Lead scoring lets you rank prospects in a marketing automation system

against a scale that represents the perceived value each lead has in

direct relation to the organization.

Scores are used to determine the value or quality of a lead and are based on a variety of things,

such as their willingness to engage, their frequency of engagements, the stage of the buyer

journey they’re in, their readiness to buy, the frequency they are engaging with you, the type of

engagements they have with you, and much more.

Within this eBook we help you identify key steps on how to score with lead scoring, moving

clients from the awareness stage of the buyer journey to interest to consideration. If you’re ready

to take your marketing automation and lead scoring efforts and push them to the next level to

make sales, read on.

AN INTRODUCTION TO LEAD SCORING

WITH MARKETING AUTOMATION

DETERMINE SCORING CRITERIA

1

Based on your funnel stages, which, as a reminder, range from Awareness to Interest to Consideration (or Top to

Middle to Bottom), you may score leads within these stages based on a variety of unique factors. Leads can be scored

based on whether or not they’ve completed a form on your website, opened a personalized message you’ve sent them

via your marketing automation software, downloaded media like an eBook or white paper, and much more.

By targeting the decision-makers in your lead scoring program, you are more likely to make the sale and, as

marketers, send the right types of leads to sales. If you base your lead scoring point system off of a 50-point value

system, for example, your funnel stages will fall into these ranges:

AWARENESS – 0-10

INTEREST – 11-29

CONSIDERATION – 30-50

You can choose to score from whatever threshold you want, such as 10, 100s, etc. It’s really up to you!

Whereas you may assign a few points to a lead who is clicking on links on your website and not taking action beyond

that, you may assign more to a lead who is completing forms, watching on-demand webinars, requesting demos, and

more. For a 50-point threshold, you may assign 1 point per click in an email marketing campaign and 8 points for

completing a form. How you decide is really up to you and the value you find in these actions. With lead scoring, you

can also opt to assign points per individual, dependent on their lead type.

You can get more information about these stages and lead scoring thresholds when you read Ledgeview’s “Defining

Your Process from Lead to Opportunity” eBook, and “Driving Growth with Marketing Automation,” a master

comprehensive marketing automation guide by Ledgeview Partners. Both go further in-depth with funnel stages than in

this quick guide, but you can use this as the foundation to successfully get you started.

A W A R E N E S S I N T E R E S T C O N S I D E R A T I O N

DEFINE YOUR STAGES

2As we discussed in the last chapter of this eBook, you will want to define your stages so you know what to send to

the right audiences at the right time during each stage of the buyer’s journey. Since each stage falls into a score

range (EXAMPLE: Awareness [0-10], Interest [11-29], and Consideration [30-50]), you will be sending different

content to your leads at different times to move them down the top of your funnel to the middle to the bottom so

leads can turn from marketing-qualified (MQL) to sales-qualified (SQL). When leads become customers, you know

you’re doing something right!

The further someone moves down a funnel, the more ready they are to talk to a salesperson. Below, you will

find the types of content you should be sending leads during each stage of the sales funnel:

ATTRACT WITH CONTENT ,

CAPTURE WITH FORMS

3You can capture data on your website from leads by using “gated”

forms. Using your marketing automation to collect information on leads,

after all, is one of its foremost capabilities. Examples of content you

may “gate” include content shown on the previous slide. Specifically, you

may gate eBooks, white papers, data sheets, how-to guides, checklists,

blogs, on-demand videos, and webinars.

When you collect information on their location, job title, and intentions,

you will better be able to score them. The possibilities with “gated”

content and collecting information about leads is expansive. Remember,

this will contribute to your overall goal of converting unknowns to

knowns.

Collecting information helps you learn about your leads and what

they like so you can create the best marketing campaigns tailored to

their needs and desires with your company.

As marketers, you never want to send leads to salespeople before they

are qualified. To help ensure their qualifications and interests, you will

create higher quality leads for the sales team and a better flow through

your sales cycle.

Though you have the ability to “gate” a lot of content, you need to be

cautious. With marketing automation, you can put an expiration date on

forms so content becomes dated, and then it becomes “free” and open,

for example. You may always want to “gate” something, or put this time

stamp on your content. It is extremely conditional.

Marketing automation systems help you to ensure all of your forms are

mobile-ready or responsive in design. It’s easy to visualize and test

these features even from your desktop computer. Marketing automation

systems help salespeople and marketers get their content out to

consumers not only at the office, but everywhere. Mobile capabilities

are a content marketer’s best friend.

