Lead scoring in Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement: what, why, how and more

What if you could instantly identify which prospects are most likely to buy, tailor your outreach to their specific needs, and prioritize the leads that truly matter? With Salesforce^® and its powerful lead scoring capabilities, this isn’t just a possibility – it’s reality.

Lead scoring allows businesses to analyze behaviors, demographics, and engagement data to pinpoint high-value leads, ensuring sales and marketing teams focus their efforts where they’ll make the biggest impact. By prioritizing the most promising opportunities, organizations can close deals faster, improve efficiency, and ultimately drive more revenue.

This article dives into lead scoring in Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement (formerly Pardot), covering what it is, why it’s valuable, how to implement it effectively, and tips to maximize success. Whether you’re an established Salesforce user or considering its potential for your sales and marketing needs, this guide will show you how lead scoring can transform your approach to lead generation and capture.

What is lead scoring?

Lead scoring is a method used to prioritize leads based on their likelihood of converting into customers. By assigning numerical values to various actions and characteristics, businesses can identify which leads are most engaged and ready to take the next step. In Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement, lead scoring combines behavioral and demographic data to help sales and marketing teams target the right prospects at the right time.

Behavioral signals

Lead scoring largely depends on how a lead interacts with your brand. Actions like opening emails, clicking links, and visiting your website indicate engagement. The more a lead engages, the higher their score, showing a stronger interest in your products or services.

For example, if a lead frequently opens and clicks your emails, it suggests they’re interested in your offerings. Marketing Cloud Account Engagement automatically tracks these actions, allowing your team to focus on engaged leads.

Demographic data

Demographic data helps score leads based on their fit with your ideal customer profile (ICP). Attributes like job title, industry, company size, and location determine whether a lead is a good match for your offerings. Leads who align with your ICP typically receive higher scores.

For instance, if your business targets mid-market tech companies, a decision-maker in that industry would receive a higher score than someone outside that target group.

Engagement recency and frequency

Engagement recency and frequency help assess how close a lead is to converting. Leads who have interacted recently or frequently with your brand are more likely to be in the consideration phase. Marketing Cloud Account Engagement tracks these changes and adjusts scores in real time, ensuring your team targets the most relevant leads.

Negative signals

Lead scoring also accounts for negative signals, such as unsubscribing or disengaging for an extended period. These actions lower a lead’s score, ensuring your sales team focuses on those who are still interested and qualified.

Why you should consider using lead scoring

Incorporating lead scoring into your sales and marketing processes offers several significant advantages, helping businesses maximize their efficiency and increase conversions. Here are some of the key benefits of implementing lead scoring:

1. Helps prioritize high-quality leads

Lead scoring ensures that your marketing and sales teams focus on leads that are more likely to convert. By ranking leads based on their score, teams can quickly identify which prospects need immediate attention and which ones need further nurturing.

Example: If you have a limited number of sales reps, you don’t want them wasting time with low-value leads. By focusing on those with higher scores, you increase your chances of closing deals faster.

2. Improves alignment between sales and marketing

Lead scoring helps bridge the gap between sales and marketing teams by providing a shared understanding of what constitutes a qualified lead. This alignment ensures smoother handoffs and better collaboration between teams.

Example: When marketing sends over a lead with a high score, sales knows that it’s time to engage in a personalized outreach campaign.

3. Increases conversion rates

By concentrating resources on the highest-scoring leads, businesses can improve their overall conversion rates. Marketing teams can tailor content, and sales personnel can personalize interactions based on the information captured in the scoring system.

Example: A SaaS company might find that leads who engage with product tutorials convert at a higher rate. Sales teams can target these leads with demo offers and trial incentives.

4. Saves time and resources

Lead scoring eliminates the guesswork by automating the qualification process. Instead of manually sorting through leads or relying on intuition, teams can use scores to prioritize efforts, ensuring that every resource is optimally allocated.

Example: If you’re running a limited-time promotion, lead scoring helps you target leads who are more likely to respond, maximizing the return on your marketing investment.

5. Improves customer relationships

Lead scoring helps you engage with leads at the right moment in their journey. When leads are nurtured effectively and consistently, they feel valued, leading to stronger relationships and better long-term loyalty.

Example: By scoring leads based on their behaviors and interactions, you can ensure that your communications feel relevant, timely, and personal.

How does lead scoring work in Marketing Cloud Account Engagement?

Lead scoring in Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement is an automated system designed to help marketing and sales teams prioritize leads based on their likelihood to convert. By assigning numerical values to various actions and characteristics, Marketing Cloud Account Engagement helps businesses identify which leads are ready to engage with sales efforts.

Assigning values to behaviors

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement tracks lead interactions, such as opening emails, clicking on links, and downloading content, and assigns scores to these actions. More valuable actions like filling out forms or visiting product pages earn higher scores, signaling stronger interest. This allows sales teams to focus on leads who are actively engaging with your content.

Incorporating demographic data

Demographic factors, such as job title, industry, and company size, also influence a lead’s score. Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement uses this data to prioritize leads that match your ideal customer profile (ICP), ensuring you’re targeting prospects who are more likely to convert.

Scoring based on engagement frequency

Engagement frequency helps to gauge the depth of a lead’s interest. Leads who frequently interact with your brand, whether through email or website visits, are assigned higher scores, indicating that they are more likely to be in the consideration phase of the sales funnel.

