Link Leads Blog · July 31, 2026
Open enrollment runs November 1 through mid-January in most states. The agents with a full calendar by December bought and worked their list in the 90 days before that, not the week of. Here's the build order.
Federal open enrollment for ACA marketplace plans runs November 1 through January 15 in most states, with a handful running their own state exchange on a slightly different window. Every agent selling ACA knows the calendar; fewer treat the three months before it as build time. A cold list pulled the week enrollment opens gets worked at the same pace as everyone else's cold list. A list that's already deduped, scrubbed, and pre-segmented by the time November 1 hits gets worked at volume from day one, while competitors are still cleaning their data.
An aged consumer data list — demographic and contact records licensed in bulk and aged 30–90 days before resale — isn't a list of people who asked for an ACA quote. It's a list of working-age adults, 18 to 64, with a validated phone number, state, ZIP, and age on every record. That's not Medicare or final-expense data (no one on the list is 65 or older), which is exactly the band ACA marketplace outreach needs: people too young for Medicare and, in most states, not automatically covered through an employer at the volume this list represents. Treat it as a dialer list to qualify against subsidy eligibility and current coverage status, not a list of pre-qualified buyers.
ACA subsidy rules, plan availability, and even the enrollment window itself vary by state. Pull your list state by state and size each pull to what you can actually work — a solo agent calling and texting daily can realistically carry 3,000–5,000 records per state through a full enrollment window without records going stale. Buying one enormous national file and never getting through it is the most common way agents waste money on a list.
Do this in August or September, not the week before November 1. Dedupe the file by phone number first — duplicate records waste scrub credits and inflate your reply-rate math later. Then run a DNC scrub and a wireless/landline check before a single dial goes out; texting a landline number isn't just a wasted send, it can be its own compliance problem separate from DNC. We point our own buyers at Landline Remover for this — upload the CSV and it strips landlines, disconnected numbers, and DNC-listed contacts in one pass (disclosure: that's an affiliate link and we may earn a commission if you sign up through it). Whatever tool you use, get the scrub certificate and file it with the campaign records before enrollment starts, not after.
Not every record in an 18–64 file behaves the same on an ACA pitch. A 24-year-old and a 58-year-old have different premium sensitivity, different odds of employer coverage, and different subsidy math at the same income level. Split the file into rough bands — 18–34, 35–49, 50–64 — and write a separate opener for each rather than one script for the whole list. The 50–64 band in particular tends to convert on price stability and network continuity messaging; the 18–34 band responds more to the penalty-avoidance and catastrophic-coverage angle.
Enrollment is 10+ weeks long — use it. A single day-one blast to the whole file burns your best send window and leaves nothing for the six weeks after. A tighter cadence works better: text the first third of the list in the last week of October, call back non-responders within 48 hours, then release the next third in mid-November and the final third in early December, ahead of the mid-January close. Staggering the release also spreads your own call volume so you're not trying to work 5,000 fresh leads in a single week.
These are cold data records, not people expecting your call, so the opener should read that way — short, no false familiarity, easy to opt out of. Never address the recipient by name or use a name placeholder in the message itself; a generic greeting reads as more legitimate on a cold send than a name that might be wrong or that flags the message as a mail-merge. The agent can and should introduce themselves. A workable SMS opener:
"Hi, this is {agent} with {agency} in {state}. Open enrollment for ACA health plans starts Nov 1 — want me to check what you'd qualify for before it opens? Reply STOP to opt out."
Keep the call script equally direct: confirm state and current coverage status in the first fifteen seconds, then move straight to whether they want a plan comparison before the window opens. Anyone who says stop, on either channel, goes on your suppression list permanently — not just for that send.
This is a practical planning and process guide, not legal advice. TCPA, TSR, CMS marketing guidelines for ACA plans, and state-level telemarketing and texting rules change and vary by state. Talk to counsel familiar with health insurance marketing compliance before you scale a calling or texting campaign, especially one that spans state lines.
Link Leads sells aged health data by state and age band at a flat $0.015 per lead — 5,000 leads in a single state runs $75 in the order builder, and code PACT takes 20% off your first order. The aged health insurance leads page breaks down what's in the file by vertical fit, and if you haven't run the cost math on a full-list send yet, the math on texting 10,000 aged leads covers it. Or grab the free 100-row sample first and pull your state's numbers yourself.