With leads flowing from an ever-increasing array of online sources, it is becoming increasingly important for marketers to prioritize leads efficiently. Lisa Cramer, Chief Sales and Marketing Officers for FirstWave Technologies, notes that lead prioritization is a different discipline than the traditional A-B-C Sales categorization. It’s more attuned to marketing action and comprises a set of levels for suspects, leads and Sales-ready leads.
Scoring methods will vary depending on marketers’ specific needs and processes. For example, Cramer suggests a very basic scoring scheme might look like this:
Lead Prioritization
|
LEAD SCORE |
PRIORITY LEVEL |
MARKETING OR SALES ACTION |
|
20-40 |
Suspect |
Nurturing activities by Marketing |
|
45-55 |
Possible Lead |
Move to Telemarketing for qualification |
|
60-70 |
Warm Qualified Lead |
Send to Sales for timely action |
|
75-100 |
Warmer Qualified Lead |
Send to Sales for immediate action |
To determine the overall scoring scheme and what score and process is appropriate for each action, marketers must take into account the following:
· Clicks from email campaigns, pages visited, time spent on each page
· Clicks and page viewing from online ads
· E-newsletter and survey responses
· Downloads from your website (whitepapers, case studies, etc.)
· Blog entries
· Telemarketing responses
· Trade show visits
· Direct mail responses
· Webinar attendance
The next step is to determine how each interaction should be evaluated and what weight it deserves in the overall scheme. For instance, compare the scores below for someone who clicks a link from an outbound email, views your landing page for 12 seconds and downloads a white paper, versus someone who clicks the link, views the landing page for 20 seconds, views 3 product pages then 2 case studies, downloads a white paper, and remains on your website for 5 minutes.
Scoring from Email Campaign
|
VISITOR |
CLICKED LANDING PAGE
(Score 5) |
TIME ON LANDING PAGE
(Score 5 if >=10 sec) |
VIEWED PRODUCT PAGES OR CASE STUDIES
(5 each) |
VIEWED CASE STUDIES
(5 each) |
WHITEPAPER DOWNLOAD
(Score 10) |
TIME ON SITE
(Score 10 if >= 2 min) |
SCORE |
|
1 |
5 |
5 |
15 |
10 |
10 |
10 |
55 |
|
2 |
5 |
5 |
0 |
0 |
10 |
0 |
20 |
Cramer explained that leads move to Sales only when they reach the Sales-ready threshold. Leads in the lower scoring ranges are continuously engaged through e-newsletters and other marketing activities to nurture them toward the Sales-ready threshold.
“Success in lead generation does not end with lead volume. The metric that matters, for both marketing and sales, is results,” Cramer said. “It’s about sales, not just the number of leads passed on to sales. Lead scoring and prioritization is the key moving the right leads to right stage at the right time, resulting in more efficient processes and, ultimately, more sales.”
For more, visit www.firstwave.net