Scoring – Find Out If Your Customer Is Ready to Buy

The scoring system makes it possible to determine a customer’s likelihood of buying at a given time. We implement it in order to be able to predict which customers are currently the most motivated to make purchases. Scoring is a marketing activity, the implementation of which brings visible sales effects and that is why its implementation requires cooperation between the marketing department and sales departments.

So if the position of the company has been already reached on the market and we have a sufficiently large client base, it’s time to improve the sales system. This is when you should think about the implementation of the scoring system.

What is the most important factor in a scoring system?

Besides consumer behavior on the internet and on our websites, we can also take into account their activity in physical stores. How often they shop, how much time they spend there, what kind of products they are interested in, how often they buy and in what amounts – it all contributes to an overall picture of consumer activity. This is all possible due to technology based on beacons.

Before the implementation of the scoring system, you should look at all the data that you have collected so far. The most common purchasing decisions are taken by people that are always opening our emails and spend a lot of time on pages of specific products in our online shop. Or maybe more people are likely to buy that product in stores rather than online, and on the website they spend minimum time required just to make payments when buying online? You should also watch on whether and at what point customer behavior starts to change. Pay attention to behaviors that are common to all shoppers and see how they differ from one customer to another.

The data to be taken into account may vary depending on the type of product or service they relate to, but they always can be divided into two groups:

• Formal data (explicit)—This is mainly demographic data that tells us who our customers are. It includes age, location, marital status, job and earnings. Remember that with omnichannel solutions we can also obtain data from social media and enrich the profile of our customers.
• Implied data (implicit)—Mainly behavioral data like customer behavior on websites, activity associated with mobile applications, product categories purchased online and offline, etc. These criteria give us insight into the preferences and shopping experiences of our clients.
• Scoring can be also be lowered as a result of this data. This can result from things like unsubscribing from a newsletter, activity limited to noncommercial subpages, abandoning shopping carts or student status while our product is a service for corporations.

How to score customer’s behavior?

All criteria (formal or implicit) should be divided into categories according to their relevance and each of them assigned a certain number of points. For example, our division and valuation of criteria might look like this:

• the most important criteria (10 – 15 points),
• very important criteria ( 5 – 9 points),
• valid criteria (1 – 4 points ),
• negative criteria (0 and less).

The bigger the impact a certain factor has on a purchase, the more points it should account for. Moreover, the purchase of different products may be followed by another type of behavior. Therefore, you should think about different scores depending on the product category, even for the same client, and gather as much information as possible – the more you know about the client, the better you can prepare the scoring.

Hot, warm or cold?

A profile of each of our clients will be defined in real time according to two coordinates (formal and implied). It should also establish the number of points divided into two categories, so that we can assign each client to a group of hot, warm and cold leads (or those ready for immediate sale, those requiring support of the decision and others still at the beginning of the purchasing path). 

Scoring in the life of sales teams

In preparing the scoring system, customers should be thoroughly assessed to ensure that the points they are assingned is not misleading for the sales team. For example, a customer who is very active on the website and social media, but had never bought anything because he views a page just out of curiosity is not a solid lead. Generally, the sales department should be interested in customers who have a balanced ratio of formal and implied features.

You should also remember to consider the validity period of the scoring and the fact that the effectiveness of the scoring system is very strongly influenced by the quality of the client base and the number of different pieces of information that it has gathered. Remember to collect customer data from every possible source to make the most informed decisions about crafting the best marketing strategy.

Summary

The most important benefit of scoring clients is shortening the purchasing cycle and increasing the likelihood of conversion. It also gives you the ability to customize marketing to client behavior and prioritize how it operates (hot lead, lead warm, cold lead) at every stage of the purchasing path. Such activities establish a relationship with the client and build commitment, and consequently an increase in its satisfaction with the products and services that you offer.

P.S. Synerise offers all the tools to create an effective scoring system based on omnichannel marketing. Contact us to find out more!