One of the most powerful features of Marketing Cloud Account Engagement is the ability to configure Lead Scoring. For customers using the Plus Edition or higher, Lead Scoring Categories provide even more precision.
Lead Scoring in Account Engagement helps level up your marketing strategy. It measures prospect engagement, captures product interest, and enables targeted segmentation for more effective campaigns. This process not only improves marketing efforts but also ensures better alignment with sales teams.
Lead Scores in Account Engagement are applied to Prospects in two different ways:
- Default Scoring Criteria: Each account includes an out-of-the-box scoring system. This assigns default scores based on standard prospect interactions with Pardot assets like forms, landing pages, and email clicks. You can edit these point values by navigating to Account Engagement Settings → Automation Settings → Scoring.
2. Asset-Specific Scoring: Lead Scores can also be adjusted on individual assets. This is done using Completion Actions on assets like forms or custom redirects. Additionally, Automation Rules can update scores based on specific criteria.
For example:
A form completion may add +50 points by default.
If you set an asset-specific Completion Action adding +25 points, the total score applied when that form is completed is +75 points.
This dual approach allows you to measure prospect engagement more granularly. For instance, downloading a whitepaper might receive fewer points than completing a “Contact Us” form, signaling different levels of intent.
What Are Scoring Categories in Account Engagement?
For Account Engagement Plus editions or higher, you can also leverage Scoring Categories to apply the default Scoring criteria based only on interactions with assets in a specific Account Engagement folder. This is especially relevant for businesses with different products or service lines!
Example: Let’s say we have two Account Engagement Landing Pages, one for Product A and one for Product B. Each Landing Page lives in its own product-specific Account Engagement folder that corresponds to its own Lead Scoring category. If a Prospect views Product B’s Landing Page once, then views Product A’s Landing Page five times, the Scoring Categories would reflect the default score applied to their respective asset:
- Product A Score: 5pts
- Product B Score: 1pt
How Can You Maintain Lead Score Accuracy?
In addition to Scoring Categories, there are some other helpful features to know and leverage in Account Engagement to support your Lead Score strategy:
- Automation Rule for Score Decay: Implement an Automation Rule that decays a Prospect’s score after a period of inactivity to maintain score accuracy and identify re-engagement opportunities.
- Custom Redirect for Email Bot Activity: Some mail servers deploy security settings that protect their users from spam by pre-downloading emails and clicking all links. These bot activities can inaccurately drive up a Prospect’s score and falsely suggest engagement. Deploying a hidden custom redirect in emails can help flag bot activity, and reduce score inflation.
- Page Actions for Score Management: Another way to protect the validity of Lead Scoring is to leverage Page Actions and assign score increases/decreases based on your website’s page traffic. This can be helpful in weeding out unqualified behaviors, like job candidates visiting career pages.
Lead Score is one of Account Engagement’s most popular, yet most underutilized features. Lead Scores allow Marketers to further differentiate Marketing Qualified leads, and drive more personalized Prospect engagement.
Check out these helpful tools to learn more about Account Engagement Lead Scoring:
