How to Set Up Lead Scoring in HubSpot (That Actually Works!)

Wouldn't it be great if every lead in your CRM was a perfect fit for your ideal customer profile? (Yeah, that's an impossible dream…)

But with lead scoring, you can monitor leads who aren't quite ready yet and reach out at the right time.

What is lead scoring (and why is it amazing)?

HubSpot's lead scoring field sounds fancy, but really it's a regular ol' calculation property. It will add or subtract points based on the attributes YOU define. In other words, you can assign positive point values to a contact based on good-fit attributes or behaviors. On the flip side, you can remove points based on bad-fit attributes or behaviors.

(Note: HubSpot does have "predictive lead scoring," but that's only available on Marketing Hub Enterprise aka the most expensive tier available. For this post, we're talking about the old-school manual way of scoring leads that's available in the more popular Pro-level tier.)

The best part about lead scoring? When a contact earns a certain number of points (again, as defined by you), you can use an automated workflow to notify a sales rep that they're ready for a conversation. That means you won't feel like you have to reach out to unqualified leads ASAP just because you'll forget about them later on…HubSpot will monitor their sales-readiness for you!

Before you turn on lead scoring, remember:

• Once you publish/update the lead scoring field, HubSpot will automatically and retroactively update this score for all contacts in your CRM. This means contacts could have unexpected high (or low) point values…will that affect existing lists or workflows? If so, proceed with caution.
• On that note, what do you want to accomplish by using lead scoring? Do you want to update a contact's lifecycle stage? Alert a member of your sales team? The number itself is meaningless unless you take action because of it.
• Nothing is written in stone! In fact, it's a best practice to regularly review your lead scoring formulas to make sure you're not handing out too many points to certain activities (or not enough to others).

The three types of scoring attributes:

Think about what your current customers and opportunities have in common. If you're in marketing, talk to your sales and service team because they're on the front lines! Then start to group commonalities into these buckets:

• Firmographic information, such as:
  • Industry
  • Job title
  • Geography
• Behavioral information, such as:
  • Form submissions
  • Website pages viewed
  • Marketing email engagement

It's just as important to recognize what makes a bad prospect and use these negative attributes to subtract lead scoring points:

• Negative attributes, such as:
  • Email contains .edu
  • Viewed the careers page of your website
  • Hasn't opened past 11 emails
  • IP address is a foreign country (not always accurate with VPNs)

The number of criteria you define is totally up to you. As are the point values you assign to each. There is no magic number (sorry!).

We've seen clients who have just a few criteria in their lead scoring formula and we've seen clients with over 100 attributes. (Though that must be hard to manage!)

We've seen clients who only assign scores in units of 10, but we've also seen others who use every possible whole number available. (No, decimals are not a thing.)

Whatever works for you is the right answer!