topic Re: Best Practices to Setup a Lead Scoring in Tips, Tricks & Best Practices

Best Practices to Setup a Lead Scoring

KaKaRoT — Mon, 02 Jan 2023 18:08:35 GMT

Hi,

We use HubSpot marketing hub which is integrated with Salesforce CRM. I want to know the best approach to set up the lead scoring model. What are the best practices and HubSpot properties to be considered for setting up the lead scoring model in HubSpot?

We have a HubSpot & Salesforce "Lead Status" property that gets synced, so is it a good practice to consider the "Lead Status" property for scoring? Or do I create a custom property in HubSpot, I would like to know the best and most efficient way to setup a lead scoring model.

Thanks in advance!

Thanks

Re: Best Practices to Setup a Lead Scoring

ContentNinja — Mon, 02 Jan 2023 18:22:35 GMT

Hi @KaKaRoT , You can create custom score proerty and define your own filture and criteria for a lead to be scored higher or lower. The below knowledge article describes the entire process very well: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/crm-setup/set-up-score-properties-to-qualify-leads

also, the Hubspot Lead Status property is typically to track the status of the lead and not to score it.

hope it helps, if it did, please mark it as a solution so that other community members can benifit from it. Thanks

Re: Best Practices to Setup a Lead Scoring

karstenkoehler — Mon, 02 Jan 2023 18:49:09 GMT

Hi @KaKaRoT,

Happy to help here!

You've probably already stumbled upon this resource on how to set up a lead score: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/crm-setup/set-up-score-properties-to-qualify-leads

In terms of what to include, I'll share some of my thoughts:

First, I'd recommend deciding on what exactly the lead score should do. Should it be a thermometer of how engaged a contact is (intent), an additional piece of information for sales before they reach out to a c contact? Or should it be an overall barrier that a contact must surpass before a contact is considered sales qualified? It is crucial to clearly define what you want to do. Lead score properties in HubSpot are a black box that returns a number so if you're not sure about what you want to measure this number means very little.
If you have a short list of very clear black and white criteria of when a contact is qualified, it is usually better to simply create a workflow that checks those criteria and then passes on a contact. For example, if you want to pass on contact to sales who have a certain job title, company size and have booked a demo, there isn't any need to create a scoring property. Similarly, there isn't any need to subtract 100 points for a competitors, consultants, students if you could simply exclude competitors from being passed on to sales via exclusion in your workflow or sync list.
Be careful of scoring criteria that are not reliable (anymore), e.g. marketing email opens, especially if you want to subtract points for a lack of marketing email opens, for example.
Overall, scoring properties make sense when you want to add up a lot of small interactions.

In terms of what can be scored, here's what I usually included:

Number of marketing emails clicked
Number of page views / sessions
Number of form submissions
Registration / participation in webinars or real-world events

... in other words marketing touchpoints.

You can can subtract points when these interactions are older than a specific date (e.g. Last marketing email click date is more than 1 year ago), incorporating decay into your score.

If you search for 'hubspot lead score best practices' you'll find many blog posts and other opinions on this topic. Personally, I see often lead scores used incorrectly when people could simply clearly define what constitutes a SQL or their criteria of passing on a contact to sales. (Specific job titles, company sizes and a known phone number aren't scoring criteria. They are minimum requirements for a contact to be passed on. Including them in a score means that a contact could reach a minimum score despite having a job title and company size that are known to be a bad fit, for example.)

If you have clearly defined criteria for passing on contacts to sales but additionally want to see that a contact has had at least a few touchpoints with marketing content, then this is – in my opinion – a good way to use a lead score.

Best regards!

PS. Scoring properties have other great applications and can be great for measuring data quality, engagement with specific campaigns and much more...

Re: Best Practices to Setup a Lead Scoring

LaurenRyan — Wed, 04 Jan 2023 17:35:34 GMT

Hey @KaKaRoT - Scoring is typically a combination of measured intent and quality. So, does this person want to talk to/buy from us and are they someone that would be a good fit for our product.

Similar to @karstenkoehler's suggestion - I'd use indicators like number of page views, specific pages viewed (like pricing), forms submitted, etc for interest and factors like job title, industry, business size, etc for fit.

Here's a post my team created diving into HubSpot lead scoring for further ideas.

Re: Best Practices to Setup a Lead Scoring

MWard91 — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 20:13:59 GMT

Hi Karsten,

Question for you with regards to scoring for Number of marketing emails clicked - let's say we add a property to add 1 point if a link in a marketing email was clicked by the lead within a time frame- does this give 1 point total? or 1 point per click?

Re: Best Practices to Setup a Lead Scoring

michaelhermon — Tue, 07 May 2024 15:14:24 GMT

Hi @KaKaRoT !

If you'd like to try an alternative method to what @karstenkoehler and @LaurenRyan suggested, you can try to use a HubSpot lead scoring integration that enriches your inbound leads, scores and routes them based on how relevant they are to your business.

Good luck!

Michael Hermon

RevOps Tech Expert