The formula is the same everywhere: contact rate equals contacts divided by attempts, multiplied by 100. For example, if a volunteer knocks on 60 doors and speaks with the person on the list at 15 of them, the contact rate for that shift is 15 divided by 60, or 25 percent. That figure is an example to show the arithmetic, not a typical or target rate.
What counts as an attempt and a contact
The formula is simple. The hard part is agreeing on what to count. Two teams that count differently will report different contact rates for the same work, so write your definitions down before the first shift.
An attempt is one try to reach one person or household, such as one knock on a door or one call dialed. A contact is an attempt that reached the person you meant to reach and led to a conversation. Many organizations count a conversation with the targeted person only. Others count a conversation with anyone at the door. Either choice works if everyone uses the same one.
Door results raise the most questions. The list below shows one common way to count them. Our guide to what a CRM does for a local campaign explains how door results and other events are kept on each voter's record, which makes this kind of counting easier.
| Door result | Count as an attempt? | Count as a contact? |
|---|---|---|
| Contacted (spoke with the person) | Yes | Yes |
| Refused | Yes | Your choice; many teams count it, because someone answered |
| Not home | Yes | No |
| Come back later | Yes | No |
| Left literature | Yes | No |
| Moved, deceased or inaccessible | Your choice; many teams leave these out | No |
Leaving bad addresses out of the attempts, such as people who have moved, measures how well volunteers do with good data. Leaving them in measures the quality of the list as well. Pick one, and say which you used when you report the number.
Contact rate for doors, calls and texts
Working out a contact rate for one canvass shift
- Count the attempts60 doors knocked during the shift.
- Count the contacts15 doors where the volunteer spoke with the person on the list.
- Divide15 contacts ÷ 60 attempts = 0.25.
- Contact rate: 25 percentMultiply by 100 to show it as a percentage.
The same idea applies to each way of reaching people, with small differences.
- Doors. Attempts are doors knocked, and contacts are conversations. Some campaigns count by household and others by person. A household with three voters on the list can be one attempt or three.
- Phone calls. Attempts are calls dialed, and contacts are calls answered by the right person. Wrong numbers and disconnected numbers are usually counted separately, because they say more about the list than about the callers.
- Texts. Organizations that text usually measure a reply rate instead: the number of people who replied, divided by the number of texts delivered. Opt-outs (requests to stop receiving texts) are reported separately and must be honored every time.
Related measures
Contact rate is often reported beside a few other numbers. Each one answers a different question.
- Coverage. The share of your list that has been attempted at least once. A high contact rate on a small part of the list still leaves most people unreached.
- Reply rate. For texts and email, the share of delivered messages that received a reply.
- ID rate. The share of contacts in which the person answered your main question, such as whether they support a candidate or a position. Organizers call this identifying a supporter.
- Attempts per contact. The number of tries it takes, on average, to reach one person. It is another way of reading the same information as the contact rate.
How to use your contact rate
A contact rate is most useful when you compare like with like.
- Compare similar shifts. Contact rates often differ by time of day and day of the week, so compare shifts that ran at similar times.
- Clean the list. Addresses where people have moved or died lower the rate and waste volunteers' time. Record those results so they can be left off the next walk list.
- Plan second attempts. People who were not home are good candidates for a second knock on a different day or at a different time.
- Do not judge volunteers by this number alone. A volunteer assigned to apartments or rural roads may have a lower rate for reasons outside their control. Look at the turf as well as the person.
- Watch the trend. A falling contact rate across several shifts can point to a problem with the list, the timing or the area.
When the same people are reached through more than one channel, keep every attempt on one record. Our post on one voter record across petitions, doors and texts explains why that matters, and volunteers who reach people they already know through relational organizing often record their conversations the same way.
Counting door results with Beacon and CoreCNX
Record every attempt, not only the conversations. In Beacon, the CNX Suite's canvassing app, each door gets a result at the door: contacted, not home, refused, moved, deceased, inaccessible, come back later or left literature. Beacon shows how many contacts each territory holds and how many have been contacted, and it exports interactions to a CSV file, so you can count attempts and contacts for any shift or turf in a spreadsheet.
With the CNX Suite, each door result is also sent to CoreCNX, the suite's CRM, and added to the person's timeline. Anyone on your team who opens the record sees every attempt and its result in date order, beside the person's texts and email activity, before planning the next contact. Our page on CoreCNX for political campaigns shows how those records fit together.
Common questions
What is a good contact rate?
There is no single good number. Contact rates depend on the area, the time of day, the quality of the list and what you count as a contact. Compare your own shifts with each other over time rather than with a figure from another organization.
Is contact rate the same as response rate?
Not quite. Contact rate measures how often an attempt reaches a person. Response rate, or reply rate, usually measures how often people answer a message they received, such as a text or an email.
Should refusals count as contacts?
Many teams count a refusal as a contact, because a person answered. Others count only conversations. Either is fine if your team uses the same rule every time.
Start counting from your next shift
Write down what counts as an attempt and a contact, record every door result, and compare shifts that ran at similar times. Start a 14-day CoreCNX trial and keep each person's attempts and results on one record.
