What do people mean by ACA leads?
ACA leads is a loose term. It can mean a spreadsheet of people who filled in a health insurance form last week, a phone call from someone who saw an ad, or a caller your floor screened and transferred live to a licensed agent. All three get sold as ACA leads, at very different prices and with very different quality. If you're buying data to dial, or selling transfers to an agency, you need to know which one is in front of you.
Below is how each type is made, what buyers check before they pay, and where offshore floors usually go wrong. Rules on consent and calling change, so treat the compliance points as general and confirm the specifics with your buyer and your counsel.
Data leads: forms, aged data and the consent behind them
Most outbound ACA campaigns start with data. A person fills in a form on a website, often one comparing health plans, and agrees to be contacted. That record, with name, phone, state and sometimes household details, is sold as a fresh lead, often to more than one buyer. After some days or weeks it is sold again, more cheaply, as aged data.
The record is only as good as the consent behind it. The form has to say who may call and by what means, and the person must actually have filled it in. Many buyers want a consent certificate from a third-party service that recorded the form session, so the consent can be shown later if anyone asks. If your data arrives without one, ask why. Our consent glossary entry and the post on TCPA basics for offshore call centers cover the general rules.
ACA data also ages fast. Someone who filled in a form in October and enrolled in November isn't a lead in December. Aged data can still work, but contact and qualification rates fall, and duplicates with other vendors rise.
Data is also sold as exclusive or shared. An exclusive record goes to one buyer only, for a period. A shared record goes to several, which is why the person may get four calls in an hour and answer yours with "you people again". Shared data is cheaper per record and more expensive per transfer, because your fronter is often the third voice the caller has heard that day. Ask which kind you are getting, and price your expectations accordingly.
Inbound calls: ads, callbacks and why they cost more
Inbound ACA leads are calls the person makes. They saw a TV spot, a search ad or a social media ad and dialed. Intent is higher because the caller chose to call. Inbound calls are usually priced per call that lasts past a set duration, and they are routed to whoever bought them, sometimes a floor that screens them before passing them to a licensed agent.
For offshore floors, inbound is often harder to get than outbound, because buyers want inbound callers answered fast, during US hours, often by US agents. Where floors do work inbound, the fronting job is shorter: confirm the basics and transfer quickly, because the caller is already warm.
Callbacks sit between the two. A person missed your outbound call and rang the number back. Treat those as your warmest calls, answer them first, and make sure your caller ID setup sends a callback to a live seat, not to a dead end.
Track inbound and callback transfers separately from outbound in your reports. They behave differently, and blending them hides how your outbound fronting is really doing.
Outbound transfers: how a floor turns data into ACA leads buyers pay for
This is where most Pakistani and Indian floors sit. You dial data, your fronter screens for coverage, household, income and state, and qualified callers are transferred live. The buyer pays per billable transfer. In effect you're making a higher-grade lead out of a lower-grade one, and the value you add is the screening and the handoff.
A worked example shows where the volume goes. Say your floor loads a list for the night. A share of dials connect to a live person once answering machines are dropped. Of those, a share will talk past the opening. A share of those pass the coverage question, a smaller share fit the household and income range, and a share of those agree to the transfer. Then the buyer's filters apply: billable duration, duplicates and returns. You can't change the top of that funnel much, because the data decides it. You control everything from the opening down, and that's why floors dialing the same data get such different results.
The most expensive place to lose a caller is the last step. A caller who passed every question and then hangs up during a clumsy handoff wasted all the dials it took to find them. That's why our post on warm and cold transfers matters so much on ACA.
The quality signals ACA buyers check
Buyers judge ACA leads and transfers on a handful of signals. Expect them in your agreement or in your first QA review, and track them yourself so nothing in the review surprises you:
- Consent: a valid record that the person agreed to be contacted, by whom and when.
- Lead age: when the form was filled in, for data leads.
- Contact and transfer rates on the data, compared with their other sources.
- Billable rate: the share of transfers that pass their minimum duration.
- Duplicate rate against their own records and other vendors.
- Return rate and reasons: employer coverage, Medicare or Medicaid, income outside range, wrong state, a caller who didn't know about the transfer.
- Enrollment rate on billable transfers, and whether those enrollments stick.
- State mix: transfers from states the buyer doesn't cover, or where their agents are stretched.
Pitfalls that cost floors their ACA buyers
The last two signals take time to show up. A source can look fine on billable rate and still get cut if its enrollments cancel faster than other sources'. Ask the buyer what they measure beyond the transfer. Then check your own floor against the mistakes that most often end ACA relationships:
- Buying cheap data with no consent record, then having nothing to show when a complaint arrives.
- Calling outside the caller's local calling window because the shift runs late into the PKT morning.
- Transferring callers who already have a marketplace plan with another agent. Unauthorized agent changes have drawn enforcement, and buyers are strict about it.
- Fronters guessing or suggesting income figures to get a caller into range.
- Promising free plans or specific savings.
- Loading the same data into two campaigns and creating your own duplicates.
- Ignoring the Spanish-speaking share of a list, then sending those callers to English-only agents.
Questions to ask before you buy ACA data
If you buy the data your floor dials, most of the pitfalls above can be caught before you pay for it. Ask the seller these questions, and get the answers in writing:
- Where was each record generated, and can you show me the form and its consent wording?
- Does each record come with a consent certificate, and does the consent name my buyer or allow sharing with them?
- When was each record created, and how many times has it been sold before?
- Which states are in the file, and in what share?
- Has the file been scrubbed against the national DNC registry, and when?
- What happens if a record turns out to be invalid or has no consent? Is there a replacement or refund policy?
Where bots fit in ACA lead production
Most ACA pitfalls are decisions the owner makes before a single dial, which is the good news. Fix the data and the rules first, and your fronters have a chance.
Bots change the middle of the funnel, the stretch between a connected call and a transfer. B3 Voice's ACA fronter drops answering machines, reads your approved disclosure, asks about coverage, household and income in your order, marks do-not-call requests on the call and ends politely when the household is outside your thresholds. It never states a subsidy amount. It runs in English today with Spanish coming, which matters on ACA lists. The flow is on the ACA bots page, and you can test it on a slice of your own list with a free trial.
