5 Ways To Score Leads For Success By Targeting The eLearning Community

Lead Scoring In eLearning: How To Make It Right
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Summary: Lead scoring might remind you a bit of the “pursuit of happiness.” They are both hard to achieve. However, they are important for your well-being, your personal growth, and your sales revenue.

The Importance Of Lead Scoring In eLearning And 5 Steps To Make It Right

Lead scoring should be one of your top priorities. Don’t worry, I’ll share everything there is to know about it. You've seen in the past few chapters just how important lead nurturing is, but there is one key thing to know that hasn't been discussed yet: Not every lead is worth pursuing. Leads are incredibly valuable to your eLearning business, but not all leads are serious prospects. You don't want to have your sales team devote time and effort to all leads. Especially those who aren't going to develop real, fruitful customer relationships.

Instead, you want sales to pay special attention to the marketing qualified leads (MQLs) in your sales funnel [16]. Taking this approach lets your sales team nurture only the leads who are truly interested in the product or service you have to offer. Not those who are only mildly interested. How do you determine which of your leads are the most qualified? Start lead scoring [17].

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What Is Lead Scoring? (What It Means For eLearning Marketers)

To score your leads, you'll assign them values or points. Usually, these scores are in number form and can be based on multiple attributes, from the professional information they submitted in your online form to their credentials to how they interact with you online. There are several lead scoring tools you can use to achieve this. I’ll share more insights on that in the following chapters. But let’s first get the general idea of what you need to do. Keep reading!

Lead scoring allows you and your sales team to best respond to leads and prioritize which to nurture. The above can help your eLearning brand grow the number of leads that become customers. To get started, you'll need to find the model or system of lead scoring that works best for your company.

How To Score Leads In The eLearning Niche

Begin by identifying what the leads who became customers have in common [17]. You have to check what the leads who didn't become customers have in common as well. That'll help you build a foundation for what you do and don't want in the most qualified candidates.

Here are 5 ways to assign lead scores to get you started:

1. Demographics

Some companies use demographic information to see whether leads are qualified and worth pursuing relationships with. If you're marketing to people who primarily live in one geographic location, for example, you'd want to make sure your leads are in that area and check that box. You can use a form on your website to ask people about their demographics and then use that data to ensure your MQLs are in your target audience. A lead scoring excel file will be useful to you if you don’t already have a lead scoring tool.

2. Online Interactions

You can also qualify leads based on their online behavior. A great place to start with this model is to go back and look at which offers your current customers downloaded. Make sure to check how many they downloaded. You also need to know which pages they viewed and engaged with on your site before they became a customer. Then, you can start to qualify leads based on how they engage with your eLearning business’s website. Also, use leads' online behavior to see which might not be worth pursuing anymore. If some time has passed since a lead interacted with you online, you might mark that lead as less qualified. It is good to note here that your content marketing campaigns can increase traffic to your site. The strategy you follow and what you need to achieve is of utmost importance for lead scoring as well.

3. Emails

Scoring leads based on how they engage with your emails is also a great tactic. See which leads are opening your emails—and, better yet, which are clicking through to your website. Using this approach lets you get an idea of how interested leads are in the messages you're sending them. Once you know this, you can give higher scores to those who appear the most engaged with your email interactions. Also, this lead scoring tip will help you understand what kind of topics interest them most. The above will help optimize your content marketing efforts. If you want to get more insights, make sure to read eLearning Industry's Complete Lead Nurturing Guide for eLearning Companies.

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4. Organization Information

You might be looking for specific types of businesses to work with. Whether the leads you consider the most qualified are B2B organizations or B2C, you can assign scores accordingly. You have to figure out which kind of leads are most relevant to you and your business goals. Give points or deduct points based on the type of organization, it's a good way to see how well your leads fit into your target audience. Some eLearning companies find B2B lead scoring to be more effective. It all depends on the kind of service you provide but also on your ideal buyer personas.

5. Spam

Sometimes, you might find leads that make you suspicious of spam. Occasionally, a lead will fill out a form on your website and not capitalize on his or her name or company name. Also, look out for email addresses. If your MQLs are businesses and you get lead forms with personal Yahoo email addresses attached, that might be a sign that the lead is neither qualified nor real. In order to avoid getting such leads, it might be better to ask for your leads’ business emails when they complete your contact form.

While nurturing leads is one of the most important parts of your marketing strategy, take the time to identify which leads are the most qualified. By doing this you’ll help your team spend time on the leads who matter most. One thing is certain, you’ll need to follow the right steps to create an effective lead scoring system. If you practice lead scoring and devote effort to nurturing the leads with the best results, you'll form better relationships. As time progresses, more customers will come from it for a real purchase.

Lead scoring is vital because it will help your sales force spend time and effort wisely. Focus on reaching out to eLearning prospects that count. When you approach qualified leads, you get bigger opportunities for them to convert. If you waste your sales reps’ time with leads that have fewer chances of converting, you hurt your business. Now is the time to start pursuing high-quality leads. Taking this step will increase sales productivity. In the long run, it can guarantee a better ROI for your eLearning brand.

[16] How to Build and Maintain Lead Nurturing Systems for Your Business

[17] Lead Scoring 101: How to Use Data to Calculate a Basic Lead Score

Originally published on May 7, 2020
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