It is illegal to dial consumers with an autodialer with commercial offers. It is not illegal to do surveys, call with information that is not a sales pitch, like political, church, school messages.
t is still not illegal to call businesses with sales offers though, and this allows for quite a lot of different offers to be pushed through so called robo-calls. Also called "press 1" campaigns, these are effective tools to generate warm leads for sales at the speed you need them, while in the same time pre-qualify the prospects. Depending on the type of offer, and the lead database, you can expect anywhere from 0.5 to 8% conversion rate on live connects. If it converts less than 0.5%, you have to change the message, or the leads.
There are readily accessible dialers using SIP trunks that make auto dialing extremely efficient, you can end paying less than one cent per minute call time. With a message usually under 30 seconds, you can generate leads at the rate of $0.50-$10 each.
Let me know if you have more questions about this, we have successfully run auto dialers for the last 5 years, and love the game of getting results with auto dialers. Snd me an email with your questions at roumen (at) researchacquisition.com.

Gustavo Zepeda

Posted on July 28, 2010

Brandon,

It will surely depend on each Country. In Mexico --where we offer this service (with an Asterisk box hosted in Dallas, TX), it is not illegal either, and rules are much the same as Roumen described, plus a prohibition about the time of the day these robo-calls are sent (not before 7 am and not after 11 pm or so). In the case these are collecting calls, each lender will waive in its contract the prohibition of calling after-hours.

Saludos,
Gustavo