Winter Service special
Campaign Case Study · Outbound Lead Generation
Winter Special
A year-over-year performance analysis of the Winter Special campaign
Campaign-Wide Key Performance Indicators
01 / Executive Summary
Campaign Overview
The Winter Special campaign spans two full reporting years — Year Ending 2025 and Year Ending 2026 — making it the first campaign in this series to be assessed on a year-over-year basis rather than month-to-month. Across 709 combined clock hours, the team logged 15,522 total calls, reached 2,123 qualified decision makers, and generated 388 total leads — a campaign-wide lead-to-QDM conversion rate of 18.28%.
The year-over-year trajectory tells a layered story. Calling volume nearly doubled between the two years (+105.9%), and QDM contacts grew by 52.7% — yet total leads grew at a comparatively modest 19.2%. The result is a meaningful decline in conversion efficiency: the lead-to-QDM rate fell from 21.07% in 2025 to 16.45% in 2026. At the same time, list quality improved substantially, climbing from 89.87% to 96.26%.
In short, 2026 was a campaign of scale — more hours, more dials, more total output — but not uniformly one of efficiency. Untangling that distinction is the central analytical thread of this report.
"Total leads grew by nearly a fifth and list quality jumped more than six points — but the campaign's defining 2026 challenge is a rising tide of unresolved calls, not a shortage of activity."
02 / Year-Over-Year Comparison
Year Ending 2025 vs. Year Ending 2026
Placed side by side, the two years read almost like two different campaigns: 2025 was leaner but sharper, converting a smaller pool of activity at a higher rate. 2026 was substantially larger in every volume metric and saw list quality improve markedly — but conversion efficiency, on a per-call and per-hour basis, declined.
Leaner Activity, Sharper Conversion
Scale Expansion, Efficiency Trade-Off
03 / Annual Performance
Year-by-Year Results
The table below consolidates both reporting years against the combined campaign total. 2025 holds the strongest conversion and contact-rate figures; 2026 holds the strongest absolute lead count, calling productivity, and list quality.
| Year | Clock Hrs | Total Calls | QDMs | Leads | L/QDM | Contact Rate | List Quality | Calls/HR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Year Ending 2025 | 245 | 5,073 | 840 | 177 | 21.07% | 16.56% | 89.87% | 20.71 |
| Year Ending 2026 | 464 | 10,449 | 1,283 | 211 | 16.45% | 12.28% | 96.26% | 22.52 |
| TOTALS | 709 | 15,522 | 2,123 | 388 | 18.28% | 13.68% | 94.17% | 21.89 |
Calls per hour actually improved year-over-year (+8.7%), but the gains stopped there: QDMs per hour fell 19.3% (3.43 → 2.77) and leads per hour fell 37.0% (0.72 → 0.45). The team was dialing faster in 2026, but each hour of work converted to fewer qualified outcomes than it had the year before.
04 / Lead Category Analysis
Where the Leads Came From
The 388 total leads break into four active categories — Rental and Other recorded zero leads in both years. Winter Special, the campaign's namesake category, accounts for nearly three-quarters of all leads (72.9%), with Equipment a distant second at 17.5%. The most notable shift between years is Equipment's growth: from 13 leads in 2025 to 55 in 2026 — a 323% increase — while Winter Special itself held essentially flat (143 → 140).
Beyond the 388 direct leads, the campaign logged a separate pool of qualified-but- unconverted contacts — Special Handling and Info Request outcomes. This pool more than tripled year-over-year, growing from 15 contacts in 2025 to 50 in 2026 (+233%), a far steeper climb than the 19.2% growth in direct leads.
Bars scaled relative to their own section maximum. This pipeline is not counted in the 388 total leads above.
05 / Call Disposition
Non-Lead Call Outcomes
Once a call reaches a qualified decision maker, the outcome is either a lead, a warm pipeline result (Special Handling or Info Request), or a QDM-level decline — chiefly No Interest, which is by far the largest single disposition in the entire dataset at 1,637 occurrences. Calls that never reach that qualification stage fall into a separate set of pre-qualification outcomes, dominated overwhelmingly by TBD — calls left pending resolution rather than closed one way or the other.
