How do you score your leads?

[Anonymous]

We all know how important leads are to growing business.  Share with the Marketing Nation how you score your leads.

[Anonymous]

At Marketo, it's all about refining the process, we like to start with a few drivers for our scoring initiatives:

1. Simplifying our scoring algorithim

2. Partnering with sales for buy-in/understanding to reduce complexity

3. Continuously improving and reconsidering the quality of MQLs we are sending over to our sales teams

For anyone just starting out, or looking to improve their strategy this is a great one-pager on all things scoring: Pathway to Lead Scoring: Best Practices & How-To

[Grace_Brebner3 · Accepted solution]

There's so many things I could mention, but here's a few key takeaways - they're not exactly how we do score leads, but highlight common areas for optimisation/avoiding issues:

• Scoring isn't a marketing only project. Sales and data teams can shed enormously useful insight on what specific behaviours and demographics genuinely show a higher level of engagement or probability to convert. Equally, a lead score can be an enormously useful piece of information for them to utilise, but only if they actually understand what it is and how it's calculated. So, don't black box it.
• Tokens are a great way to allow a quick overview of the score change associated with specific behaviours/values, and also make it easy to update those score changes across multiple campaigns.
• Keep it simple to start with. Don't create too many variations, like individual form score campaigns for each and every individual form. Combine into one wherever it is logical to do so (e.g. one campaign for all content form fill outs), and keep your scoring within the scoring program, rather than scattered throughout your instance. Start simple, then start to scale when you know it's working well.
• Run some scenario validations. Create a few fictional examples on paper of people who you would perceive as meeting MQL criteria - apply your scoring rules, and see if they would actually qualify. Equally, vice versa - see if people would qualify when they shouldn't, see if some rules are doubling up on each other unintentionally. It's a simple step but often missed, and it always picks up on something.
• Restrict availability. Don't let people get 5 points every time they click on any email, and allow them to run through that campaign every time - you'll get tripped with bots picking up 30 clicks in 1 second. It's often a good idea to allow leads to run through these sorts of score campaigns once every hour, or put in place some other restrictions on these fronts.

There's always more, but those are some of the most important ones that jump to mind!

[Anonymous]

Grace Brebner​ these are gold!! I like that it's cross-functional in your organization, partnering with Sales is key here to sending the best leads with scoring! Also keeping it simply can't be overstated enough. Thank you for sharing!

[Grace_Brebner3]

Thanks Amber Javaid - I'm actually partner side, so have the benefit (if you can call it that!) of getting called in when organisations aren't doing it right - and these are definitely the most common causes of breakdown I see. Beneficial in so far as when we know some good ways to resolve the issues having encountered them before, and when working from scratch we can avoid them.

But, to Amanda Thomas 's point below - it's often about really understanding what the purpose of scoring is - getting better MQLs.

[Anonymous]

Grace Brebner everyone could use recalibration from time to time , so to your point too Amanda Thomas partnering with sales is key so we're improving the quality of MQLs over time..and tokens...are just about the most efficient perk of the process ever. Here's one of my favorite webinars on lead scoring strategy The Who, What, Why, How of Lead Scoring...even the slides are great to skim through.

[Amanda_Thomas6]

Yes To Tokens!!

[Amanda_Thomas6]

Same as mentioned above. It's definitely something worth reviewing every 6 months with sales! Also, a motto of mine, scoring isn't used to get more MQLs it's used to get BETTER MQLs.

[Ryan_Benton]

Better MQLs ... I think that's key! We've only been on Marketo for 8 months, so right now there's a "gimmie, gimmie" feel from our sales team for every contact who completes a form fill.  As we mature our scoring program, I'm excited to see if the metrics we have in place are producing accurate MQLs ... or if people are interacting with our content "just because", but may not be in a place for sales to act.

[ChristinaZuniga]

I've found bucketing scores works best for me. Then when we add a new technology or a new activity to score against I'm asking "is this an A or a C type of score" instead of some range like -5 to 35.