No separate scores for behavioral and demographic values.

Demographic scores are best thought of as how interested you

are in a prospect. Behavioral scores are how interested that

prospect is in you. If you only use one lead score value, there

will be no easy way to distinguish between, for example, the CEO

with little to no interest in your solution vs. the low-level end

user with a high interest. Scoring on both demographic and

behavioral attributes allows you to provide more meaningful

and relevant data to sales.

TIP 01

Faulty inactivity campaigns.

Companies routinely use “inactivity” campaigns to subtract points

if, for example, a prospect takes no action for 3 months. However,

if a prospect so much as clicks on one email or visits one Web

page during that period, his/her score will never go down. A

better approach is to institute a score degradation scheme—

see #3.

TIP 02

Score Inflation.

When you award points to a prospect for some specific

behavior (e.g. visiting a Web page, attending a Webinar), that

score shouldn’t last forever. The value of someone attending a

Webinar last week, for example, will be much less significant

say, a year from now. However, many lead scoring schemas

don’t reflect that degradation of score value over time, and the

result is “score inflation,” where individual prospects may ring

up lead scores of one thousand points or more, by which time

the score has become meaningless. One solution is to use a

system of expiration dates and deduct points over time.

TIP 03

Multiple campaigns assigning lead scores.

There are usually two ways to assign lead scores. The first is to

build a lead scoring “step” into each individual campaign. The

problem with this approach arises when you want to refine your

lead scoring schema over time, in that any change will require that

you change scoring commands for every campaign in which that

particular scoring action is included. A better alternative is to

utilize one, centralized lead scoring workflow that applies to all

campaigns and assigns lead score whenever the appropriate

behaviors occur. This approach makes lead scoring more flexible

and optimizing the overall schema much less time-intensive.

TIP 04

Scoring email opens.

Email opens are a grossly unreliable measure of email

effectiveness. An email “open” can mean many things, but more

than likely does NOT mean that the individual recipient

consciously opened and read your message. As such, scoring

email opens not only runs the risk of assigning lead value

for no valid reason, but can also contribute to score inflation

(see #3, above.) Better options are to score on email

click-throughs and form submissions.

TIP 05

Scoring every Web page visit the same.

Web page activity is a useful measuring stick to gauge a

prospect’s interest in your company and solution, but not all Web

pages are created equal. Assigning the same value therefore, say:

one point per page, to every page on your Website, fails to

differentiate between high-value and low-value pages. Some

lower-value pages, “careers” for example, may even merit

negative scores, whereas more high-value pages, say: “pricing”

or “contact”, should be awarded relatively more points.

TIP 06

Too little negative scoring.

Negative scores are a useful tool in avoiding false positives – that

is, assigning high lead scores to leads that in reality don’t merit

sales’ attention. Too many companies ignore negative scores

altogether, with the result being that junk leads slip through the

cracks and sales confidence suffers. Negative scores can be

demographic (e.g. consultant titles, companies below a certain

size, non-supported geos) or behavioral (e.g. inbound traffic from

consumer sites, visits to career page.)

TIP 07

No scoring suppression rules.

In a similar vein, some leads simply shouldn’t be scored at all

since they’ll never be candidates for sales follow-up. Examples

of leads that fall into this category include students and

competitors. Rather than attempt to score down leads who

meet those criteria, it’s usually simpler to simply suppress

those leads from scoring altogether, and eliminate the possibility

that they somehow (through an intense bout of activity,

for example) get passed to sales in error.

TIP 08

Over-scoring caused by repetitive actions.

A lead that clicks on the same email 5 times in one hour

shouldn’t be scored the same as someone who clicks on 5

separate emails over 5 months. Yet without the appropriate

score qualification rules, leads can be scored too highly based

on repetitive action. In the prior example, one solution would

be to implement a rule such that any lead can only be scored

for email clicks a maximum of once per hour.

TIP 09

Scoring “contact sales” incorrectly.

Most B2B companies have a certain lead score threshold at which

prospects are deemed ready for sales. If an individual prospect

explicitly requests he/she be contacted by sales, companies often

assign that lead a point value equal to the sales-ready threshold,

say 100 points. However, this fails to distinguish between, for

example, a lead with 10 points who requests sales contact, and a

lead with 40 points who does the same. In theory, the 40 point

prospect is a more mature lead. A better solution, therefore, is

add a certain number of points (in this example: 100 points) rather

than bring the lead automatically to the sales-ready threshold.

TIP 10

Spear Marketing Group is a full-service demand generation agency

that helps B2B technology companies generate, nurture, and

convert leads to revenue. Services include email marketing,

SEO/SEM, content syndication, lead nurturing, digital advertising,

social media, and content development. For more information,

visit us on the Web at www.spearmarketing.com

Additional resources:

White Paper: Top 10 B2B Email Marketing Mistakes

White Paper: Effective Lead Generation Offers for High-Technology Companies

Blog: The Point – Best Practices & Principles in B2B Demand Generation