Glossary - Trailfire

A

A2P 10DLC: "Application-to-person" SMS sent over standard 10-digit U.S. phone numbers. As of 2023, U.S. carriers require every brand sending A2P SMS to register through The Campaign Registry (TCR). Unregistered messages get filtered, dropped, or rate-limited. Trailfire handles registration on your behalf as part of onboarding.
Address Verification (CASS): USPS-certified process that standardizes a mailing address and confirms it exists in the postal database. Trailfire CASS-validates every postcard address before printing — undeliverable mail is suppressed automatically and never billed.
Attribution Window: The time period during which a marketing touch (postcard, review request, ad click) gets credit for a resulting job. Trailfire's default attribution window is 90 days post-touch, configurable per campaign type.

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BBB Accreditation: Better Business Bureau membership program. Carries trust weight with older homeowner demographics in some regions; less relevant to younger and digital-native buyers. Optional Trailfire integration surfaces BBB rating on review reply signatures and postcards.
BTC Anchoring: Cryptographically committing a hash of data (e.g., a review text) into a Bitcoin transaction so the data's content and timing can be proven later, independently, without trusting any company. Trailfire uses OpenTimestamps to anchor every review hash to BTC — making review tampering mathematically detectable.
Business Profile (Google): Formerly "Google My Business." The free Google-owned listing that appears in Google Maps and Local Pack results. Reviews on this profile are the highest-leverage local SEO asset for service businesses.

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CAN-SPAM Act: U.S. federal law (2003) governing commercial email. Requires: accurate from/header info, non-deceptive subject lines, valid physical postal address in every email, and a working unsubscribe mechanism honored within 10 business days. Trailfire's email engine is CAN-SPAM compliant by default.
CASS Validation: See Address Verification.
Cohort: A group of customers grouped by a shared attribute (e.g., "completed a job in March 2026"). Trailfire reports on review rate, referral rate, and revenue by cohort so you can spot which months produce the best LTV.
CSLB (California State License Board): California's contractor licensing authority. California requires CSLB licensing for any contractor project over $500. License number must appear on every advertising piece, including postcards and email. Trailfire auto-includes your CSLB number per state matrix.

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Direct Mail (Neighborhood Mail): Physical mail (typically postcards) sent to nearby addresses after a completed job. Performs unusually well for local service businesses because the recent job site provides social proof ("your neighbor at 47 Oak St just had us out") that no digital channel can replicate.
DKIM / SPF / DMARC: Three email authentication standards that prove an email actually came from your domain. Missing any of them cuts deliverability dramatically. Trailfire configures all three during onboarding so your review request emails actually reach inboxes.
Drip Campaign: A scheduled series of automated marketing touches (email or SMS) sent to a customer over time. Trailfire drip campaigns cover post-job follow-up, win-back, seasonal reminders, and referral asks — all triggered by the rules engine.

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EDDM (Every Door Direct Mail): USPS bulk-mail program that delivers to every address on selected mail routes at sub-$0.20/piece postage. Cheap per piece but indiscriminate — every household on the route gets the mailer regardless of fit. Trailfire's Smart Card targets individuals; EDDM blankets routes.
EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness): Google's framework for evaluating page quality. For local service businesses, EAT signals include: years in business, license numbers, reviews and ratings, photos of completed work, and third-party verification badges.

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Fraud Guard: Trailfire's bot- and click-fraud filtering layer that runs against website visitors before they enter the Smart Card or ad-retargeting pipeline. Filters out known bot IPs, datacenter ranges, competitor-monitoring services, and click farms — saving on per-match data and per-card postage costs.

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Google Business Profile (GBP): See Business Profile.
GDPR: EU General Data Protection Regulation (2018) governing personal data processing of EU residents. Applies if you serve EU customers regardless of where your business is based. Trailfire's data handling is GDPR-ready.

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Hashed Email (for Custom Audiences): An SHA-256 hash of an email address used to build Google or Meta Custom Audiences without exposing the underlying email. Trailfire's Smart Card pipeline can route identity-matched emails as hashes to ad platforms — letting you retarget known households without storing plaintext PII.

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IICRC: Institute of Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification — the industry trust mark for carpet cleaning, water damage, and mold remediation contractors. Displaying IICRC credentials is the highest-trust signal in those trades.
IP-to-Household Matching: Patented identity-graph technology that resolves an anonymous IP address to a specific physical mailing address using consented data partnerships. The foundation of Trailfire's Smart Card product — every anonymous website visitor becomes a postcard candidate within 72 hours.