Think about the times you’re sitting at a doctor’s office, for example,

with nothing to do. Sometimes picking up an eBook is a quick, great

read. (Of course, we at Ledgeview always think this is a great option.)

USE PROGRESSIVE PROFIL ING

4

Progressive profiling serves different form fields in your marketing automation system to contacts based on what

you already know about them. It’s done through Dynamics Forms that present questions incrementally over time.

When you want to know everything about a lead, prospect, or customer, this is an essential and amazing tool to

have in your marketing toolbox.

Marketers are greedy by nature. Don’t be offended by this observation, marketers. It’s just a fact! When it comes

to forms, leads may feel like they’re doing taxes what with all the fields marketers may give them to fill out.

Marketers want to move leads further and further down the sales cycle, and they need the information and

awareness to do it. This is why they ask, for what feels like, more and more information every time.

Marketers are data-hungry, and love to leverage it to drive success through creative marketing campaigns in a

marketing automation system. You will need to have patience when working with progressive profiling. It will take

time to get the info you want, but over time, using progressive profiling improves your chances of people

completing shorter forms.

Progressive profiling provides a wealth of information in small chunks to help you continually refine your messaging

to better serve your audience, and ensure that each buyer journey is as targeted as possible.

With marketing automation, you will want to practice the core values of

personalized marketing to achieve.

Progressive profiling is fundamental in this respect.

AUTOMATE FORMS

5By using forms in marketing automation, you can also

create immediate, automated, time-saving actions

like:

• Sending an automated email response,

like confirming an event or when they

will be hearing back from you via a

Contact Us form

• Adding a new lead to your marketing

automation or CRM system, or updating

old or missing information

• Adding them, or moving them to or from

a marketing list or nurture program

• Plus, you can notify the account or record

owner of their activity and assign new

leads with email notifications from a

gated eBook form or Contact Us page

By using the automation feature of marketing automation, you allow your sales and marketing teams to save more

time on big projects and less time on tedious tasks that keep the sales cycle moving along swiftly. Lead segmentation

helps you communicate with your audience in personalized and dynamic ways that relate to them, help you connect

with them, and get them moving further down the sales cycle.

Not only does productivity tend to increase a result of using marketing automation, but employees learn from the

insight they gain from using marketing automation and become better at their individual roles and collaborations. The

list of benefits goes on, and on, and is unique to each company.

When you take advantage of its full capabilities, especially with lead scoring, you will be able to send targeted

messages at the right time to the right audience that you know is interested in you and wants to learn more.

Turn leads into opportunities into sales with marketing automation and lead scoring.

RECAP | 5 PROVEN LEAD SCORING

STEPS THAT REALLY WORK

D E T E R M I N E S C O R I N G C R I T E R I A

D E F I N E Y O U R S T A G E S

A T T R A C T W I T H C O N T E N T , C A P T U R E W I T H F O R M S

U S E P R O G R E S S I V E P R O F I L I N G

A U T O M A T E F O R M S

There is no one-size-fits-all model when it comes to lead scoring, but the tips shared in this

eBook will help set you on the bath to define your own lead scoring models from criteria to

stages to content management and distribution and more. Once you understand what lead

scoring means to your organization, you can truly thrive with it. Learn more about Lead Scoring

when you read Ledgeview’s master eBook guide, “Driving Growth with Marketing

Automation.”

With marketing automation, there is so

much value to explore, it’s hard to cover

in one eBook, but Ledgeview’s done it

with a master guide on “Driving Growth

with Marketing Automation.”

Marketing automation is an important

and strategic tool that can create

efficiencies in sales and marketing

alignment efforts, among many other

benefits that we explore in-depth within

the contents of this expert guide.

In this eBook, Ledgeview Partners

examines the key components of

marketing automation and its value in

providing organizations a way to guide

customers through the buying journey.

You will discover the insight and resources in this eBook that will help tie your marketing

automation strategy together, and, in the end, set your sales and marketing teams up to

achieve marketing automation success through alignment.

From the cost of sales and marketing misalignment to selecting the right marketing

automation software to lead scoring best practices to identifying goals and KPIs and

much, much more, if your sales and marketing teams aren’t reaching the success they can

be with marketing automation yet, we have confidence they will be by the end of this

eBook!

Download this resource at: http://bit.ly/LVP_eBooks

BECOME A MARKET ING AUTOMATION

EXPERT WITH LEDGEVIEW’S MASTER GUIDE