Building a lead scoring system is a great way to focus your marketing and sales efforts on the people most likely to convert into customers. The key is to create a system that is tailor-made for your business and based on real-world data, not assumptions.
Here's a step-by-step guide on how to create an effective lead scoring system:
Step 1: Align Your Sales and Marketing Teams
Before you assign any points, your sales and marketing teams need to agree on what a qualified lead is. This is arguably the most important step. Without a shared definition, your scoring system won't be effective because a "hot lead" for marketing might not be what sales needs to close a deal.
Discuss and define the characteristics of your ideal customer. Consider things like:
Demographics/Firmographics: What is their job title, company size, or industry?
Behaviours: What actions do they take that show strong intent? (e.g., visiting your pricing page, downloading a product brochure)
Step 2: Assign Points to Behaviours
Now, you'll assign point values to the actions you identified in Step 1. The goal is to give more points to actions that indicate stronger buying intent.
Email Opens: While passive and often unreliable, you can assign a nominal value, or even 0 points as a baseline. If used, keep it very low, perhaps 0-1 point.
Email Clicks: These show slightly more intent than an open but are still not as strong as web activity. Assign a low value, for example, 2 points.
Web Page Hit: This indicates initial browsing. Assign a low-moderate value, such as 3 points.
Repeat Web Visit: An independent return visit shows sustained interest. This should be scored higher than a single page hit, perhaps 5 points.
High Value Web Page Visit: This is crucial. Identify pages that signal deeper research or interest in specific solutions (e.g., solution pages, service descriptions). Assign a significant value, for example, 10 points.
Hit Goal URL: These are your strongest intent signals within Force24. These should be pages representing a clear step towards conversion, like a "Thank You" page visit after a form submission, a "Demo Request Confirmation" page, or a download page for key assets (e.g., a pricing guide PDF). Assign the highest point values here, such as 20 points.
Force24 applies a 30-day decay, which helps keep scores current and prevents outdated activity from inflating a lead's score. This ensures you're always looking at recent engagement.
Step 3: Set Score Thresholds
A lead score is meaningless on its own. It's the context that gives it meaning. You need to define score bands or thresholds that trigger specific actions. These thresholds should be unique to your business.
For example, you might create three tiers:
0-10 points: This lead needs more nurturing. They could be added to a basic digital nurture campaign.
10-30 points: This lead is engaged, but not yet ready for a sales call. They could be put into a marketing journey with more targeted content.
30+ points: This lead is considered "sales-ready." The system can automatically create an alert for the sales team to follow up.
To determine your thresholds, review your current customer data. Look at the average lead scores of contacts who have successfully converted and use that as a benchmark.
Step 4: Automate and Refine Your System
Once your scoring system is defined, you can use Force24's automation capabilities to put it into practice.
Automated Lists and Queries: Set up automated marketing lists with lead score queries to group contacts based on their score range. For example, one list might capture contacts scoring 30 or above, triggering an alert for sales. Another could target those who've dropped below 10, initiating a re-engagement campaign.
Journey Manager: Use start audiences and decision components to check for lead score and automatically take actions as contacts cross specific thresholds. This ensures leads are always in the right nurturing path or handed off to sales at the optimal time.
Remember, a lead scoring system isn't a "set it and forget it" tool. It requires continuous refinement. Regularly review your data using Force24's reporting tools to see if your scoring values and thresholds are still valuable. If you notice that leads with a score of 30 are converting more often than those with a score of 50, you may need to adjust your thresholds. Track trends using the "Average Lead Score Timeline" to see if your outreach is building or losing engagement.
By building a system based on the real, observable behaviours trackable within Force24 and consistently reviewing its performance, you can ensure your sales and marketing teams are always focused on the most valuable opportunities.