Top Marketing Compliance Issues & Benchmarking Stats: 2H 2023

PerformLine reviews, monitors, and flags hundreds of thousands of marketing assets each day for potential compliance violations. Through those insights, we’ve pinpointed the most common compliance issues and benchmarked compliance statistics across channels. 

These insights offer a valuable glimpse into the marketing compliance landscape, empowering businesses to refine their strategies and stay ahead of potential pitfalls. Dive into our findings to ensure your marketing efforts are not only impactful but also fully compliant.

Most common compliance issues

PerformLine monitors thousands of marketing assets daily for compliance using proprietary technology and expert rulebooks to search for potential violations. 

PerformLine’s rulebooks are carefully curated collections of terms and phrases that are associated with specific compliance categories, regulations, laws, and guidelines that organizations use to monitor marketing content to identify potential compliance violations at scale. These rulebooks cover everything from broad compliance concerns (like UDAAP) to industry or product-specific requirements.

Please note that the specific terms called out for each issue are the commonly flagged terms, but are not an exhaustive list. 

1. Offer Inflation

Offer inflation—also referred to as exaggerated claims—refers to statements that are not entirely truthful or accurate and are designed to make the product or service appear more attractive or valuable than it actually is.

In most cases, it’s difficult to promise these types of outcomes to all consumers. For example, a consumer might see a product marketed as having “the best rates” and take that at face value. That consumer doesn’t shop around because the consumer trusts that the claim is true. The consumer signs up for the product, which turns out to not be the best product for them and causes more harm in the long run. 

2. Brand Misrepresentation

Brand misrepresentation involves using deceptive or false language and terminology that misrepresents a brand’s attributes or product qualities. This is most commonly identified in the insurance industry but is applicable to other industries as well.

These types of terms could imply a level of security or reliability that the product or service cannot guarantee for every consumer. These terms, if used in marketing promotions, could mislead consumers to form incorrect impressions about what a brand stands for or the benefits of its products. 

3. Misleading Language

In this context, misleading language refers to terms or phrases within proximity to a company name that would mislead consumers about the nature of the company’s products or services. This compliance issue is most prominent for organizations that work with third parties, such as partner banks and fintechs.

For example, a fintech company using the word “bank” next to its name might unintentionally imply that it offers the full range of services typical of a traditional bank, such as savings accounts, loans, or FDIC insurance. 

4. Credit Deception

Credit deception means using language that would lead consumers to believe that a certain product or service would help, repair, or build credit. While it may be true for some products or consumers, it isn’t always true.

These types of terms could imply specific outcomes or improvements that may not be achievable or accurate for all consumers. 

5. Disclosures

Disclosures include any information that lenders are required to include on their websites, social media profiles and posts, or other marketing materials regarding their products. Assets are flagged if any of the required disclosures are missing. This is most commonly identified in the mortgage industry but is applicable to other industries as well.

Compliance benchmarking stats

In the second half of 2023, PerformLine monitored 9.8M assets across and flagged 2.2M of those for a potential compliance issue.

Assets refer to a specific marketing item or communication, such as a document, web page, social media post, email, call, or message.

When an asset is flagged, it means that the PerformLine platform has identified a potential compliance issue that needs to be reviewed and, if needed, remediated.

Some notable marketing channel-specific stats…

We also took a deeper dive into benchmarketing stats across specific marketing channels.

PerformLine’s Document Review helps streamline the compliance review of marketing materials from internal departments and external partners, affiliates, and other third parties. An impressive 97% of submitted documents undergo a thorough review process, receive instant and actionable feedback, and receive final compliance approval all within 24 hours or less. 

PerformLine’s Web Monitoring solution, powered by the innovative Kraken Crawler, has been a game-changer in identifying previously undiscovered content with brand mentions across the web, with 68% of the web pages we monitor being new finds.

Through Social Media Monitoring, our clients can monitor major social media platforms at scale to ensure marketing compliance. Notably, 80% of the compliance issues we flagged were on popular platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

Our Email Monitoring and discovery tool has been instrumental in finding and pinpointing potential compliance issues across sales, marketing, and partner emails, with 31% of the emails flagged. 

PerformLine’s Call Monitoring and Message Monitoring automatically review calls and messages for compliance violations and performance issues. Our platform flagged 25% of calls and 33% of messages for a compliance issue or performance observation.

Get the full marketing compliance quarterly review report

PerformLine’s Marketing Compliance and Enforcement Actions Quarterly Review focuses on the latest compliance issues and benchmarketing trends that impacted consumer finance companies in the second half of 2023. Powered by our in-depth compliance monitoring and industry analysis, this review provides essential insights to help businesses navigate the evolving regulatory landscape effectively.

Access the full report for free here.

Monitor for marketing compliance with PerformLine

At PerformLine, our mission is to empower marketing and compliance leaders with the technology and knowledge to ensure that their organizations and partners provide accurate and compliant information to consumers across any channel.

We help leading organizations mitigate marketing compliance risk while increasing efficiency through:

• Time savings on hours spend manually searching and reviewing marketing materials for compliance
• Cost savings by identifying compliance issues and allowing for quick remediation before they turn into investigations or enforcement actions
• Automated discovery of unknown brand mentions and product promotions across marketing channels to find potential compliance issues
• Comprehensive coverage and oversight across marketing channels, products, and partners at scale through automated technology

Schedule a demo to learn more.

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