How AI can Fix your Crap Lead Scoring Model

I'm not a massive fan of traditional lead scoring. Its arbitrary and overly simplistic nature leaves a lot to be desired, however a lot of its crucial flaws can be fixed with AI.

Now, before we all drop off to sleep to another marketing tech person jumping on the AI bandwagon, let's quickly recap. AI. Artificial Intelligence. What is it? For our purposes right now, it's essentially a thing that makes other things smart. Think of Siri and Alexa and all those other somewhat creepy pieces of technology that are now constantly listening to us and learning what we do. Or better yet, think of your lead scoring model. Your lead scoring, on its own? Crap. With AI? Smart. Broadly, it's the concept around stuff being able to carry out tasks in a more intelligent way.

So how is your lead scoring becoming so smart all of a sudden? AI can be used to take all that sales and marketing data you have, look at it with all your previous won and lost opportunities, and intelligently tell you what your lead scoring model should be, not the other way around. This sounds great right! But wait, there's more. With Machine Learning, your new smart lead scoring model can look at the results of the leads passed over to sales and update itself to be more accurate, spotting patterns that would normally be missed by the human eye. The days of arguing the merits of three points instead of four points are behind you.

AI can intelligently tell you what your lead scoring model should be, not the other way around

Now instead of providing leads to sales with a vague and ultimately meaningless number, you can send them leads with a percentage of how likely they are to turn into a won opportunity. And that number is backed up by hard data and facts, not crap. 

This is all sounds really great for sales, but what about marketing? AI predictive lead scoring allows marketing teams to be more agile, more efficient and more competitive. How? Imagine a world where you can launch a campaign, or test a new tactic, and see exactly how and where it effects pipeline as people engage with it. Not in 3 month's time at the end of the buying cycle, but an hour ago.

When you can see exactly how your marketing activity is affecting pipeline, you can start optimising communication and engagement right across the funnel, recognising the content that has the most valuable engagement and making sure that it is always received at the optimum time in the optimum format. 

On top of this, marketing budget can be spent far more efficiently, and investments can be clearly justified. It's a lot easier to get sign off for more budget when you can tell your boss that by doing so conversion rates will increase by 200% and propensity for sales conversion will up to 90%, and we know this because of X, Y and Z. That's a lot more powerful than "Please give me more money I have an idea and I really think it will work this time"

Marketing teams are finite resources, who are being expected to know more and do more every day, while marketing budgets remain constant. When it comes to being successful we need to make sure our tech is working the hardest for us, so we know definitively that the decisions we're making are the right ones and that our marketing budget is going to the best place.

The question is, do you want your marketing team to be smart? Or do you want them to be crap?

Key Takeaways 

• If you're not already lead scoring, jump straight into predictive
• If you are already scoring, it's time to start making those scores mean something