Lead scoring amends

[Ellie_Boardman-]

I'm currently reviewing our existing lead scoring and have a few changes to make to some of the scores against particular activity (for example a couple of activities are scored too generously so we're looking to reduce the score allocated) and also to a couple of the smart lists (for example, to capture some additional search queries).

I have recently joined the company so this scoring was set up before I started and am fairly new to to Marketo so any tips would be greatly received.

Making the tweaks seems fairly simple but in terms of best practice, would you run retroactive campaigns to update scores against historic activity taken place or would you just allow the new changes to run so the new score/smart lists affects new activity only?

If I do need to run some retroactive campaigns, would the new score overwrite the existing for that particular activity or would it add on top of the existing score? I feel reluctant to update existing records with the new scoring, especially where we are decreasing the score slightly as I don't want leads to potentially pass through MQL again?

We are also activating some scoring that was set up but never run. Would you suggest retroactive scoring in this case and run a filter to make sure they've not passed through a similar campaign before? If we activate some new scoring, if we don't run any retroactive campaigns, am I correct in thinking this scoring will only apply to new leads?

Apologies in advance for what may be basic questions!

[Grégoire_Miche2 · Accepted solution]

Hi Ellie,

Sincerely, running retroactive SC to correct past behavior scoring is a very difficult task (quite easier to do on demographic). It is tricky to isolate which leads have been scored only once, or twice or three times, ... or ten times. All the more so as other score corrections might have been happening in between, which will make your corrections irrelevant. So if you do it, it will necessarily be an approximate solution.

Also, if you run retroactive corrections, it will have to be differential. For instance, if the previous score for the activity was +5 and the new one in +2, you will have to apply -3 as many times the lead was scored for this activity.

It also depends if you have some score decays set up. If this is the case, anyhow, on the long run, all the "overscoring" will be canceled by the decay for the majority of the leads, since it's likely only a (small) minority of them will continue to have a regular activity. So do you really need to bother ?

Score correction that would lead to decrease the score would drive some leads to no longer meet the MQL criteria. But are you planning to remove it from the users who received these leads ? That might be the case if the sales or telemarketing have received far too many leads, but if it's only a few of them, it's not necessarily worth it.

So, my recommendation is, unless the current score levels are causing significant business troubles that need to be fixed, just change the score for the future and let the past as is.

-Greg

[Ellie_Boardman-]

Great - thanks Greg, very helpful (& the answer I was hoping for!)