Telemarketing rewired: magazine publishers are racing to retool their approach to telemarketing in response to tough new federal regulation

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Feb 1, 1993 by Lambeth Hochwald

Magazine publishers are racing to retool their approach to telemarketing in response to tough new federal regulations.

Those magazine publishers and circulation directors who rely heavily on outbound telemarketing for renewals and new business knew it was only a matter of time before the government stepped in to regulate calls aimed at consumers. So it came as no surprise when, last December, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) officially implemented Congress' 16-point Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) of 1991.

Designed to shield consumers from unwanted telemarketing appeals, and banning unsolicited "junk" faxes as well, (see Folio:, December 1992, pages 2C-27), the FCC statute also restricts pre-recorded messages and autodialers used in making some telemarketing appeals.

For the magazine publishing community, this has meant a necessary tightening of telemarketing practices and a drive to improve communications with out-of-house service bureaus - in part because the statute shifts the burden of legal responsibility to the client from the service bureau. In addition, the FCC statute holds the client publication financially responsible should a lawsuit arise. To stay in compliance, publishers are looking for new ways to keep their "do-not-call" lists current and to make sure names on it are cross-referenced for every title marketed by telephone and with each service bureau the magazine employs. This is critical because the statute includes a private-suit clause whereby consumers can sue publications for up to $500 per offense if the call recipient is contacted again after he or she has asked not to be. Some publishers are in the process of drawing up written policies with their attorneys detailing exactly how they will compile and maintain their do-not-call lists.

The legislation also strictly defines who should be considered a consumer and who has what the TCPA terms a "prior business relationship" with the client represented by the telemarketer. Although the TCPA statute doesn't apply to calls made to those who have this prior business relationship, it makes it clear that once a person has requested not to be called, all so-called prior business ties are cut.

Paul Mahler, executive vice president of DialAmerica Marketing, an outbound telemarketing service bureau in Mahwah, New Jersey, says it's up to publications themselves to stay apprised of the laws in the states in which they operate. In some cases, state laws on intrastate telemarketing are stricter than the new federal legislation. Each service agency should have its own written policy and, as stipulated by the FCC, call consumers only between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m.

Mahler says he has contacted his clients about the legislation's effect on them and is now training his employees to respond to the new rules.

Little impact on trade magazines

Will the new regulations affect the telemarketing efforts of business-to-business publications? Faye Swalm, director of telemarketing at Advanstar Communications, says that trade magazine telemarketing is still - technically - different from that oriented toward consumers: "It's very difficult to preclude, philosophically, a business person from prospecting calls because [business people] are interested in expanding business. It's not the same kind of cold call you're making to a consumer."

Nonetheless, Mark Facey, president of Mark Facey & Company, a Bristol, Connecticut-based company that specializes in trade-title telemarketing, says the FCC ruling is a necessary, yet "mild," attempt at managing a selling tool that has grown dramatically in recent years.

Like Facey, Maxine Tiger, general manager of McGraw-Hill's telemarketing department, believes that the regulations will restrict the abusers and have little impact on publishers who were already using the medium responsibly.

"Because we are targeting those who we already know are interested and we're not just blitzing a Zip Code, this won't have any negative impact on my business," Tiger says. "In the long run, the regulations are a good thing because they reinforce what we've been doing. In the short run, documenting our policies is just one more job I have to do."

Scripts need re-examination

Once a magazine publisher has cleaned its lists of do-not-calls and mapped out its revised telemarketing campaigns, the next step is to work with its service bureaus to create suitable scripts. Telephone representatives need to know how to tell the difference between a momentarily annoyed customer and a telemarketing-unfriendly one - and a good script can help guide them in recording that information properly in a publisher's database.

"We've already started cleaning up our scripts," says Tiger of McGraw-Hill. "We're trying to make sure that our sales reps discriminate between the individual who doesn't want to be called - ever - versus the consumer who is annoyed at that moment," she explains.

Ilona Martner, marketing quality manager at Time Inc., is testing what she describes as a "decision tree" script that is aimed at helping her telephone reps to recognize a "do-not-call" request - and then to take the proper steps to record the dialogue. The tree includes several possible calling scenarios. It leads reps through a step-by-step clarification process with six cases in which a customer clearly wants to be placed on a do-not-call list, and other scenarios in which the customer is less opposed to telemarketing. This is the first effort Time has made to adjust its scripts, Marmer says. "We hadn't focused our attention on the scripting aspect as it related to objections to telemarketing," she adds. "But now we're testing different versions of this decision tree because we want to make absolutely sure that we are capturing our customers true preferences."