Lead Scoring is commonly used for lead qualification and segmentation in marketing. However, the solely point-based one-dimensional native lead scoring model provided by many marketing tools, such as HubSpot, is not sufficient to address the complex business requirement. This article shares some best practices to build an effective and actionable two-dimensional lead-scoring model using the native features from HubSpot.
There are many online resources that explain what Lead Scoring is and how you can use an effective scoring model to segment your leads to better manage your top funnel. If you are reading this blog, I assume that you have a basic understanding of what HubSpot’s Lead Score is; or even better, have had a chance to play with it, and understand what it can or can’t do. If not, that’s OK. There is a really good HubSpot blog that will introduce you to HubSpot’s manual lead scoring and how you can use it to automate your lead qualification.
THE SIMPLE LEAD-SCORING MODEL
In short, HubSpot’s Lead Score is an aggregated number, which can be calculated by adding or deducting points from available data fields. This is designed for simplicity so sales and marketing teams can look at the same score versus having to keep track of multiple places in order to understand how engaged a contact is. A typical use case, like what illustrates below, is to identify Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) by setting a threshold to be above certain scores.
However, while marketers often use explicit (demographic) and implicit (behavior) properties as the measurement of “fit” and “interest” to develop the scoring model, the current version of HubSpot doesn’t have a set of built-in flags to indicate which data fields are demographic vs. behavior. In other words, the system itself is not able to differentiate between “fit” and “interest” based on data fields. This leads to some challenges. For example, you can’t segment leads based on how they scored. Two leads that have a score of 80 points could be from very different ways, which could lead to very different implications. Also, without developing complex workflows, it’s possible to unexpectedly group people solely based on how they reach specific points.
DEVELOP AN ACTIONABLE TWO-DIMENSIONAL LEAD-SCORING MODEL
Fortunately, you are able to construct a comprehensive two-dimensional lead scoring model, Fit vs. Interests, using what’s natively available in HubSpot – the Smart Lists.
Since all leads come with certain values in various demographic fields when they were brought into HubSpot, this determines the level of “Fit” – the first dimension.
Before you define the second dimension – “Interest”, you need to create a smart list that groups all the marketing-influenced leads. You can set the criteria that best facilitate your business, and here are some inspirations:
- opened marketing emails X times
- made form submissions
- graduated from email nurturing programs
- interacted social media
- visited the website more than X times
- marketing-generated leads
Of course, not all leads are going to be your Marketing Influenced. Leads that have responded to your marketing campaigns are the influenced ones, and more responses indicate more interest and would earn more points. Therefore, when you apply your lead score threshold you suddenly create this magic four-quadrant.
It’s easy to see that the top-right quadrant contains your gold leads, which should be prompted to your inside sales/sales for carrying on a further conversation.
Gold leads: (List membership = Marketing Influenced) & (HubSpot Lead Score > X points)
However, sales engagement doesn’t always happen after marketing engagement; more often they take place simultaneously depending on various circumstances. A lead may already have sales engagement at some point during its journey; for example, before a lead gets stored in your system, he may have spoken to sales at a tradeshow. Therefore, you can and should further segment your gold leads. Similarly to define Marketing Influenced Leads, you can define your Sales Engaged Leads using these criteria:
- Replied sales emails
- Had a sales meeting scheduled
- Received sales calls
PRIORITY LISTS
You are now ready to derive the following five priority lists – the P List, each of which requires unique actionable items:
P0 = individuals who have been influenced by marketing and have already engaged with sales. You want to let the sales conversation go, and provide marketing assistance when only needed.
P1 = individuals who have shown great interest and have been influenced by marketing, but not yet engaged by sales. You should start the sales conversation with this group immediately.
P2 = individuals who have not shown any interest in responding to marketing campaigns but with a high score (most likely were imported leads). Since this group qualifies your target audience but is not responding to your mass marketing, you can leverage your inside sales to provide individual reach out.
P3 = individuals who have shown some interest by responding to marketing campaigns but not enough for SDR to engage. You want to continue mass marketing nurturing to make them into the gold area.
P4 = individuals who were likely imported (with low scores) yet have not shown any interest in responding to marketing campaigns. Unless your inside sales have the bandwidth to reach out to this group, you will need to continue marketing mass nurturing. However, expect that leads in this group are likely to turn stale, or they were unqualified or even invalid leads, to begin with. It’s an excellent opportunity to clean up your inflated leads pool
Remember with the simple lead scoring model, two leads that have a score of 80 points could mean very different things. With the two-dimensional leads scoring model, leads are on the same priority list do share very similar traits and qualities. Welcome to HubSpot lead scoring. Hope this example inspires you to develop a lead scoring and segmentation that best suits your business.