| Disposition | Count | % of Total Calls | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| No Interest | 1,637 | 10.55% | QDM reached and declined — largest single disposition |
| Do Not Solicit | 33 | 0.21% | Compliance flag at the QDM stage |
| Not Qualified | 260 | 1.68% | Did not meet program criteria |
| Duplicate | 7 | 0.05% | List duplication (minimal) |
| HQ Out of Territory | 6 | 0.04% | Geographic mismatch |
| TBD | 12,494 | 80.49% | Pending resolution — rose from 73.3% to 84.0% of calls year-over-year |
| Bad Number | 632 | 4.07% | List hygiene issue — improved markedly between years |
TBD alone accounts for more than four out of every five calls placed across the campaign's full two-year span, and its share of total call volume grew rather than shrank between years — climbing from 73.3% in 2025 to 84.0% in 2026. This single disposition is the largest structural factor behind the falling contact and conversion rates documented in Section 03.
06 / Key Findings
What the Data Reveals
Scale Grew Faster Than Conversion
Calls rose 105.9% and QDMs rose 52.7%, but leads grew only 19.2% — pulling the lead-to-QDM rate down from 21.07% to 16.45%. The campaign produced more in absolute terms in 2026, but at a lower rate of return on each qualified conversation.
List Quality Improved Significantly
Bad Number occurrences fell from 8.12% of calls in 2025 to 2.11% in 2026, lifting overall list quality from 89.87% to 96.26% — a meaningful operational gain that should be documented and preserved going forward.
TBD Became the Defining Disposition
TBD rose from 73.3% to 84.0% of all calls between years and now accounts for 80.5% of total call volume campaign-wide — by far the single largest factor suppressing the contact rate and, by extension, the lead-to-QDM conversion rate.
Equipment Surged While the Core Category Held Flat
Equipment leads grew 323% (13 → 55) between years, while Winter Special — the campaign's namesake category — stayed essentially unchanged (143 → 140). Equipment messaging appears to have found unusually strong traction in 2026.
The Warm Pipeline Tripled
Special Handling and Info Request outcomes combined grew from 15 to 50 (+233%) — more than three times the growth rate of direct leads. A meaningfully larger pool of qualified-but-unconverted opportunity entered 2026 than left 2025.
Productivity Gains Did Not Reach Every Metric
Calls per hour rose 8.7% year-over-year, but QDMs per hour fell 19.3% and leads per hour fell 37.0%. Faster dialing alone did not translate into proportionally stronger qualified outcomes.
07 / Recommendations
Suggested Next Steps
Build a Structured Re-Contact Cadence for TBD Calls
With TBD now accounting for over 80% of all call volume, a disciplined, multi-attempt follow-up schedule — varied days and times, tracked by attempt number — should be the top operational priority. Resolving even a modest share of this backlog would directly lift the contact rate.
Investigate the Root Cause of the Declining Contact Rate
The drop from 16.56% to 12.28% deserves a closer look: is it a harder-to-reach remainder of the list, a scripting or staffing change, or simply the effect of nearly doubling volume with the same team? Identifying the driver will clarify whether this is a temporary dip or a structural trend.
Formalize Equipment-Focused Scripting
Equipment's 323% lead growth is the campaign's clearest bright spot. Codifying whatever talk track or targeting drove that gain — and training the wider team on it — could sustain or extend the momentum into the next reporting year.
Immediately Follow Up on the 65-Contact Warm Pipeline
Special Handling and Info Request contacts tripled year-over-year and require no additional dialing to act on — only timely follow-through from the sales team. This is the campaign's most readily convertible near-term opportunity.
Document the List-Quality Improvements as Standard Practice
Whatever process changes drove Bad Number rates down by six points between years should be captured formally and applied as a baseline standard for future campaigns, so the gain isn't lost to staff turnover or list refresh.
08 / Conclusion
Campaign Assessment
The Winter Special campaign grew substantially between its first and second reporting years — in call volume, hours invested, total QDMs, total leads, and list quality. That growth, however, was not uniform: the rate at which qualified conversations converted into leads declined, and an increasingly large share of calls ended without resolution rather than with a clear outcome.
Both halves of this story are real and both matter. The campaign is operating at meaningfully greater scale with a cleaner, higher-quality list than it was in 2025. The opportunity heading into the next cycle is not to generate more activity — it is to resolve more of the activity already generated, and to close the gap between the QDM growth rate and the lead growth rate that opened between the two years.
"The campaign's defining challenge for the next cycle isn't generating more conversations — it's resolving the ones already on the books. With TBD now accounting for four out of every five calls, the path to higher conversion runs through follow-through, not first contact."
