As marketers, we are curious to know when a lead will qualify. Thanks to modern marketing technology, we can actually track leads and assign scores to their actions to understand when they will qualify. This is commonly referred to as lead scoring. But to have a better understanding of lead scoring, we need to be aware of the positive and negative parameters of lead scoring.
In the previous article, we discussed the 10 positive lead scoring parameters to identify hot prospects.
While we have already discussed the positive lead scoring parameters, here we will talk about the negative lead scoring parameters. These parameters will help you eliminate cold leads from your lead bucket. It will help you save on time and resources that you would be otherwise wasted on unnecessary leads.
- Generic Email Addresses Provided in Signup Forms
Opt-in forms are a great way of receiving information in exchange for some free resource or even a free trial. Often people provide false information in order to get access to that resource. It is understandable, and we often do that ourselves to access some information vital to us. Yet we do not want to know anything about that company or receive any emails.
Generic email addresses are more often than not fake, and most people provide it because they are not interested in your brand. Keep these addresses out of your contact lists, and you will be saving a lot of resources. Always look out for leads with work emails if you are a B2B marketer.
2. Very Short Duration of Visit
Similar to our previous point, maybe someone has come to your website with a specific intent in mind. Maybe they want to download a resource or check a price just to be sure. That’s it. This will be the first and last time they will ever visit your site. But since you asked them to provide a name and email address, now they have become part of your database.
These are leads that will never qualify, simply because they are not interested in your brand or your product. Your lead scoring parameters should have a threshold negative lead scoring parameter for lead qualification.
3. No Visible Revisit History
A continuation of the previous parameter, if a so-called lead only visited your website once and then you have not come across any revisits in a considerable amount of time, maybe you should remove that lead from your active database. Cold leads like these are often a waste of time.
4. Email Opens
Email open rates are crucial to your marketing campaigns. Just like opening an email would automatically translate into a higher lead score, not opening emails would indicate an uninterested lead. These leads are probably receiving the emails because they signed up via the opt-in form.
However, if a large number of your leads are not opening your emails, then maybe it is time to rehash your email marketing strategy.
5. Lead has Spent a Lot of Time on the "Careers" Section
A lead whose activity reveals that they spend time on the “careers” section of your website would mean that they are not interested in purchasing anything from you. They probably like your brand and want to work with you. So, it makes no sense to spend time and resources to nurture these leads for Sales.
6. Designation Doesn't Suit the Decision Maker Profile
Sometimes, you will come across leads whose job profile might strike to be unusual. The designation that they have provided, does not sit well with the profile of the decision-maker profile.
In other words, this is a lead that will probably have little or no effect on the purchasing decisions of a company. Such a lead will not be able to make the ultimate decision, and hence it might be difficult to convert them.
7. Location
We do not need to tell you this but location should be an integral parameter of any lead scoring strategy. It helps you filter out leads who are in countries beyond your service’s reach. These leads are unserviceable at the moment and there is no point in nurturing them if you cannot really help them out in the long run.
Maybe you can consider reestablishing contact once you extend your service to their countries.
8. Competition
Everyone does this. In order to gain insights about your competitor, you sign-up on their website. You become part of their contact database and receive all sorts of communication from them. However, the same can and will happen to you.
Competitors will want to keep a tab on you to wipe out leads that come from your competitors’ domain.
9. Industry
When you create a field in an opt-in form, do not forget to ask for the industry. The lead may be from an industry you don't cater e.g. Defense, Government, NGO, Healthcare, etc. This helps you score your leads better and weed out unnecessary ones.
10. Repeat Sign Ups
There will always be these leads who will keep requesting demos time and again. But then at the end of the day, they will not buy from you. They will keep on doing this and waste your resources. Such leads usually turn out to be nothing but a waste of time.
An SDR can qualify or disqualify such leads based on past and current interactions. Of course, the purchase requirements change over time and your SDR can just help understand that.
All these points are important negative lead scoring parameters that help you focus on the right leads. There is no point wasting time and trying to convince a lead that does not want to do anything with you.
Configure these negative lead scoring parameters into your marketing automation system and witness improvement in conversion rates for yourself. We hope that this will ultimately help you be a better marketer in the long run!
Also read: 10 Positive Lead Scoring Parameters to Identify Hot Prospects