Intent data can overwhelm Sales and Marketing teams. There can be a lot of data, with lots of detail leaving you unsure of what to do with it.
Like looking at your huge To-Do list, it’s best to divide things up into priority and delegate. You should work in the same way with intent data, except most of time we it’s not made simple for you to do that.
That has changed. Say Hello to intent data scoring, the easy way to prioritize the hottest leads and simplest way to understand where to devote your attention.
Scoring settings
The purpose of intent data is to understand who is a hot buyer right now, because they’re engaging a competitor or engaging with content related to you. Maybe they’re attending competitor’s events, the list goes on.
But to make it easier to understand who is hottest, we’ve added scoring to out system. Put simply, scores of 1 to 20 are low and a score of 100 is the highest.
If you downloaded all of the leads in your CRM, how would you know who the hottest leads are? Having a simple number by the side of each lead would help you understand quickly.
There are 3 main factors in how simple intent data lead scoring works. Here’s the crux of it…
Fit
You could have the best lead ever, who’s engaging with your competitor and was at their event last week. They’re looking at content, hungry for information. They need to be reached out to. But is their company or their role slightly away from what your perfect ICP.
That doesn’t mean they’re not a really good lead.
So reviewing the lead fit and the account fit and assigning a score to it allows you to spot the hot lead but be aware that they’re not the 100% perfect, 100 score lead. 85 is a great score and a hot lead, but clearly if the scale is up to 100 you’d know there is less engagement or the targeting is marginally away from your perfect ICP.
The same goes for accounts. If you want clients who are between 50 and 200 employees, an account who has 49 employees or 201 is still likely a good fit. There are lots of ways targeting like this can let good opportunities pass you by, so we make sure you can still see them but have visibility that they’re not 101% on target. Maybe just 99% in cases like this.
The behind the scenes of this is that job titles, seniority levels and the industry a lead works in decide how good they are as a fit for you. If the decision maker at C level is looking for a solution, this is more significant than a mid level manager looking. So scoring reflects this.
Similarly, the industry a lead works in may mean that they’re not quite the perfect lead. Non profits may not be your perfect customer, but they may still get great value from you. On the flip side, if you see a SaaS decision maker looking for a solution, this may be absolutely perfect for you.
And at an even more granular level, the specific roles you review should reflect scoring. We’ve seen it tons of times, the “VP Marketing” is the perfect buyer. But really, the person we want to talk to is the “Marketing Ops” person, for example. So if the exact, perfect job title’d lead is looking for you, this is reflected by a higher score than other roles would score at.
Trigger
There are lots of different trigger events that intent data captures. Clearly in some use cases, a prospect going to an event might be a huge trigger for one company and not so interesting for another. Scoring can be tweaked based on priority.
But usually a prospect engaging with a competitor is the biggest and best trigger event – worthy of the highest score.
Hiring decision makers and growing the team is also a big trigger event. This is similar to accounts winning funding or opening a new office – you’d know there is funds available and initiatives being worked on that you can tap into.
All of these triggers carry a higher score because they are genuine sales triggers, you could pass this context right to sales. Other trigger events like prospects engaging with
Account insight
Lots of activity happens every day, your intent data provider will capture that. But actions taking place over a number of weeks count for more, there is more intent there if you’re a repeated engager. So, that should be counted for in the scoring.
On the flip side, a brand new lead is engaging with your competitor for the first time, so they’re on the first touch. That’s not as serious as a 15-touch lead. So we’ve built our scoring to reflect how accounts showing more intent count for more than first-timers.
This is especially important when you consider an account could have engaged with your Q4 campaign continuously, but then did not engage again once it finished. Over time, that lead is not as hot as it once was. Scoring should tell you this.
Action
So, what do you do with leads who have particular scores? Not every lead requires immediate Sales follow up. This is difficult to talk about without considering how different one company is to the next, with different Sales team sizes and Marketing functions. Deal sizes will impact how you’ll take and engage these leads, but generally speaking we operate by this guide:
1 to 40 score
These are the leads that usually need more Marketing nurture before Sales should touch them. These leads have lower scores because your data has higher priority contacts you should focus on, which does not mean 1 to 40 score leads are weak or bad.
They need nurture. Share top of funnel, easy to use content with them. Generate opt-in and nurture them through your funnel. Go for cheat sheets and webinars, not whitepapers and case studies. Educate these leads, get them interested in your tone and message over your brand and differentiator. It will pay off later.
41 to 70 score
Depending on your team structure and if Sales is super hungry for leads, you’ll either pass them the 50, 60 and 70 score leads or decide to nurture them all. Again, top of funnel content is best to push in front of these people. You need to be generating opt-in so that they’re warmer for your Sales team. If they opt-in and have a score of 65, the lead is probably ready to be spoken to. They won’t need much more content from here on in.
71 to 100 score
These are the leads Sales wants. Engaging with competitors, totally on target with your ICP and engaging right now. Reach out to them right now. Use great context, you have the timing, now you just need to deliver the right message.
If you want to try out intent data for yourself, try LeadSift Buzz for free. We’ll deliver insights to your inbox when your target accounts are winning funding, creating new content, winning awards and hiring.