L

Local Pack: The boxed group of three local business listings Google shows at the top of search results for location-intent queries ("plumber near me"). Position in the Local Pack is the highest-leverage local SEO outcome — review count, rating, and proximity are the primary inputs.
LTV (Lifetime Value): Total revenue from a customer over the full relationship, not just the first job. Recurring service trades (HVAC tune-ups, irrigation start-ups, water-treatment filter changes) have 5-10x higher LTV than one-off trades.

N

NABCEP: North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners — the industry trust mark for solar installers. NABCEP-certified installers signal legitimacy in a market with high quality variance.
NAP Consistency: "Name, Address, Phone" — keeping these three pieces of business information identical across every listing site (Google, Yelp, BBB, Angi, etc.). NAP inconsistency confuses search engines and lowers local rankings.
NICET: National Institute for Certification in Engineering Technologies — the industry trust mark for fire protection contractors. NICET Level II is the minimum for sprinkler system design.

O

OpenTimestamps (OTS): Open standard for blockchain timestamping. Aggregates many data hashes into a single Bitcoin transaction via Merkle trees, providing tamper-evident timestamping at essentially zero marginal cost per record. Trailfire anchors every review hash via OpenTimestamps so reviews are mathematically verifiable years later.
OSHA: Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA inspection records are public — Trailfire can surface "no OSHA violations" as a trust signal on review profiles for trades where workplace safety drives selection.

P

PII (Personally Identifiable Information): Information that can identify a specific individual — name, email, phone, address. Trailfire encrypts PII at rest and in transit, and exposes hashed-only versions when feeding ad-platform Custom Audiences.
Postcard Quota: The monthly number of postcards included in your Trailfire plan. Postcards over the quota are billed at your plan's per-card rate at the end of the cycle. Unused quota does not roll over.

R

Referral Loop: An automated mechanism that asks happy customers to share a unique link with friends, tracks which referrals convert, and credits the referrer. Trailfire's referral loop is built into post-job follow-up — every 5-star review prompt includes a one-tap referral share.
Review Gating: The practice of asking customers to rate privately first, then only routing positive raters to public review sites. Prohibited by Google and grounds for review removal or Business Profile suspension. Trailfire does not gate — every review request goes directly to the public site of choice.
Rules Engine: Trailfire's automation system that watches for events (job completed, review submitted, customer churned) and triggers downstream actions (send postcard, request review, fire referral ask). Rules are configured per tenant with no-code logic.

S

Smart Card: Trailfire's IP-to-household matching postcard product. When an anonymous prospect visits your website (e.g., your pricing page or service area page), patented identity-graph technology resolves the IP to a household mailing address, and a personalized postcard is mailed within 72 hours. Available on Growth and Pro tiers.
SOC 2: American Institute of CPAs auditing standard for service organizations covering security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy controls. Trailfire runs on SOC 2-hosted AWS infrastructure with a path to formal Type II certification.
Structured Data (JSON-LD): Machine-readable markup that tells search engines what a page is about (a review, an FAQ, a software product, a local business). Trailfire pages ship with FAQPage, SoftwareApplication, BreadcrumbList, and DefinedTermSet schema to maximize search visibility.

T

TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act): U.S. federal law (1991) restricting SMS and telephone marketing. Requires prior express written consent before sending marketing SMS to a consumer's wireless number. Violations carry statutory damages of $500–$1,500 per message. Trailfire enforces explicit consent capture before any marketing SMS sends.
The Campaign Registry (TCR): The central registry through which U.S. carriers vet A2P 10DLC SMS senders. Unregistered brands and campaigns face message filtering, throttling, or rejection. Trailfire handles TCR registration as part of onboarding.
Tenant Isolation: Architectural pattern where each customer's data is partitioned so no customer can read another's records, even at the database level. Trailfire enforces tenant isolation at the repository layer — every database query is scoped to a single tenant key.

U

UTM Parameters: URL tags (utm_source, utm_medium, utm_campaign, etc.) that attribute web traffic to specific marketing campaigns. Trailfire automatically tags every postcard, email, and referral link with UTMs so you can see which channel drives which booking.

W

Webhook: An HTTP callback your system can fire when an event happens (e.g., "job completed in our CRM"). Trailfire accepts inbound webhooks to trigger review requests and campaigns from any CRM that can post JSON — no formal integration required.
Win-back Campaign: An outreach sequence aimed at customers who haven't booked in 12+ months. Trailfire's rules engine fires win-back campaigns automatically based on tenure-since-last-job thresholds you set per service type.

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See it running on your business

Plain-English definitions for the terms operators run into

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B

C

D

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See it running on your business

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