Not All Leads Are Created Equal

It certainly makes obvious sense that some leads generated by a Website are better than others, and certain behavioral clues and data points (such as which pages on a site were visited) can indicate a much greater likelihood of a prospect's propensity to buy.

For example, a prospect who searches on Google for your company name is likely of more interest than someone who found the site with a generic term. And obviously, someone who visits twenty pages (including product information and pricing) on multiple visits is of more interest than someone who came once, registered for the newsletter, and just visited the Management Team page.

However, some organizations treat a lead simply as a lead, which of course is non-optimal, especially in terms of utilizing the precious time of a sales force.

Lead Scoring is the practice of applying weights to leads as they come in based on certain criteria, and then depending on the score, having a different set of sales and marketing activities associated with the lead. Since the criteria is largely based on a combination of data and behavior, integrating StrikeIron data sources over the Web at the point of lead collection can be invaluable, especially combined with site visit behavioral tools.

For example, someone who visits the site and registers and the email address and phone number is verifiable is a lead worth sending to the sales team, especially if company size, location, and business type fit predetermined parameters.

Here is a simple example lead scoring algorithm:

- Lead is from a US company (10 pts)
- Verified physical address (5 pts)
- Verified email address (5 pts)
- Verified phone number (5 pts)
- Did a search for our company name to find us on a search engine rather than a generic search term (10 pts)
- Visited how many pages on our site:
    2-10 (5 pts)
    11-20 (10 pts)
    21-50 (15 pts)
    51+  (20 pts)
- Multiple people from that domain registered (10 pts)
- C-level title (10 pts)
- Came in on the Web form (10 pts)
- Completed a product trial (10 pts)
- Revenue
    $2million-$10 million (2 pts)
    $10million-$50 million (4 pts)
    $50-$100 million (6 pts)
    $100million-$1 billion (8 pts)
    $1billion+ (10 pts)
- SIC code matches target market (10 pts)
- Responded to campaign x (10 pts)
- Responded to campaign y (5 pts)
etc.

Of course, lead scoring algorithms will be different for every company depending on their customer profiles, product offerings, and market approach. This is just one example.

Leads over certain scores are then prioritized in terms of time spent by the sales organization, and leads that fall below a certain threshold (say 25 points as an example) are maintained by the marketing organization in a "lead nurturing" program of multiple touches over time. These algorithms of course should be adjusted and optimized over time based on feedback from the sales organization.

In addition to optimizing sales team time, lead scoring can also help determine more accurately the success of various marketing campaigns. Qualified and "high scoring" leads can be measured versus just the total number of leads generated when considering the effectiveness of a campaign and campaign ROI.

Some Web services from StrikeIron that can help optimize an organization's lead scoring algorithms include:

Email Address Verification
US Address Verification
Reverse Telephone Number Verification
Global Address Verification
D&B Business Prospect with Corporate Linkage
D&B Worldbase Marketing Plus
Gale Group Business Intelligence by Web Domain

...and several others.

These services are easily integrated into automated demand creation and lead scoring solutions, whether home grown or within professional software solutions like Eloqua provides. They can then be maintained as well in CRM applications such as Salesforce.com, NetSuite, Oracle CRM on-demand, and others.

The impact to the bottom line can be tremendous.

Comments

[Adam S]

Good post, I came up with something similar called a Pre-Qual Score used to evaluate our leads explained here: http://www.d-toolsblog.com/?p=365 Also there is some good info on this topic in these series of posts. http://www.d-toolsblog.com/?cat=80

[Perry]

I like your concept of lead scoring. I also do the same thing, the scores depending on what matters to my business. I also make use of a software so I can easily identify the leads that should be my priorities, since they offer higher potential conversion rates.