Understanding Lead Scoring / Grading

What is lead scoring?

Lead scoring is the process of assigning values, as in actual scores (or numerical “points” if we want to be posh) to each lead generated for your business.

How do you know how to score them? Well, everyone will have a different way of assigning scores to their leads, but you can start with the professional information they’ve submitted to you and how they’ve engaged with your website/ company across the internet.

What’s the point?

Lead scoring helps your sales and marketing team quickly identify the most profitable target leads, as well as using algorithmic learning to recommend the next action.

That’s why at CANDDi, Lead Scoring and Lead Grading are two of our most powerful features.

How does it work?

We work from scores of 0 - 100 based on your lead’s activity on the website. This includes the number of sessions and number of pages visited.

The Lead Score is then calculated in real-time and increases as the scoring actions increase. So the more pages they click through, the bigger the score.

Lead Scores can also decrease over time to ensure you’re not wasting your efforts on a lead that’s actually six months old. Sure, they might have been engaging with some pretty cool stuff, but if they’ve made no action in a while, it probably isn’t worth it.

Basically, a lead with high activity a while ago but who never returned will have a lower score, than one who did the same activity yesterday. Simples.

Sooo, lead grading?

Is there a difference? Yeah, slightly.

Instead of using numbers, the Lead Grade is an alphabetical value (from A-E) based on the ‘intrinsic quality’ of the lead.

What on earth?! This means leads will get graded on the type of company they are, or the visitors role within the company, etc, rather than engagement.

The Lead Grade only ever increases as CANDDi learns more information about the Contact / Company.

Can we combine the two?

Yep. This is how:

1. Find Hot Sales Leads

Leads who have High Grades (are ‘the right kind of Lead’) + leads with High Scores (have done a lot of relevant activity) = the perfect Sales prospects.

With these leads you know that you’ve reached the right people and bonus, they’re showing that they are interested in your proposition.

2. Marketing Lead

Leads with High Grades + Low Scores = good long-term prospects.

So you’ve reached the right person within the organisation, but they’re not quite ready for a sales approach. With these leads, we recommend adding them to a drip marketing campaign and slowly engaging with them until their activity shows that they are a Hot Sales Lead.

3. Investigate

Leads who have High Scores (lots of relevant activity) + Low Grades (aren’t the right type of lead) need further investigation.

These leads can often be time wasters, but you never know if you might have just stumbled upon an untapped goldmine. Don’t be too quick to dismiss them because they don’t fit into your usual ideal. They could just display different characteristics to your ‘dream lead’ because you’ve not considered targeting them yet!

If you notice there are a couple with both Low Scores and Low Grades, they’re not even worth pursuing - ignore this traffic unless the metrics improve.

If you need a hand getting to grips with your lead scores/ grades, give us a call today!