Lead Scoring: 5 Ways to Determine Lead Readiness

An estimated 79 percent of marketing leads never actually become customers. A lack of an efficient lead nurturing process is a big contributor to these poor outcomes. The greater the understanding brands have of their customers and their journey from awareness to making a purchase, the more productive their lead nurturing process will be. Here are a few areas to examine when determining a lead score.

How much information does the prospect provide?

You need to gauge how much information the prospect has provided you about themselves and their needs. Often, brands have both optional and required fields on their forms. When people offer more information beyond just the basic name and email, they are showing signs of being interested in your business and not just going through the steps to secure the asset you have offered.

How many times has the prospect visited?

Track the number of times your prospect visits your website. Visitors who return several times are building their relationship with your brand and demonstrate that they find your information appealing. They are interested in your organization and what you have to offer.

Their multiple visits will provide you with information about the type of content, promotions, or offers that drew them to your site and thus insight into what pain point they might be trying to solve.

What is the prospect’s engagement level?

You should be tracking all of the available data about prospect activity on your website once they arrive. Look at how long they spend on the site and what they do when they arrive. This will offer insight into their interest. If they venture over to your product and pricing pages, for example, then this is a sign that the lead may be warm because they are showing direct interest in what you have to offer and how much it will cost them.

The offers that your prospect takes advantage of is also important. For example, when leads are willing to offer their information to participate in a webinar or download a white paper, you will be able to clearly see the topics that interest them the most. You will be able to more accurately gauge where they are in the buyer’s journey based on their interests, and thus be able to better predict the optimal time for contacting them.

Do they open your emails?

The email open rates associated with particular prospects will also provide insight into their level of interest with your brand. When you have a well-planned marketing automation and email marketing strategy outlined, then you will not be bombarding your prospects with poor-quality emails. Instead, you will be sending them engaging messages tailored to them. You can then use the open rates and the click-through rates from the emails to better understand your prospects. Those who delete and never open your emails are likely not as interested in the brand as another prospect who often scans your emails and occasionally clicks through. Tracking the email subjects and the offers detailed inside that attract the most attention from a particular prospect can help you compile information about them that will serve your lead-nurturing goals. Experiture can help you with your marketing automation goals.

Do they engage with your brand on social media?

It is also important to take social media into account in lead scoring. You should be paying attention to how your prospects interact with your organization on these platforms, such as following your page or actively posting, to understand their level of interest. Among CEOs and VPs, 84 percent say that they use social media when making buying decisions. This trend is also noted by sales representatives, with 64 percent saying that they closed at least one deal directly because of social media in 2014.

Understanding when a lead is prepared to move to sales can be a challenging process, but it will also have a sizeable impact on the success of your organization. As brands improve their understanding of their prospects and what these people want to see from them, the easier it will be to turn prospects into paying customers.