Scoring all records vs only sales potential contacts

[jace_brendle]

We've just recently launched our initial lead scoring program and are working to refine the processes.

Currently about 10% of our overall Marketo data set consists of contacts we want to keep in Marketo so we can message, but would never actually create a lead. These could be employees, partners, alliance firm members or others. It's easy enough to identify this group, and would be easy enough to exclude them from out scoring smart campaigns. I haven't seen much discussion of this. It seems most just score all records.

Is there any value to scoring these? I'm planning on setting an exclusion process, but thought I'd reach out to the community in case I'm missing something. 

[Beth_Massura · Accepted solution]

Hi Jace,

I've definitely seen exclusion smart lists come into play with scoring to leave out employees, people in embargoed countries, etc. If the purpose of the scoring program is to bubble up engaged prospects to send to sales when they reach a threshold, then scoring people who you never want to send to sales doesn't make much sense. The exclusion list eliminates the unnecessary processing.

Is there anything else you are using scoring for beyond lead prioritization/routing to sales? You could potentially consider additional scoring model(s) using a separate custom scoring field & campaigns if you need to rank engagement among employees or partners, for example. The scored activities and relative values could be different from those you're using in the prospect scoring model, hence why you might have a separate program.

Cheers,

Beth Massura

2022 Adobe Marketo Engage Champion

[Katja_Keesom]

Totally agree with @Beth_Massura here. It is actually quite good practice to set up a central smart list for people you would not want to be included in your scoring and include a filter in all of your lead scoring smart campaigns to exclude members of that smart list.

And indeed, depending on the use case you could even decide to set up a separate scoring model (leveraging different scoring fields as well would be my recommendation) for all or part of this group.

[jace_brendle]

Thanks Beth. We're literally 4 weeks into a scoring contacts and have a lot planned for development. Some as simple as high-value activities, others more complicated like intent models across business lines. Lots to do!

I appreciate all the feedback.

[Darshil_Shah1]

I agree with the recommendations above! Not many, but I've definitely seen Marketo users having records that they don't want to score, and the ideal way is to build a suppression smart list and reference it in your lead management framework (scoring, lead lifecycle, etc.) and other relevant operational campaigns to exclude those people from running through them. You might also want to add a filter to suppress these people from the campaign(s) that sync people over to the SFDC, as you don't want these people in SFDC too. Not excluding poeople who don't form your target/prospect list would certainly cause un-necessary processing you might want to steer clear away from so your marketing and sales team can focus only on the right leads to work upon.

[jace_brendle]

Thanks all - I'm going to start making some changes today. 

It's always good to have a sounding board like this community! I appreciate the feedback.