Using lead scoring with Pardot
Creating a lead scoring model is something that intimidates a lot of people. They get overwhelmed by where to start and how to assign value in such an arbitrary way. But if you use Pardot, they’ve made it fairly easy.
Scoring vs Grading
The first thing to note about Pardot’s scoring system is that it comes in two parts — scoring and grading. Scoring is a cumulative number generated from the value you assign to user activities. Grading, on the other hand, is much more stagnant, based on specific criteria that generates a letter grade.
In simpler terms, scoring is how interested someone is in you, while grading is how interested you are in them. Scoring is based on implicit data, grading is based on explicit data.
The two models work well together when it comes to helping your sales team prioritize. Take, for example, Prospect #1, with a grade of B and a score of 110. Then you also have Prospect #2 with a grade of A- and a score of 80. Prospect #1 is a less qualified lead, but since they’ve done more research on your business, they most likely will have a shorter sales cycle.
Creating a scoring model
Assigning value to your assets
I have found the best first step in creating a proper scoring model is to create a site map. Understanding all of your webpages and how they interact with each other allows you to see how you’ve previously prioritized your content.
Identity the pages you find most valuable (ex: Pricing, Sign up), and assign them a score. This is the part that’s difficult for some people, as there’s no right way to assign value, so long as you’re consistent. So if you value your pricing page at 100 points, then your other pages should be proportionate to that. (Ex: Don’t assign your Pricing page 100 points, and your About page 2).
Once you’ve assigned values to your webpages, do the same with your content and forms.
Implementing those values
To start applying your scoring model to the people browsing your site, you’ll have to create scoring categories. How you use categories is ultimately up to you — you can base it by campaign, or by source. When I started, I broke it out by marketing vs product pages.
You can set your scoring categories by going to Admin > Automation Settings > Scoring. You’re able to set your content, forms, and engagement scores here as well.
To assign scores to your individual webpages, navigate to Marketing > Automation > Page Actions. You will need to create a new page action for every page you’re looking to score. Every page on your website is automatically assigned 1 point by default. So if you have 1,000 blog posts on your website, you don’t have to individually score every blog in order for them to count.
If you want certain webpages to be called out in a prospect’s activity, mark them as a priority page. You’re also able to set completion actions to run when a prospect lands on a page. So, for example, if you’re using last-touch attribution and someone lands on a landing page for one of your campaigns, you might want to set one of your custom fields to reflect that they were last on that page.
Once you’ve set up page actions for any pages you value above one point, you’re done! The only thing left to do is to monitor your leads and prospects to ensure their score is representative of their value and potential to convert.
Setting up grading
Evaluate your data
Although scoring gives you an idea of how qualified a lead is, grading will tell you outright. Grading allows you to set up profiles based on specific criteria, but it can be a bit confusing to set up. You probably already know what makes up a good customer, and you may have already set up customer personas. Much like personas, prospect grading is a reflection of your ideal customer.
Choose 7-10 attributes that make up your ideal customer, such as job title and company size, and identify what your ideal value for each of these data points is. Be very selective and do not choose too many, or all of your prospects will end up with an A+.
Start assigning grades
To begin using prospect grades, you’ll first need to set up your grading profiles. To do this, navigate to Marketing > Segmentation > Profiles.
You can name your criteria whatever you like, but it’s best to name them the same as the fields you will be assigning to them. Next, assign how you would like the value to change by letter grade if the value matches your criteria. For example, ⅓ of a letter grade would move your prospect from a D to a D+, and ⅔ of a letter would move it from a D+ to a C.
Finally, to generate grades, you will need to use automation rules. Navigate to Marketing > Automation > Automation Rules and create a new automation rule for each piece of grading criteria. This is where you will set the value of your criteria.
In the Rules section, select your criteria, and for Actions, create an action for Change Profile Criteria, select the criteria, and set it to Matches. From here, Pardot will automatically tie your data together and adjust a prospect’s score based on the criteria they match.
Note: You are able to assign multiple fields to one piece of grading criteria, but be sure that the results of this are consistent. For example, if you know that you consistently see better results for prospects if Job Title is CEO and Company size is 50, then you could combine these two data points to represent “company fit.”
Once you’ve set up your initial scoring and grading model, don’t be afraid to test and iterate. Monitor the success of your conversions, and ask your sales team for feedback so that you know whether or not the values you’ve assigned are representative of the leads you’re looking for.
