Automation Example: Lead Scoring Based on an Email Nurture Series

Details

If you'd like to automatically score contacts based on their email engagement (such as opens, link clicks, unsubscribe activity, etc), you can create an advanced automation to do so.

Some example use cases could be:

• Adjust a lead score based on a prospect engaging (or not engaging) with a series of nurture emails
• Rate the health of dormant contacts over time based on a series of re-engagement emails, with a view to removing contacts that still don't engage

What This Example Will Cover

In this automation example, we'll be building a workflow that adjusts a contacts lead score based on the actions they take from a lead nurture series, which consists of three emails sent over time for a recipe club.

You could then, optionally, combine this with our Internal Notification automation example to inform certain staff members once the lead score exceeds, or drops below, a specific value.

This example will use a combination of email opens, link clicks and unsubscribe actions to adjust the score up and down. As you can see from the example below, the email also contains a link to join the VIP club - while other emails in the series (not shown) include links to the online store. We'll use these actions to increase the lead score.

Creating and using a lead score matrix can assist you when it comes to building out the automation steps. Here's the one we'll be using for our example;

How-to Guide

Our automations track link clicks on a per-email basis. As such, if you add new emails to a nurture series, you will need to add these emails into your lead scoring automation too. Additionally, if you wish to monitor multiple links (for clicks) per email, you'll need one automation step for each link.

Before you begin, you'll need to have the emails (that you wish to use in your scoring) built and ready to go, with the various links inserted. You should also have an idea of how you'd like your scoring to work & what the values should be.

Part 1: Add a New Field To Store the Lead Score

1. Select Lists and Forms from the sidebar.
2. Your lists will be shown. Locate the list you'd like to work with, and double-click on it to open it into Forms view.
3. On the right hand side, you'll see a list of current fields. Click Add New Fields.
4. Select the Number field type and give the field a name. For example, 'Lead score'.
5. Change the Content Type to Normal.
6. When finished, click Save.
7. By default, the field you just created will appear on the form you were editing. To remove it from the form, click the eye icon next to the field name on the right hand side, as shown.
   
8. Click Save to close the form editor.

Part 2: Setting up the Automation (for the Email Opens)

Let's configure the automation steps for tracking email opens...

1. Select Automation from the sidebar.
2. Select the Advanced Automation tab.
3. Click New Workflow.
4. Give the workflow a name and click Save.
5. Click New Step.
6. In the first section, set the action as The following message being sent and select the folder that contains the first email you wish to monitor. In our case, it's the first email in our Recipe Club eBook series.
7. Also in this first section, select your folder and list.
   
8. In the second section, set the trigger as Open. This is because we want to monitor this email for opens.
   
9. In the third section, ensure all options here are unticked. However, in the Change the following value(s) in the Contact record area, click Add/Edit. A popup dialog will open.
10. In the first dropdown, select your newly-created Lead score field.
11. In the second dropdown, select increment by.
12. In the third field, enter the value to increment the lead score by. In our case (referring to the table above), '1'.
13. Click OK.
    
14. In the fourth section, configure the timing of when to apply the score change. In most cases, you'll probably want to set this to Immediately.
15. Click Save. You will now be taken back to the main screen for the automation you're building.
16. Repeat steps 5-15 for any other emails you want to monitor for opens. In the case of our example, we have three emails in total - so we'd be repeating all of these steps two more times.
17. Back on the main screen for the automation, you can also rename the steps if you wish. Here's what we have so far, in the case of our example:
    

Part 3: Setting up the Automation (for Link Clicks Inside the Emails)

Next we'll configure the automation steps for monitoring clicks to read the various eBooks...

1. Click New Step.
2. In the first section, set the action as The following message being sent and select the folder that contains the first email you wish to monitor. In our case, it's the first email in our Recipe Club eBook series.
3. Also in this first section, select your folder and list.
4. In the second section, select the trigger as Link Click, then use the dropdown underneath to select the link you'd like to monitor for clicks. 
5. In the third section, ensure all options here are unticked. However, in the Change the following value(s) in the Contact record area, click Add/Edit. A popup dialog will open.
6. In the first dropdown, select your newly-created Lead score field.
7. In the second dropdown, select increment by.
8. In the third field, enter the value to increment the lead score by. In our case (referring to the table above), '3'.
9. Click OK.
10. In the fourth section, configure the timing of when to apply the score change. In most cases, you'll probably want to set this to Immediately.
11. Click Save. You will now be taken back to the main screen for the automation you're building.
12. Repeat steps 1-11 for any other email link clicks you wish to monitor. In the case of our example, we have more emails to monitor - and a different set of links to score more highly, so we'd repeat these steps a few more times! 
13. Back on the main screen for the automation, you can also rename the steps if you wish. Here's what we have so far, in the case of our example (note this includes all of the steps in this guide so far):
    

Part 4: Setting up the Automation (for Unsubscribes)

Next we'll configure the automation step to look for the unsubscribe action. Upon taking place, we'll set the lead score to 0...

1. Click New Step.
2. In the first section, set the action as A trigger against the following list and select the list you'd like to monitor for unsubscribes.
3. In the second section, select the trigger as Unsubscribe.
4. In the third section, ensure all options here are unticked. However, in the Change the following value(s) in the Contact record area, click Add/Edit. A popup dialog will open.
5. In the first dropdown, select your newly-created Lead score field.
6. In the second dropdown, select set to.
7. In the third field, enter the value to set the lead score to. In our case (referring to the table above), '0'.
8. Click OK.
9. In the fourth section, configure the timing of when to apply the score change. In most cases, you'll probably want to set this to Immediately.
10. Click Save. You will now be taken back to the main screen for the automation you're building.
11. Click Save.

Part 5: Activate Your Automation

1. Select Automation from the sidebar.
2. Select the Advanced Automation tab.
3. Finally, click the ellipsis (...) next to the automation and choose Activate.