Lead scoring Methods

Smart CRM & Sales Hub Tips, Tricks & Best Practices
1

Hello folks!

I am looking for some good practices we can implement for lead scoring in HubSpot What are some effective strategies for setting up and optimizing lead scoring in HubSpot to prioritize and qualify leads effectively for sales teams?

2

Hi @Jonathan_Baker1,

Happy to help here!

You’ve probably already stumbled upon this resource on how to set up a lead score: Understand the lead scoring tool

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.

Some additional resources you might find useful:

Best regards!

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

PPS. There is a new lead score feature in HubSpot in the works which will likely release around INBOUND this year. You might want to hold back on major lead scoring work in the ‘old’ tool and request this beta: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvT3cY09pWQ

3

Hey @Jonathan_Baker1

Here is one blog you can follow for effective strategies on setting up and optimizing lead scoring in HubSpot: Lead Scoring Explained: How to Identify and Prioritize High-Quality Prospects

Effective strategies for setting up and optimizing lead scoring in HubSpot involve both traditional and predictive lead scoring methods.

These HubSpot academy lessons are also a great resource: HubSpot Academy

If you found our post helpful in resolving your query kindly mark it as an accepted solution!

4

Hey @Jonathan_Baker1

when it comes to lead scoring what works best for most clients

is the demographics + intent method

meaning not only using properties like type of contact/company, company size, industry..etc (all the demographics)

but keeping the score live, updating constantly when a contact shows intereset, intent

or even substracting point when its been a long time since they haven’t interacted with your brand.

Of course if can be as extenstive as you need (adding events, emails, ads…) or stating with something more simple as website visits and form submissions.

Hope this helps