AUTOMOTIVE DEALERSHIP SMS COMPLIANCE

// Course Guide

Who this course is for

• Dealer principals and general managers responsible for messaging risk
• BDC managers and sales desk leads who run outbound texting
• Service directors whose advisors text repair updates
• Compliance and F&I staff overseeing vendor platforms and DMS integrations

Why texting compliance is different for dealerships

Dealerships text from more places than almost any other retail business: the sales floor, the BDC, the service lane, F&I and third-party marketing vendors, often across several rooftops sharing one DMS. That creates three recurring risks. Consent captured in the service drive gets reused for sales promotions it never covered. Opt-outs entered in one tool never reach the CRM or the vendor running the next equity-mining campaign. And leads bought from third-party sites arrive with consent that belonged to someone else. TCPA class actions against dealer groups regularly turn on exactly these gaps, and carriers now block unregistered dealer traffic outright.

What each module covers

1. TCPA Foundations for Auto Dealers. The TCPA as it applies to dealerships: consent tiers, autodialer rules after Facebook v. Duguid, Do Not Call obligations, statutory damages and recent case law.
2. TCR Registration. 10DLC registration for dealerships: brand and campaign structure, use case selection, vetting, and keeping registrations accurate as the business changes.
3. Multi-Rooftop Consent Management. How to capture, scope and document consent for dealerships: express versus express written consent, disclosure language, recordkeeping and consent that survives a challenge.
4. Message Classification. For dealerships: classifying messages as informational, transactional, conversational or marketing, and why the classification decides which consent and which campaign apply.
5. Contamination Prevention. For dealerships: preventing contamination: keeping marketing content out of informational and transactional messages so consent and registrations stay valid.
6. Opt-Out & DMS Integration. For dealerships: processing STOP and other opt-outs across every system, honoring revocation by any reasonable means, and keeping internal and national DNC lists synchronized.
7. Sales Operations Compliance. For dealerships: the commercial side of compliance services: pricing, contracts, service levels and client education.
8. BDC Risk Management. Applied guidance on bDC Risk Management for dealerships, with templates, checklists and case studies drawn from real programs.
9. Service Lane Messaging. Applied guidance on service Lane Messaging for dealerships, with templates, checklists and case studies drawn from real programs.
10. EBR Management. Applied guidance on eBR Management for dealerships, with templates, checklists and case studies drawn from real programs.
11. DMS Audit & Documentation. For dealerships: building the evidence trail: consent logs, message archives, monitoring dashboards and the records regulators, carriers and plaintiffs request.
12. Litigation Defense Strategies. For dealerships: responding to complaints, demand letters, class actions and regulator inquiries: preserving evidence, common defenses and settlement considerations.
13. Final Certification Exam. A proctored final assessment covering every module, with scenario questions drawn from real dealerships situations. Passing earns the course certificate.

The problem this course prevents

A three-rooftop dealer group lets its BDC vendor text every customer in the DMS about a year-end sales event, including service customers who only agreed to repair updates and 400 people who had replied STOP to a service reminder. The course walks through how consent scope, suppression syncing and vendor controls would have stopped that send before it became a TCPA exposure.

Course FAQ

Does this course cover texting from the service lane and the sales floor separately?

Yes. Separate modules cover service lane messaging and sales operations, because the consent each department collects authorizes different message types and must be tracked separately in the DMS.

We use a third-party BDC. Is the dealership still responsible?

Generally yes. The dealership is usually the brand of record and the seller on whose behalf messages are sent. The BDC risk management module covers contracts, audit rights and suppression syncing with outsourced BDCs.

Is the course self-paced?

Yes. Automotive Dealership SMS Compliance runs about 20 hours across 13 modules, including the final exam, and you can work through it at your own pace with lifetime access to updates.

Is this course legal advice?

No. It teaches the rules, carrier requirements and operational controls that apply to dealerships, but it is not a substitute for advice from qualified counsel on your specific program.