1. Future Proof: How to Create a
Lead Scoring Model That Scales
Kylie Alexander | Marketing Automation Manager

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Speaker
Kylie Alexander
Marketing Operations Manager
Adobe

3. Growing your marketing
team can mean
growing pains

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When growth is fast and furious...
New marketers come onboard fast.
• They specialize in different regions,
priorities, products, etc.
• They build one-on-one relationships
with sales.
• They each may have different goals—
and different opinions of how lead-
scoring should work.
When lead scoring isn’t fully coordinated
across your entire organization, problems
can occur.

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Inconsistent data
There is no consistent definition of a qualified
lead. This means:
 You cannot analyze qualified and accepted
leads across your entire organization,
because you’ll be comparing apples to
oranges, pomegranates, etc.
 You can’t find out if your scoring models are
working
 Marketing attribution is a lot more difficult

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Unpredictable results
BDRs and sales reps never know what
they’re going to get.
 The quality of leads offered each BDR
may be wildly different.
 Leads may be allocated based on one-
on-one relationships.
 Lead scores may be manually adjusted
on the fly so marketing and/or sales can
meet short-term targets.

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9. Two years ago, Marketo
faced the very same
challenges

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Marketo Marketing Operations—2018
 We had a small marketing ops team—
one internal employee and a few
contractors.
 The company had onboarded all kinds of
marketers—customer marketers,
demand gen marketers, event
marketers, etc.
 We had a standardized lead-scoring
model set up in our instance of Marketo
Engage, but no formal governance or
process for changing it.

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Our challenges
Things had to change
In some situations, marketers
would manually change system-
generated lead scores to:
 Meet short term goals
 Make lead scores more
accurate for their region or
strategic focus
Occasionally, marketers would tinker
with the companywide lead-scoring
model, which led to:
 Inconsistent lead-scoring data
 Difficulty getting meaningful
reports on marketing
performance

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13. How did we do it?

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We got buy-in from leadership
and stakeholders.
In every region, we talked
to:
 Sales
 Sales operations
 Business development
 Customer success
 Marketing

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It took many iterations, but we got there
We updated regional lead-scoring criteria to be more flexible.
 Lead scoring now relies on three types of scoring, which may be weighted differently
for each region:
1. Behavioral
2. Demographic
3. Ideal customer profile
 We implemented a closed loop process for BDRs to provide feedback on
their leads
 We assembled a governance committee and defined a process for periodically
evaluating and updating our scoring model and responding to questions.

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Then we spread the word
Communicating our new lead-scoring
processes was critical to their acceptance.
So:
 We onboarded everyone—marketers,
BDRs, sales—with formalized training
sessions.
 We made sure everyone knew what to do
when they had questions or concerns
about lead scoring.

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We became...
More effectiveMore agile More knowledgeable

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More agile
 When sales and marketing teams have
questions about lead quality or quantity, our
governance committee addresses them.
 We use data-driven analysis to investigate
potential problems.
 If we find them, we adjust our approach.
– For example, we discovered that leads from
content syndication were being qualified too
early.
– We updated the lead-scoring model, which led
to higher-quality leads.

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More knowledgeable
 With consistent scoring data, we can get
a better understanding of how well our
marketing programs are performing.
 We’re now confident our reports are
accurate, so we use them to make
forward-looking planning decisions.

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More effective
 By continually evolving our lead-scoring
model and using lead scores to inform our
marketing strategies, we set the stage for
rapid growth.
 Even during our acquisition by Adobe, we
were able to keep growing our pipeline.
 The same agile approach is working for us
today.

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