Everything you need to know about marketing compliance. Plus best practices and tips

1. What is
Marketing Compliance?
What you should know and how this
affects your industry.

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In a simple definition,
Marketing compliance is ensuring that
your company’s marketing, advertising,
and sales content follows the rules and
regulations set by government agencies.
This includes content across a wide variety of mediums, including the web, call centers, emails,
messages, social media, and documents (this includes physical collateral such asdirect mailers).
Some industries are more highly regulated than others, such as: banks, financial institutions, mortgage
lenders, alternative lenders, credit card issuers and brands, buy now pay later (BNPL) firms, higher
education, gig economy platforms, and insurance companies. Some regulations are applicable across
all industries (such as UDAAP), but each industry also has its own unique regulations to follow. These
industries are overseen by a number of regulatory agencies, such as the CFPB, FTC, FINRA, State
Attorney Generals, and more.
No matter the industry, ensuring complete marketing compliance is essential to protecting
consumers and your company’s reputation and bottom line.

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What is Marketing Compliance?
Marketing compliance is ensuring that your company’s marketing, advertising, and content follow rules
and regulations set by government agencies. These standards are put in place to protect consumers
from being misled or deceived by businesses. In practice, marketing compliance is making sure that
your content and copy are compliant with all applicable regulations—no matter where they end up.
Whether these messages are on the web, in an email, communicated by phone or chat in call centers,
through customer support in chat boxes, on social media, or in physical collateral pieces like direct
mailers, your company is responsible for making sure the messaging is consistent and abides by
regulations.
The Importance of Compliance
Certain regulations (such as UDAAP) prohibit certain types of language, acts, and/or practices that
can mislead or deceive consumers and lead to potential harm. If federal or state regulators find that
your brand messaging isn’t abiding by regulations, they could open an investigation, file a lawsuit, and
penalize your company.
From a reputational standpoint, your marketing materials can make or break the first impression that
consumers have of your brand. If you make a bad impression, it weakens your relationship with potential
customers and tarnishes your reputation.
Marketing Compliance:
What You Should Know

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Ever Changing Regulations
Now more than ever, it feels like new regulations are popping up everywhere, and existing ones are constantly
changing and evolving—and that’s because they are. From both a federal and state level, keeping up-to-date on
the latest regulatory obligations can be a challenge.
Marketing Content Approval
Marketing compliance means that there must be a working relationship between the marketing and
compliance/legal/content controls departments. Aligning that relationship while getting collateral out promptly
continues to be a struggle for many organizations.
Unknown Brand Placements
The internet can be a crazy place and thousands of third-party websites could be using your brand’s name, logo,
or content without your knowledge or permission. Or, even worse, they could be using them in a deceptive,
non-compliant way, which could lead to much larger issues..
Bad Actors
As much as we all like to think that our partners have our best interest in mind, some might not. Much like other
third parties, these partners could be using your brand’s name and logo for deceptive practices or could be
failing to adhere to regulatory and brand guidelines.
Bandwidth
To stay on top of all these marketing compliance challenges, organizations have to ensure that they have enough
bandwidth and headcount to meet their regulatory obligations. Many organizations, however, don’t have the
extra budget to hire additional headcount to find, monitor, and review all placements to ensure 100% coverage.
Marketing Compliance Challenges
Learn more
Looking for more marketing compliance
challenges and how to overcome them?

