Lead Scoring Is No Longer Enough (Hint: Engagement Scoring Is)

Not all leads are the same; some convert into customers, while others download a free ebook and then are never heard from again. Scoring the leads your marketing efforts generate can help you distinguish between high-value leads in a sales funnel and those that’ll go nowhere. That being said, lead scoring is an imperfect science that can be unreliable.

Engagement scoring, however, offers a more accurate indicator of lead value. It uses engagement marketing principles to measure how engaged your leads are with your brand.

What Is Lead Scoring?

Lead scoring is a systematic process that assigns value to different types of leads within a traditional marketing sales funnel.

Lead scoring model and examples

Lead scoring takes several factors into account to assign an appropriate value to each lead, such as:

• Source
• Position in the marketing funnel
• Demographics
• Company information
• Event attendance
• Material downloads
• Email and social media engagement
• Online behavior
• Conversion or no conversion
• Time spent in the sales funnel

Next, you identify the factors most likely to indicate conversion and those least likely to generate sales. You can then rank the value of each factor, assess current leads, add up their points, and rank them based on their results.

Take a dog supply store, for example: If leads who are dog owners are highly likely to convert, assign this factor a high value, say three points; if leads of all ages are equally likely to purchase (or not), this factor does not directly correlate with a positive or negative outcome, so you should assign it a low score, perhaps zero; if 50% of email subscribers purchase, assign this a moderate score like two. A lead with all three factors would have a high score of five, while a lead who doesn't own a dog but subscribes to the newsletter would have a moderate score of two.

For lead scoring to be accurate and informative, you need to incorporate multiple factors.

Why Lead Scoring Is Broken

Traditional lead scoring has several flaws that make it inaccurate, unreliable, and difficult to maintain. In short, lead scoring is overly complicated and broken. Here's why.

You don't have the whole picture

Lead scoring is imperfect because so much of the customer's journey is hidden. Many customer  actions such as researching and reading reviews occur before they contact a business.

Also, no two customers take the same path on their way to purchasing, and it's impossible to trace every customer's exact steps. So, attempting to assign value based on customer journey maps will produce inaccurate results.

Extracting meaning from data is difficult

The big difference between data and information is meaningful insights. You can collect all the data in the world, but you have to translate it into meaningful information to extract useful insights.

Too much data

Too much data is overwhelming and challenging to use. Additionally, recording every tidbit about your customers and their interactions with you is costly. Traditional lead scoring requires the collection of as much data as possible to identify patterns, rather than intentionally selecting metrics to follow based on the questions you want answered.

Outdated marketing model

Lead scoring is based on tracking customers as they move through a traditional sales or marketing funnel (i.e., awareness, consideration, decision, and evangelism). However, marketers (and their audiences) are looking for something new. 

The Benefits of Engagement Scoring

Engagement marketing offers a fresh take on the traditional sales funnel. It employs a human-to-human approach that speaks to consumers' emotional needs, builds relationships, and creates a community around a brand. The engagement marketing funnel prioritizes understanding customers' frustrations, providing them with reliable solutions, confidently demonstrating the post-solution transformation, and inspiring gratitude that fosters brand loyalty.

This new method has also replaced lead scoring with engagement scoring. Along with customer satisfaction, customer engagement is one of the leading indicators of conversion, churn, and potential for upselling and cross-selling.

In engagement scoring, a customer is considered engaged if they receive value from your product or service. For example, if you have a weight-loss app, your users are deemed engaged if they lose weight. Those who track their meals and activity but fail to shed pounds aren't considered engaged because they don’t experience measurable value from the product.

Identify all the benefits you provide to determine customer engagement with engagement scoring. Then, rank and weigh them in terms of importance. Next, calculate customer engagement scores based on every weighted benefit they've received from you and the number of times they've used them.

The ROI of Customer Engagement Scoring

Customer engagement scoring can increase ROI by helping you:

• Lower customer acquisition costs — Quickly identify customers ready to purchase and convince them to convert
• Improve customer retention rates — Determine which customers aren't gaining value from your product or service and take action to improve their experience
• Increase customer lifetime value — Identify highly engaged customers who are good candidates for cross-selling and upselling efforts.

At Banzai, we help you take advantage of all the benefits of engagement marketing, including the power of customer engagement scoring, to create brand loyalty, build community, and maximize your marketing ROI. Ready for a big return on your marketing efforts? Get in touch with us today.

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