What is contact rate?
Contact rate is the share of leads or accounts your team actually spoke with, out of all the leads worked. If you call 500 leads and have a live conversation with 150 of them at least once, your contact rate is 30%.
Unlike connect rate, which is counted per dial, contact rate is counted per lead, so it shows how much of your list you are really reaching. It goes up with faster first response, more attempts spread across different times of day, and numbers that are not flagged as spam. Some teams count only right-party contacts, meaning the actual person on the record, not a coworker or family member.
Contact rate is the first step in cost per qualified lead: qualified leads equal leads times contact rate times qualification rate. Small gains here compound through the funnel.