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What is Sales Compliance?
Sales compliance is ensuring that your organization’s sales communications follow the rules set
by the government. These standards are put in place to protect consumers from being misled or
deceived by businesses, especially financial institutions. In practice, sales compliance is making sure
that communications are in line with regulations across all touchpoints in which your organization
communicates directly with a consumer. Whether it be through email, social media, on the phone, or via
messages, organizations are responsible for making sure that messaging by their sales representatives
is accurate, truthful, and abides by all applicable regulations.
Why is Sales Compliance Important?
Sales communications are an extension of your marketing communications, but there are two main
differences when it comes to compliance monitoring. First, with sales communications, a sales rep is
typically communicating directly to only one or a few people, rather than a larger audience. Second,
monitoring involves reviewing communications of many individual sales professionals as opposed to
one central hub for marketing content. These communications are not immune to regulatory scrutiny,
as they still fall under the same rules and regulations as any marketing materials would. Failure to meet
these regulatory obligations could result in regulatory scrutiny and enforcement actions against your
company.
For those in consumer lending, sales compliance is especially important. Mortgage loan officers and
wealth advisors, for example, often work with consumers directly. It’s important that consumers are
given accurate information. Under the Truth In Lending Act (TILA), this includes information like the
amount financed, finance charges, payment schedules, a total of payments, annual percentage rates
(APRs), and security interest disclosures. If any of these are not disclosed properly, the creditor is liable
and will likely hear from the regulators.
Sales Compliance:
What You Should Know

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Dodd-Frank Act (Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and
Consumer Protection Act) Learn more
UDAAP (Unfair, Deceptive or Abusive Acts or Practices)
Learn more
TILA (Truth in Lending Act) Learn more
CARD Act (Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and
Disclosure Act) Learn more
Map Rule (The Mortgage Acts and Practices Advertising Rule)
and Regulation N Learn more
Source: https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/rules/rulemaking-regulatory-reform-
proceedings/fair-debt-collection-practices-act-text
When it comes to the financial services industry, there’s an endless number of regulations, requirements, guidelines,
acts, industry standards, and more set forth to protect consumers. Regulators, such as the CFPB, FTC, FINRA, and
more establish these legislations and use them to help deter risky behavior and guide their enforcement actions.
While the complete list of legislation is extensive, and many laws are unique to certain industries, there are a few
important acts and regulations to be aware of.
Marketing Compliance Regulations
Learn more
Want to learn more about regulations that
could impact your brand?
TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act) Learn more
Higher Education Act Learn more
RESPA (Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act) Learn more
Federal Trade Commission Act Learn more
Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry (NMLS) Learn more
Fair Debt Collection Practice Act (FDCPA) Learn more

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Keep a close eye on these channels for compliance:
Across the web for owned and operated sites, partners, search, lead generation,
merchant, and marketplace pages
Call Centers for sales, customer service, etc
Emails including internal and external from affiliates, partners, third parties,
sales reps, customer service agents, or any employee communications
Messaging like chat boxes and SMS texts
Social Media including Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok,
and YouTube
Pre-Production Documents like blogs and one-sheets and
Physical Collateral like direct mailers and flyers
Marketing Channels to
Monitor for Compliance
Learn more
Are all your channels covered?

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Monitor consumer complaints
“The database is especially valuable, as the data provided gives you a window into what’s going on at other
companies in their whole industry, as opposed to just hearing what your own customers are saying,” says former
CFPB Director Richard Cordray.
Keep a close eye on your partners’ marketing messages – you
are responsible for them!
Your company assumes all the risk of what these third parties say on your behalf. Once you’ve included clear and
non-deceptive disclosures in your ads, make sure that your partners are doing the same.
Implement a regtech platform to scale your compliance
efforts
Take the burden off of your organization’s compliance teams, ensure that your partners and third parties are
adhering to regulatory and brand requirements, and increase your speed-to-market.
Keep your compliance efforts consistent across all of your
consumer interaction channels
Using one digital platform over another does not exempt you from regulatory obligations, so take extra care
when crafting your messages to ensure that they are compliant and non-deceptive across the board.
Craft a standard process to streamline the compliance
approval process
A common complaint is that the compliance approval process causes a slowdown in the time needed to publish
content. To avoid a slowdown, try creating an editorial calendar with built-in marketing, legal, and regulatory
approval timelines.
Tips for Marketing and
Regulatory Compliance
Keep your compliance efforts consistent across
all of your consumer interaction channels
Learn more
Looking for more marketing compliance
tips and tricks?
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Automate your marketing and sales compliance coverage, from preproduction documents to live monitorng across
the web, calls, messaging, emails, and social media, with PerformLine.
One Compliance Platform
for Omni-Channel Coverage
Speak to an Expert