Link Leads Blog · August 17, 2026
Open enrollment is 10 weeks a year. Special enrollment periods run all 12 months, triggered by job loss, a move, a marriage, a new baby — and most agents let their health pipeline go quiet the other 42 weeks because they built their list around November 1 and nothing else.
Federal open enrollment for ACA marketplace plans runs November 1 through January 15 in most states. Outside that window, a consumer can still enroll in or change a plan if they've had a qualifying life event — a special enrollment period, or SEP. The window is short, 60 days from the event in most cases, but it's open somewhere in your book every single week of the year. An agent who only builds a calling list in October is leaving eleven months of eligible buyers on the table.
The events that open a special enrollment period are specific, and they're the same reasons people's lives already push them to check their insurance:
None of that shows up as a field in a purchased data file. That's the actual problem to solve, not the list of triggers itself.
An aged health lead list — demographic and contact records licensed in bulk and aged 30–90 days before resale — gives you name, state, ZIP, phone, and age on someone 18 to 64. It doesn't tell you whether that person changed jobs last month. Trying to guess is a waste of a call. The fix is the same one that works on any data list missing the one field you actually want: replace the missing data point with a qualifying question early in the conversation, and let the record self-select. Instead of pitching a plan, the opener's job is just to surface whether a SEP-triggering event happened in the last 60 days.
Keep the opener short and treat it like the cold data contact it is — no false familiarity, easy to opt out of. Never address the recipient by name or use a name placeholder in the message; the agent introduces themselves, not the list. A workable SMS opener:
"Hi, this is {agent} with {agency} in {state}. Had a job change, move, or new baby in the last 60 days? You may qualify to enroll in a health plan outside open enrollment. Reply YES and I'll check. Reply STOP to opt out."
On a call, lead with the same question in the first ten seconds instead of a plan pitch — "have you had any change to your job, address, or household in the last two months?" A yes routes straight into qualifying which SEP category applies and what county they're in now; a no is a fast, low-cost disqualification that lets you move to the next record instead of burning five minutes on someone outside the window.
These show up more here than on an open-enrollment call, because the person genuinely doesn't expect to be shopping for insurance right now:
An open-enrollment list gets worked as one staged campaign because everyone's window closes the same day. A SEP list doesn't work that way — new qualifying events happen continuously, so the list should be worked the same way: a steady trickle through the file rather than one blast. Pull a fresh slice weekly rather than exhausting the whole file in a week, and re-contact non-responders on a 60–90 day cycle instead of writing them off after one no — someone with no event today may have one next quarter.
A SEP campaign runs year-round, which means the scrub can't be a one-time step you did back in September. Dedupe by phone, run a DNC scrub, and check for landlines before texting any slice of the file — a number that was clean three months ago isn't guaranteed clean today. 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). Re-run it on each slice you release, not just the first one.
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 — 3,000 leads for a weekly SEP slice runs $45 in the order builder, and code PACT takes 20% off your first order. The aged health insurance leads page covers what's in the file, and if you're also building toward November, the open enrollment build plan covers that side of the calendar. Or grab the free 100-row sample first.