What's Next In Lead Scoring?

2007 was a big year for many B2B marketers, as they developed processes and adopted automation that would score leads for their sales readiness and then distribute only the most qualified to sales while nurturing the remaining leads with marketing messaging until they were ready to buy. Prior to this year, most marketers relied on explicit data such as budget, authority, need and timeline to evaluate leads. This year, thanks to web and email tracking software, they were able to look at behavior data for the first time and add it to the mix to get a better understanding of their leads. Next year, leading marketers will adopt profiles and personas as part of their scores. In other words, an individual can be a partner, customer, and vendor all at the same time, or they can buy multiple products. How they are scored in one arena will not be the same as how they are scored in another. CRM systems will move from having a one-size-fits-all score per contact or account to a series of fields that represent the complexity and multiple dimensions of companies and people. It could look something like this:

Name: Category: Score:
Jane Doe Product A 92 - Hot
Product B 75 - Cold
Partner 85 - Warm

Personas will become more mainstream in targeting and messaging and marketers use today’s Web 2.0 mediums to personalize their messaging and market one-to-one. Lead Scoring, and subsequently Lead Nurturing/Incubation will also migrate to support this approach.