The Importance of Marketing Compliance Review and Monitoring

Marketing compliance review and ongoing marketing compliance monitoring are key aspects of a robust compliance program.

Ensuring that your marketing materials are in compliance before and after they are published is critical for mitigating regulatory compliance risk, protecting your brand, and protecting consumers.

Marketing Compliance Review vs. Marketing Compliance Monitoring

What is a marketing compliance review?

A marketing compliance review is the examination of marketing materials for compliance before they’re published, including direct mailers, blog posts, brochures, emails, advertisements, and more.

These marketing materials can be from internal teams and departments, as well as external third parties and partners.

Some items to check for in marketing compliance review before content is published include:

• Compliance with applicable laws and regulations for the product, service, or industry
• Appropriate disclosures are in place and are clear and conspicuous
• Necessary company information is present, including name, website, etc. 
• Language is not misleading or deceptive (to avoid UDAAP violations)

What is marketing compliance monitoring?

Marketing compliance monitoring is the ongoing review of marketing materials across channels for regulatory compliance after they’re published, including across the web and social media.

Marketing compliance monitoring includes monitoring for:

• Your brand’s published marketing content for compliance with applicable laws and regulations
• Content published by partners, individual contributors, or other third parties that are affiliated with your brand
• Unknown placements of your brand that are out of compliance

Why is it important to monitor marketing materials for compliance before and after they’re published?

Marketing compliance reviews are important because they ensure that your marketing materials are compliant before publication, allowing you to proactively avoid compliance issues.

Marketing compliance monitoring is important because it ensures that your marketing materials are still compliant after being published, and allows you to catch any compliance issues in real time. 

Even if marketing materials have been reviewed and approved before publishing, there is still a chance of that content being changed afterward. Regardless of intent, even a seemingly minor change to marketing content could cause major compliance issues.

For example, our recent study found that using subjective language was a top marketing compliance issue across published content. If the approved content for an advertisement is changed from “Get your rate today” to “Get your lowest rate today,” that one additional word could result in a UDAAP violation because it could deceive or mislead consumers about the nature of the product they’re receiving.

With ongoing marketing compliance monitoring, you can catch these small changes and remediate them quickly before they become a bigger issue.

Both marketing compliance review and ongoing monitoring are key parts of a strong compliance management system (CMS).

How to automate marketing compliance review and monitoring

Both marketing compliance review and monitoring can be automated through a compliance platform, like PerformLine’s omni-channel compliance platform.

With PerformLine, organizations can streamline the compliance review and approval process of marketing materials before they’re published, and can automate and scale the ongoing compliance monitoring of content once it’s published and live.

There are several benefits of using technology to automate marketing compliance review and ongoing monitoring, including:

• Increased speed and efficiency 
• Improved accuracy (human error is inevitable!)
• Encourages structure by utilizing a single platform
• Documentation and a complete audit trail to show good faith efforts to comply

Industries that should implement marketing compliance review and ongoing monitoring

Organizations in highly-regulated industries should consider adding technology to their compliance management systems to automate marketing compliance review and ongoing monitoring.

Here’s how some industries are using PerformLine.

Mortgage

Marketing Compliance Review: Mortgage companies use PerformLine to expedite the review of marketing materials from loan officers to ensure compliance with federal and state regulations, including disclosures and information (such as NMLS numbers, company names, the Equal Housing logo or statement, etc). 

Ongoing Compliance Monitoring: PerformLine also helps mortgage companies automate and scale the ongoing monitoring of loan officers’ websites and social media profiles to flag and remediate potential compliance issues quickly. PerformLine also discovers brand presence across unknown, unreported, or independent pages. 

Buy Now, Pay Later

Marketing Compliance Review: Buy now, pay later companies use PerformLine to expedite the review of marketing materials from merchant partners to ensure compliance with federal and state regulations and consumer protection. 

Ongoing Compliance Monitoring: PerformLine also helps BNPL organizations gain insight into the online presence of their merchants and how they’re representing their financial offering and relationship with them. 

Partner Banks

Marketing Compliance Review: Partner banks use PerformLine to expedite the review of marketing materials from fintech partners to ensure compliance with federal and state regulations.

Ongoing Compliance Monitoring: Partner banks also use PerformLine to continually monitor fintech partners by crawling and scoring their online presence at scale and identifying instances of banned language around sponsored products, missing relationship disclosures, and false claims around the partner’s financing capabilities.

Fintechs

Marketing Compliance Review: Fintechs use PerformLine to expedite the review of marketing materials from affiliate partners to ensure compliance with federal and state regulations as it pertains to the fintech’s business and their partner bank(s)’ business.

Ongoing Compliance Monitoring: Fintechs also use PerformLine to continually monitor their financial product offerings across known (and unknown) affiliate networks for compliance and to gain a competitive advantage over their competitors by offering a proactive compliance solution to show potential partners that they won’t pose a risk to their business.

Credit Card

Marketing Compliance Review: Credit card issuers use PerformLine to automatically review internal and external marketing materials for compliance with applicable federal and state regulations.

Ongoing Compliance Monitoring: Credit card issuers use PerformLine to monitor credit card listings across thousands of marketing partner sites for compliance against terms, conditions, TILA requirements, and other applicable laws.

Close the compliance loop with PerformLine

PerformLine’s omni-channel compliance monitoring solution provides:

• A streamlined process for marketing compliance review and ongoing compliance monitoring within a single platform
• Comprehensive coverage of your organization and your partners across marketing channels, including the web, calls, messages, emails, documents, and social media
• An adaptable compliance program that matches your risk threshold as your business changes and grows

Close the compliance loop with PerformLine—schedule a demo with our team today.