Sales and marketing are a critical component of most, if not all businesses. Businesses spend billions and billions of dollars each year trying to more effectively acquire customers and grow their business. Any shrewd business leader will look to gain a competitive advantage when they can, and in recent years phone call and texting automation has become one of the most used and abused methods.
The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) was passed in 1991 to protect consumers from telemarketing abuse. That was 30 years ago, and the TCPA has done a tremendous job protecting us from spam calls. More recently, spam texting has become a prevalent method of “telemarketing” that is negatively impacting consumer’s lives. Although illegal, spam texts have steadily increased over the years as mobile marketing activities become the focus of many businesses. The assumption is that most business owners don’t know sending promotional text messages to potential customers is illegal, and can leave them open to lawsuits citing the TCPA.
For most business owners, having a trusted attorney on your team of advisers is second nature. Whether your attorney is your general counsel working in the business day to day or just someone you call every couple of months for advice, it’s prudent to have an expert on your side.
The responsibility of that expert is to stay current on laws and legal trends as they pertain to your business. At lowercase, a law firm, we take on tons of these TCPA cases from the consumer side. We know how businesses abuse this ability and cause distress to consumers on their private devices, so we also advise our business owner clients and contacts against falling into those same mistakes.
The case law interpreting the TCPA is always evolving, and attorneys need to keep up with the continually changing technological landscape. If you’re wondering if any of your business’ marketing or promotional activities violate the TCPA, contact a lowercase attorney to ensure you’re using but not abusing your promotional channels.
