ISP for sending spam.
For now, Follow Up Boss users have an advantage in that CallAction has had an integration with it for some time, but I was told work was underway to expand those capabilities to other systems. There’s a simple workaround: uploading the returned .CSV file into your existing software.
It isn’t often I’d write about such a niche product, but, like those few tools that emerged to assist agents with buyer representation and to identify brokers who advocate for sellers to pay buyer agents, the pending Jan. 27 update is an important industry matter.
Also, CallAction has been at this for a long time, and credibility matters. It’s not some random provider aiming to kick up a cloud of revenue from real estate agents. The company has long proven its commitment to improving the way the industry works, and Verify is another example.
Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe
Craig C. Rowe started in commercial real estate at the dawn of the dot-com boom, helping an array of commercial real estate companies fortify their online presence and analyze internal software decisions. He now helps agents with technology decisions and marketing through reviewing software and tech for Inman.
