What is lead scoring, anyway?

As the name suggests, lead scoring is a technique where potential customers--your leads--are assigned a score that notes how likely they are to to convert into paying customers.

Most forms of lead scoring follow a growth format, which works like this:

• Leads who demonstrate the behavior of a potential buyer--clicking on certain things, looking at particular pages, etc.--these leads are assigned an automatic point value.
• When the point value surpasses a minimum threshold, an email (or some sort of notification) is automatically generated and lets the marketing and/or sales team know to focus some attention on that lead.

Note that scoring can have several trigger levels. For example, reaching a low threshold can tell the marketing team to step in, while reaching a higher threshold means it's time to hand them off to sales. This creates a clear line of separation between the two teams and helps to improve their overall efficiency.

Setting up a Lead Scoring System

The first thing to do is find out whether or not you actually need to implement a scoring system for your business. If you do, think about the basic elements and follow lead scoring best practices:

• Criteria: What behaviors will you be trying to track, and how realistically can you do so? If you're not certain, look through your analytics and try to find similarities in behavior from your existing customers.
• Lists: What does each part of the scoring system represent, and more importantly, how do they compare to each other?
• Notifications (i.e. emails/workflows): What actions are your sales and marketing teams expected to take when a notification email/workflow is initiated? How realistic is it for them to do this, and what will you do if there are so many leads they can't properly follow up on all of them?

Next, consider your options for using automation. A common practice is tying a certain lead score to a Lifecycle Stage, and this is the reason for the multiple score levels discussed above. In particular, you'll want to focus on scoring people as Marketing Qualified Leads, Sales Qualified Leads, or Opportunities.

• Tip: Consider automating the marketing process, such as delivering newsletters to a lead's email account, and personalizing the sales process once it becomes clear that they're a real sales opportunity.

Finally, make sure you create a plan for your lead-scoring system. It will make the process far smoother.

Need some help setting up a lead scoring system that works--and that marketing and sales will embrace? We can help! Contact us and let's chat.