In the last article of our 4-part series on lead scoring, I share best practices to make sure you stay on the right track.
Pre-reads for this blog post:
- Article 1 out of 4: What is lead scoring? The difference between demographic and behavioral lead scoring explained
- Article 2 out of 4: 3 questions to know if lead scoring is for you
- Article 3 out of 4: 7 steps to create your own lead scoring model
Topics we will cover in this article:
- Always involve sales
- Set up separate lead scoring models for different products or services
- Start small, scale big
- Do not score email opens
- Use negative scoring and score degradation
1. Always involve sales
This is by far the most important tip I can share. Although in many companies there’s quite some friction between the sales and marketing departments, one of the main goals of setting up a lead scoring model, is to bring sales and marketing closer together.
2. Set up separate lead scoring models for different products and services
Or: Use interest scoring or separate lead scoring models for different product categories (more on that to come!)
If your company has several different product lines, it may be worth setting up a separate scoring model for each product line. This will allow you to further define the scores assigned to each prospect, and make sure they accurately reflect a prospect’s interests. For example, if a prospect interested in product A is being scored using a generic scoring model that takes products B and C into account, it may not reflect their high interest level, and the lead may not get the attention from sales that they deserve.
3. Start small, scale big
This is especially true when defining a lead scoring model involving separate product categories. When you’ve ironed out any major kinks and you’ve reached an approach that works for both sales and marketing, you can roll out your model for other products or services.
4. Do not score emails open
While an email open does indicate some measure of engagement with your brand, it’s not the most reliable one, and can often cause inflated lead scores. What’s more, your email service provider could open an email by default after removing the previous one or by simply opening your inbox. A more telling metric would be clicks generated from the email.
5. Use negative scoring and score degradation
As we discussed in our last post, one of the drawbacks to a model that relies on scoring alone is that scores can become inflated over time. For example, if a visitor on your site is racking up points from visiting your careers page and downloading content, they may just be a job seeker.
Negative scoring and score degradation helps to weed out people who visit your site, but aren’t sales leads, such as job seekers, press relations, your own employees or competitors. In addition, definitely subtract points for leads that have unsubscribed or haven’t engaged with your content in a very long time.
Welcome to schedule a free call with me if you want to discuss things further!
Learn more about lead scoring in the other articles of our series:
- Article 1 out of 4: What is lead scoring? The difference between demographic and behavioral scoring explained
- Article 2 out of 4: 3 questions to know if lead scoring is for you
- Article 3 out of 4: 7 steps to build your own lead scoring model