Accounting for negative signals

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement takes negative signals into account. These include unsubscribing from emails or prolonged disengagement, which can decrease a lead’s score. This ensures your sales team focuses on the most promising leads rather than wasting time on unqualified ones.

Getting real-time updates

Lead scores are updated in real time as leads engage with your brand. This provides your team with the latest data, allowing for timely and relevant outreach. If a lead takes a high-value action, their score can be immediately adjusted to reflect their increased engagement.

Customizable scoring models

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement allows you to customize lead scoring models to align with your business goals. Whether you want to assign higher points to specific behaviors or adjust scores based on lead demographics, you have the flexibility to tailor your scoring system to maximize lead conversion.

Integration with Salesforce Sales Cloud

Lead scoring in Marketing Cloud Account Engagement works seamlessly with Salesforce Sales Cloud. When a lead’s score reaches a certain threshold, it can be automatically passed to the sales team, ensuring that they can follow up with qualified leads without delay.

How to implement effective lead scoring in Marketing Cloud Account Engagement

Implementing lead scoring in Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement requires a strategic approach. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you get started:

1. Define your ideal customer profile (ICP)

Before you can assign scores, it’s crucial to have a clear understanding of your ideal customer. Collaborate with your sales and marketing teams to define the demographics, behaviors, and engagement patterns of your top-performing customers. This will serve as the foundation for your scoring criteria.

Example: If your company primarily serves mid-market businesses in the healthcare sector, your scoring model might give higher value to leads from that industry and those with titles such as “Healthcare Marketing Director.”

2. Establish scoring criteria and rules

Create specific rules that assign scores to leads based on their actions and characteristics. These rules can be customized to fit your business needs. You might assign points for different activities, like downloading a whitepaper or attending a webinar.

Example: A whitepaper download might score 10 points, while a demo request could score 50 points.

3. Integrate with Sales Cloud

Marketing Cloud Account Engagement integrates seamlessly with Sales Cloud, allowing you to pass lead scores directly to your sales team. This integration ensures that your sales reps have access to real-time lead information, making it easier to prioritize outreach.

Example: When a lead reaches a specific score threshold, your sales team can be automatically notified to follow up with personalized communication.

4. Automate lead scoring updates

Set up automatic updates to your lead scoring system so that scores change based on new actions or engagement. For instance, if a lead attends a product demo or visits your pricing page multiple times, their score should increase accordingly.

Example: Using Marketing Cloud Account Engagement lead scoring rules you can automatically adjust lead scores based on a variety of engagement signals, ensuring that your sales and marketing teams are always focused on the highest-priority leads.

5. Regularly evaluate and adjust the scoring model

As your business grows and your marketing strategy evolves, it’s important to review and update your lead scoring model periodically. This ensures that the criteria reflect changes in customer behavior and sales processes.

Example: If you notice that leads who sign up for free trials convert better than those who download whitepapers, you may adjust your scoring to give more weight to trial sign-ups.

Top tips for lead scoring success

To ensure your lead scoring strategy is effective, keep these best practices in mind:

1. Start simple and refine over time

When implementing lead scoring, start with a basic model that captures key actions and demographics. As you gather more data, refine your criteria and scoring model to increase its accuracy.

2. Collaborate with sales and marketing teams

Regularly communicate with both teams to ensure that your lead scoring model aligns with their goals and objectives. Both teams should agree on what constitutes a high-quality lead and when to pass them to sales.

3. Monitor lead scoring performance

Use Salesforce’s analytics tools to measure the effectiveness of your lead scoring. Track conversion rates, sales cycle length, and lead-to-customer ratios to determine if your scoring model is working as expected.

4. Implement score decay

As leads become inactive, their scores should decay to reflect their diminishing interest. This ensures that your marketing and sales teams always focus on the most engaged leads.

5. Test and iterate

Don’t be afraid to test different scoring strategies and make adjustments based on results. Lead scoring is an ongoing process that should evolve as your business grows and your customer base changes.

6. Capture relevant data with Marketing Cloud Account Engagement lead capture

Incorporating Marketing Cloud Account Engagement lead capture techniques, like web forms and interactive landing pages, ensures that you gather the data necessary to score leads accurately. Be sure to integrate these capture methods seamlessly into your scoring model.

Ready to make the most of lead scoring in Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement?

Thanks for reading! As we’ve explored, implementing lead scoring in Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement can significantly improve your sales and marketing efforts. With the right strategies, tools, and continuous optimization, you can ensure that your team focuses on the highest-priority leads and increases conversion rates. 

Would you like to start making the most of lead scoring at your own organization? Our Salesforce Marketing Cloud Implementation Services can make it happen. Contact us today to learn more about how our team of experts can help you implement and succeed with Salesforce Marketing Cloud lead scoring. Together, we’ll transform your lead management process and drive better results for your business.

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About the Author

Yury Mokhart

Marketing Cloud Consultant, VRP Consulting

A professional Marketing Cloud Consultant for more than five years, with certifications including Consultant, Administrator and Email Specialist, Yury specializes in Marketing Cloud Account Engagement and Pardot implementations. He has helped clients in transportation, aviation, finance, retail, telecommunications and other industries to automate and enhance their marketing campaigns.