Nothing allows marketers to keep their finger on the pulse of how customers and prospects are interacting with their brand and messaging more than an effective lead scoring program. With that in mind many still struggle to turn this numerical data specific to individual records into actionable intelligence across their database. This Fresh Data White Paper from Data Services, Inc. will provide insights into how marketers can more effectively leverage the data coming from their multi-channel lead scoring programs and turn this intelligence into more data-driven campaigns. The Basics: What is Lead Scoring? At its most basic level, the term ‘lead scoring’ is a methodology used by marketers in order to quantify the level of individual customer/prospect engagement with their brand. This engagement could be any action from opening an email to purchasing a product or attending a webinar, and the quantifiable element, a.k.a. the numerical score, assigned to each can be customized based on the importance placed on that action. Planning a Lead Scoring Program Crafting an effective plan is always of paramount importance when getting started with lead scoring. Here are some basic questions that must be considered: 1) What specific behavioral, transactional and/or other actions should be quantified? 2) How will each of these actions be numerically weighed? 3) Do actions carry different importance for different divisions/groups within the organization? 4) What accumulation of numerical score points should trigger a response or other action? 5) Based on the score, or action that triggered it, how will the response manifest itself? Lead Scoring Implementation 101 The most common, and easiest to manage, type of lead scoring program involves tracking response to an email marketing program. For marketers new to lead scoring, assigning scaled points to email metrics such as opens, clicks and, if possible, subsequent website behavior is a great place to start. In this scenario, an effective lead scoring program can, over time, reveal the most and least engaged segments within your email database. Yielding both your the most ‘sales-ready’ leads as well as those chronic non-responders that either require a different approach or should simply be removed from future programs in order to help improve email deliverability metrics. Lead Scoring Implementation 201 For those ready to go beyond basic email scoring, the inclusion of additional metrics into a scoring profile will only expand your ability to reach for that 360 degree view to which all marketers aspire. These additional metrics are going to depend on your business model, but could take things such as website analytics (for those using marketing automation), online display advertising interaction, online transactional history or shopping cart data (for eCommerce retailers), point-of-sale information (for brick-and-mortar retailers), webinar or offline event attendance, online content...