Lead Scoring 101

Lead Scoring 101 Lead scoring is just one mechanism that marketers came up to gauge how qualified a lead is to receive more of the offerings that they are sending him, or how qualified he is to receive a first-time offering from the company. Lead scoring is usually done automatically with a lead tracking software, but it can also be done manually. The criteria for lead scoring are based on the activities of a certain user. These activities are used as measures for that person’s interest in your niche market, or his interest in something that is closely or even remotely related to your niche market. Salespersons then act on that credit score with follow-ups or first-time offerings. How Lead Scoring Came About Lead scoring actually is a recent marketing innovation. Previously, marketers rate and classify their leads with a fixed grade--for example, Interested, Somewhat Interested, or Not Interested. The problem with this is that the individual grades are ambiguous. They do not clearly show how interested the party is with the product; in between the Interested and Somewhat Interested, there exists a few other grades that could look better into the degree of interestedness that the person has. For example, he could be highly interested in the information, but not so highly interested to buy the product. That’s the harsh reality of business. However, marketers had to live with the frustration and the feeling that they’ve wasted their time on a lead that is said to be “Interested” in the product but is actually interested only in the information. Thus, they had to find some way to gauge the person’s interest in the product. With that, lead scoring was born. How Lead Scoring Works This is how lead scoring works. Let us take, for example, a scenario: John logged in to your piano-learning website and starts browsing your content. Your system automatically assigns him a score of 5. Then he downloads a free lesson in PDF format from your website, signifying that he is willing to find out more about your product offerings, or alternatively, he signs up for your newsletter. You add 10 points to his lead score, which qualifies him for an offer. Thus, in between your weekly or daily newsletters, you send him an offer to sign up for your full product or full piano lesson course. Depending on his response, you can add points to his credit score or keep it as is until he responds favorably. The bottom line is this: lead scoring was devised to show how high the person is in your hierarchy of potential customers. Instead of an ambiguous grade assignment, you get a quantifiable grade that can accurately grade how interested the person is in your product. It helps you know which marketing techniques to employ or how he is to be handled by your sales team. Advantages of Lead Scoring As you could see, lead scoring has several advantages to your marketing campaign. For example, it greatly enhances the accuracy of your lead tracking. Scores are assigned using the person’s activity as a base. The system will not assign a point or points for a lead without him doing an activity that signifies his interest in the product. With this score, a lead can be assigned to a sales agent who is specifically tasked to capture his interest more. If he is highly interested or has high points assigned to him by the computer, then he is assigned to the sales agent assigned to offer the product. If he shows a bit of interest or has been assigned a mediocre score, the lead is transferred to a marketer who is assigned to send him e-mails that will make him more interested to buy. Content provided by: www.leadscoring-info.com Visit our lead management software sponsor: www.leads360.com