HubSpot lead scoring is more of an art versus a science.
If you've just started using HubSpot's CRM software and stumbled across their lead scoring tool, you might be wondering if you should use it, and if so, how.
Here's the good news: HubSpot's lead scoring system is easy enough to turn on and off.
The harder part is building out a lead scoring strategy that fits well to your own goals and your company's goals.
Our guide will walk you through both the easy part of how to start with HubSpot lead scoring, and the harder part of how to build a winning lead scoring strategy.
Before we get into the details on how to build out a lead scoring system using HubSpot, let’s define some high-level terms.
Lead scoring is how you can prioritize what leads matter the most to your team. You do this by using a set of scoring criteria to determine how likely your lead is to convert based on your ideal customer profile (ICP).
Leads are commonly broken down into qualifying stages based on what channel they converted through or how often they engaged with your product. A user who converted through marketing channels, for example, would be an MQL (marketing qualified lead), whereas a user who converted via your sales team would be an SQL (sales qualified lead).
A good lead scoring system is the difference between wasting your time on a low quality lead and converting users that are ready to make the buy.
When building out your lead scoring strategy, keep the following three questions in mind:
Unfortunately, building a lead score in HubSpot is a bit more complicated than setting an ICP and implementing your negative and positive aspects. Read on to learn how you can optimize your lead scoring strategy to its full potential.
One of the advantages of having HubSpot is its relatively easy lead scoring implementation. HubSpot Lead Scoring, while having a heap of issues, does not suffer from ease-of-access. That includes lead scoring in HubSpot.
In other words, setting up lead scoring in HubSpot is the easy part. The hard part is making a strategic decision to use data to determine your lead flow.
Like the wind on a blustery day or a car horn in the distance— lead scoring is really a way to focus your attention. Is this lead good? Is it garbage?
Lead scoring isn’t always an exact, “dialed-in” method but more of a wait-and-see method. This is especially true in a few situations:
Any lead scoring system is a testament to continual improvement. While your organization may seem the same, there are trends, business models, and culture that continue to evolve.
Just when you think you have your HubSpot lead score dialed-in, the market norm and perspective will change. Whether it’s systemic and aggregate, like a new business model, or as minute as a platform change, your targets require dedication to stay relevant.
If you read here, you’ll know that I wrote a post outlining the things that are great, and not so great, with HubSpot lead scoring. Granted, every system has its own unique take on lead scoring and what metrics it deems important, but I’d characterize the two things you need to know at least with HubSpot:
So, with those two pain-points in context, know that while HubSpot lead scoring (also called HubSpot score) lets you technically lead score—it has some massive limitations around engagement metrics.
It’s for sure not all doom and gloom. HubSpot does include some metrics related to engagement (e.g. how many emails opened or how many recorded page views).
The issue is always time. HubSpot has no component that discounts time. After all, that’s great that a contact has 16 pageviews, but maybe those pageviews occur two years ago. See where we’re going with this?
More than any magic formula designed to let you pinpoint your most perfect leads, I’ll say this: use past data to predict your future.
HubSpot deals are a great example of using past data as a lead scoring model for future outcomes. Closed won HubSpot deals are one of the most critical KPIs for companies because it directly impacts revenue.
If you want to qualify leads quickly—start with looking at the attributes of who is participating in those deals. Some really good fields that could be relevant for your organization include:
Your goal for using past data projects how possible leads can be validated in the future.
Let’s work with some fake data as an example.
| Deal Name | Job Titles | Headquarters |
|---|---|---|
| Big Cereal | VP of Sales | Raleigh, NC |
| Vandalay Industries | Marketing Coordinator, Marketing Director | Scottsdale, AZ |
| Big Marketing Company | VP of Sales | Durham, NC |
| Taco City | Director of Marketing | Greensboro, NC |
Let’s pretend that these were your creme-de-la-creme deals—the ones that either represented the most revenue or were close to some other goal that’s important to you.
I say this because it isn’t always sheer revenue that matters the most to organizations, but many different aspects of offers, products, price points, and more.
The methodology is still the same: your goal is to look at the attributes of contacts within these deals and use that as the basis of your lead scoring.
If you tend to have a lot of deals with contacts who have a job title of “marketing director”, it stands to reason that you grade new leads higher via lead scoring (since those historically have represented some percentage of your closed won deals).
In the example above, you might have a business that depends on the geographic location of your contact.
The attributes of these contacts within your deals are the basis of your lead scoring.
While we’ve discussed contact attributes, you could 100% do the same process for companies or within deals:
One powerful, albeit time-consuming, method is to retroactively add data to your past deals, companies, and contacts.
Let’s say you started trying to categorize the type of companies that work with your business. This may be an effort you recently started—meaning that the data would only exist for companies going forward.
Instead, you can retroactively sort through your old contacts, companies, and deals to create that new data point (perhaps this is simply called “Company Type”).
The good news is that while adding data to new deals isn’t retroactive: most of HubSpot lead scoring is.
As long as you have a rule setup for evaluating a certain metric — HubSpot will score that lead as soon as the data is available.
The assumption with most lead scoring systems is that you have the data already or you know most of your contacts. There are too many reasons to list for why that data might not exist.
Essentially, other metrics exist in HubSpot that are ultimately unique to every contact and those are engagement metrics. Some examples include:
Again, time is the biggest caveat to using these metrics since, usually, we want to see that these actions have been taken (e.g. an email open or form submission) within recent history versus sometime last year.
There are some metrics better than others that can mostly get you the data you want:
Lead scoring in HubSpot is designed to be an ongoing process—not a one-off quick fix. We remind our clients that lead scoring is often the starting point for a much larger conversation on how your organization or company responds to leads.
In other words, lead scoring in any system is designed as a rough sign post—another data point that allows for better lead flow. More importantly, lead scoring is designed to represent your ideal customer profile and to prevent anything from slipping through the cracks.
If you haven’t already, check out my other article on how to hack HubSpot lead scoring for more in-depth detail on other nuances specific to HubSpot.
Optimizing your HubSpot lead scoring to its full potential is the difference between getting leads and converting them. Still have more questions and need some HubSpot help? We gotcha! Reach out for a free consultation call so you can get started optimizing your HubSpot today.