Lead Scoring in a Funnel

Lead scoring is a valuable tool for businesses to identify and prioritize their potential customers. It involves assigning a score to each contact based on their level of interest and likelihood to purchase a product or service. This score helps businesses determine which leads to focus their marketing efforts on and which ones are more likely to convert.

The Benefits of Using a Lead Scoring Model

Implementing a lead scoring model can provide several benefits for businesses:

1. Find your most qualified leads: By assigning scores to contacts based on their fit with your marketing and sales goals, you can identify the leads that are most likely to convert. This allows you to focus your efforts and resources on those leads that have a higher potential for sales.

2. Know where a prospect is in the customer journey: Lead scoring helps businesses track the progress of leads through the acquisition life cycle. By understanding where a prospect is in their journey, you can tailor your marketing tactics to nurture them from a marketing-qualified lead to a sales-qualified lead.

3. Optimize your campaign strategy: With lead scoring, you can determine the best type of campaign to engage with each lead based on their score. For example, leads with a higher score may receive more frequent marketing messages or campaigns with customer testimonials to encourage them to make a purchase.

4. Improve the conversion rate of leads: Lead scoring models use previous customer data to create a more effective sales process for future leads. By identifying the actions and behaviors that lead to conversions, businesses can streamline their sales efforts and increase their conversion rates.

5. Streamline sales and marketing alignment: Lead scoring helps ensure that leads are passed to the sales team at the appropriate time. By assigning numerical values to leads, it becomes clear when a lead is ready for sales outreach and when they need further nurturing through marketing campaigns.

How to Build a Lead Scoring Model

Building a lead scoring model requires collaboration between the business and the sales team. Here are the steps to follow:

1. Define the important steps leads take before acquisition: Start by mapping out the acquisition life cycle and identifying the key stages that leads go through. Focus on the stages of awareness, engagement, and exploration. Within each stage, determine the actions that are important for your lead scoring model.

2. Assign points to your scoring criteria: Once you have identified the actions, assign point values to each one based on their importance. Consider both characteristic criteria, such as target buyer persona, and behavioral criteria, such as social media engagement or website visits. Assign positive points for actions that indicate interest and negative points for actions that show disinterest.

3. Set up a lead scoring system with a CRM: Use a CRM software with lead scoring capabilities to track and assign points to contacts based on their actions. Set up marketing automation workflows to update contact scores automatically when specific actions are taken. This will help you track and manage leads more effectively.

How to Set Up Lead Scoring in a CRM

Setting up lead scoring in a CRM involves the following steps:

1. Assign points to actions in marketing automation workflows: Create workflows in your CRM that update contact scores when specific actions are taken. For example, if a contact opens a welcome email and clicks on a link, assign a certain number of points to their score. This can be done by adding steps to the workflow and selecting the “Update contact attribute” option.

2. Use dynamic list segmentation together with lead scoring: Use dynamic segmentation to create lists of contacts based on their lead scores. This allows you to target contacts with relevant marketing emails in real time. For example, you can create a list of “new qualified leads” for contacts with a score higher than a certain threshold.

3. Create targeted contact lists: Assign point values to different categories of leads based on their scores. For example, you can create lists for new leads, warm leads, qualified leads, and sales-qualified leads. Set up your segmentation workflow to add contacts to the appropriate lists based on their scores. Include an “escape” condition to reset a lead’s score if they show disinterest.

Other Use Cases for Lead Scoring

While lead scoring is commonly used for dynamic segmentation, it can also be applied to other areas of business:

• Triggering specific emails or SMS based on lead score.
• Setting up action-specific scores for detailed tracking of engagement.
• Targeting leads on platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn based on lead score.

By leveraging lead scoring in these ways, businesses can further optimize their marketing and sales efforts and improve their overall conversion rates.

In conclusion, implementing a lead scoring model can provide significant benefits for businesses. By assigning scores to leads based on their level of interest and likelihood to purchase, businesses can focus their efforts on the most qualified leads and improve their conversion rates. With the help of a CRM and marketing automation workflows, businesses can streamline their lead scoring process and effectively nurture leads through the acquisition life cycle.