How Pardot Lets You Manage Leads Through Scoring and Grading

Pardot is now called Marketing Cloud Account Engagement. This article was first published in September 2020 and uses the original name.

Pardot offers a system of scoring, grading and measuring leads in the marketing/sales funnel so you can make informed decisions about the quality of a potential lead.

What is Lead Scoring?

Scoring judges the quality of a lead based on signals of intention to buy. It provides hard data from a variety of sources that you may use objectively. Actions like opening an email, clicking call to actions and downloading eBooks etc. have an asset score and those scores are assigned to prospects based on what they do.

What is Lead Grading?

Grading judges the quality of a lead based on their profile and characteristics. Demographic, company size, industry, location, job title, age etc. are the factors that allow you to grade prospects. Combining grading with scoring can weed out, let’s say, a student researcher’s high score from an ideal marketing director’s slightly lower score from less activity.

How do Pardot Scoring and Grading Help Marketers?

The system of scoring and grading in Pardot allows you to examine the data presented to you and make adjustments accordingly. The scoring system is automatic and presents a tangible score. Similarly, the grading system also permits some adjustment and reaction to the output results.

All things being equal, 10 different businesses of different sizes each with a different share of the market (for example, one may be a multinational while the other is a start up with a catchment in the hundreds of miles) can have the same score. However, based on what you understand about their business and the prospect, they could have wildly different grades.

Bigger businesses are not necessarily a guaranteed good customer as your service may not be in line with their needs. The start-up may have the hallmarks of the ideal customer. This allows you to examine the subtle nuances of how you go about judging a lead’s quality.

You can use the grading and scoring system to provide more reliable leads to your sales team. Not only will your marketing team spend less time forwarding poor quality leads, but your sales team can use their judgement to prioritise, including that crucial human element. Users report 9.3% higher sales when moving from an old system of judging the quality of a lead to Pardot’s. In short, it helps both marketing and sales make better decisions.

Want to learn more?

We’re sure you’re interested to learn more about how Pardot lets you manage leads. For that, do keep up with our blog and start utilising that information today! Our informational & introductory write-ups will help you do both, learn the basics of Pardot and how to implement it into your business.

Contact us for a free consultation.