Trestle’s Data Quality Tracker: January 2025
Each month, Trestle publishes aggregations and insights into some of our most popular data attributes that are part of our products. This Data Quality Tracker blog contextualizes the quality of your leads/contacts/sign-ups and how they benchmark against the rest of the industry. Please note: All data presented in this blog is aggregated and is not from an individual customer.
Phone Contact Grade
Trestle’s Phone Contact Grade provides a grade for the leads/sign-ups on whether the leads are real and contactable. It considers various signals, including phone linkages to subscribers, phone activity, metadata like line type, carrier, the feedback loop we get from customers, etc. Signals we have seen over the years correlate well to answer whether a lead is real and contactable. This knowledge-base article can provide additional context on what these grades mean and how we determine them. When you apply such grade-based filters to lead workflows, you can minimize wasted efforts and focus on the leads that matter most.
Below, you will find a breakdown of the Phone Contact Grade distribution observed by Trestle across all our customers.
January 2025
Observations:
In January, the number of Grade-F leads increased by about 5%, and the number of Grade-C leads decreased by about 7%. Grades A and B increased by about 1% each. Based on our aggregated results, an increase in Grade Fs indicates a lower-quality lead pool.
Identifying low-quality leads benefits businesses by decreasing wasted time on leads that will likely never answer the phone or respond to your outreach — a reminder on how to read the grades and what they mean is in this knowledge base.
How do these results compare to the quality of your company’s leads? Trestle recently launched a free Real Contact Data Assessment report that you can use to get an idea of how these results compare to your leads.
Phone Activity Score
Below, you’ll find a comprehensive breakdown of the activity score distribution observed by Trestle across all our customers. We’ve categorized the data into three distinct categories:
- The percentage of phones we see with activity scores of 70 and above. This is where we see consistent activity with the phone through our networks.
- The percentage of phones we see with activity scores between 31 and 69. This is where we see slightly inconsistent activity with the phone through our networks.
- The percentage of phones we see with activity scores of 30 or below. This is where we see low to no activity associated with the phone through our networks.
This knowledge-base article can provide a quick primer on interpreting the activity score. If you are interested in how this score is calculated, check out this article.
January 2025
Observations:
In January, we saw an increase of about 3% in high-activity score phones and a decrease of about 2.5% in low-activity score phones. This indicates slightly more active phones than last month. Let’s see if this trend holds in the future.
Phone Line Type
Understanding phone validity and line type is not just about distinguishing between landline and mobile. With the introduction of VoIP, the dynamics of communications and how businesses and consumers use these numbers have evolved. The chart below provides valuable insights into the line-type distribution Trestle observed last month across our customers. This distribution represents the phone line type seen by Trestle for the numbers queried by businesses on lead forms or account sign-ups.
January 2025
Observations:
In January, we saw a significant dip in the percentage of mobile phones queried. Big jumps reciprocate this for landlines and non-fixed VoIP lines. This is all following months of increases for mobile phones, so this would move back into a more normalized pattern. Given the general move to mobile, it’s not a great indicator, but let’s see what the trend shows in the coming months.
Top Three U.S. Carrier Distribution
Phone Carrier Distribution provides context into the market’s state and insights into how your lead list compares to the rest of the industry. Essentially, the majority of your sign-ups are from these carriers. In the coming months, we will further analyze our carrier data and publish more insights to compare lead quality against the typical benchmarks we observe.
January 2025
Observations:
In conjunction with lower mobile phone queries, we can see that the percentage of phones belonging to the major three carriers also decreased. This represents a 14% drop for the three major mobile carriers against other smaller phone providers. This mimics what we saw above with the mobile line type queries decreasing.
What can businesses do about bad leads?
Services like Trestle’s Phone Validation API or Real Contact API can help verify leads/sign-ups, filter out disconnected phones, and ensure you prioritize the highest-quality leads that are the most contactable.
When your leads and sign-ups are sourced from various channels, use this data to work with them and address these issues at the front end rather than dealing with returned leads or fake/fraudulent sign-ups. The cost savings alone, both operationally and from receiving only higher-quality sign-ups, could be multiple times more than the cost of these verification services. Focusing your efforts on these higher-quality leads and sign-ups will also improve conversions with a higher ROI.
We value your input. Do these numbers align with your business’s experience? How can we further enhance lead quality and reduce COGS? Can we assist you in identifying and avoiding fake, bot, or fraudulent leads?
If you are curious to know the data quality of your leads, you can get a free assessment here. You can also set up a meeting, email us at support@trestleiq.com, or check out our Phone Validation demo.
