What is lead scoring?
Lead scoring is a method used within marketing and sales (and especially the connection between the two) to rank leads according to how sales-ready/purchase-ready they are.
The lead score is typically calculated based on manually configured criteria, depending on what is relevant for the individual company. These would be criteria based on the person's contact information and behaviour (e.g. on the website, in emails, on social media, etc.).
A newer concept within lead scoring is predictive lead scoring, where the score is calculated using algorithms and AI.
Example of lead scoring
An example of lead scoring could be that your lead is assigned 1 point for visiting your homepage, 10 points for visiting your pricing and/or contact page, 2 points for opening your emails, and so on. These points summed together give the lead's lead score — an indicator of, based on information and behaviour, how purchase-ready the lead is.
You will typically work with ranges of lead scores that define when the lead is cold, warm, or hot — or MQL or SQL.
Why work with lead scoring?
Lead scoring helps you understand and put quantitative data on how purchase-ready your leads are. In other words: which messages to deliver, when, to whom, and how.
Furthermore, lead scoring connects your marketing and sales departments, with marketing nurturing leads until they are sales-ready (e.g. when they reach lead score X), at which point the sales-ready leads are sent directly to the sales department, who takes over from there.
In this way, sales-ready customers are delivered directly to the sales team's inbox — completely automatically.
Additionally, lead scoring helps you forecast and prospect your pipeline and future revenue.
How to get started with lead scoring
Lead scoring typically takes place in a CRM and/or marketing automation software, where your leads, their contact information, and email sending are managed.
In these systems, you have the option to set up lead scoring for your leads and choose exactly how many points different pieces of information and actions should be assigned to your leads.
Your lead scoring could for example include the following
- Contact informationsome text
- Job title contains: CMO, Marketing Manager, Ecommerce, etc. = 10 points
- Job title contains: Owner, Director, CEO = 5 points
- Behaviour:some text
- Website visit: 5 points
- Contact page visit: 20 points
- References page visit: 15 points
- Opened 5 emails: 5 points
- Interaction with social media: 5 points
The possibilities are almost endless — it's about finding the parameters to measure that are relevant for evaluating your leads.
The first step, if you don't already have it in place, is choosing and setting up marketing automation and CRM (including tracking), followed by defining your lead scoring criteria.
Are you ready to optimise your lead generation?
Call us on 30 12 42 72 and get advice on how to implement lead scoring effectively!
