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Podium Announces Partnership with Kia Motors America, Inc. in their Social Media & Reputation Management Program

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August 28, 2019

Podium Announces Partnership with Kia Motors America, Inc. in their Social Media & Reputation Management Program

Podium is included as a part of a wider effort to help Kia dealerships improve their online presence and enhance the overall customer experience

Podium, the leading customer interaction management platform for local businesses, announces a strategic partnership with Kia Motors America (KMA) as one of their preferred providers in their Social Media & Reputation Management (SMRM) program for their dealers across the United States. This partnership will allow dealers the ability to integrate their dealership’s customer data with Podium’s unique messaging and online review products.

“How our dealerships are found and seen online continues to be an important factor for customers during their buying process,” said Barb Bertram, Digital Sales Manager for Kia Motors America. “80% of consumers will avoid a business with bad reviews and 59% say dealership reputation was the most important factor when choosing which dealership to visit. Thanks to this partnership with Podium, our dealers can use and automate their data to improve customer interaction and make it easier than ever for our dealerships to be found. We are proud that this partnership with Podium allows Kia dealerships to be at the forefront of improving the dealership experience.”

In using Podium’s platform and online review invitations, customers who have recently purchased a Kia vehicle are sent an invitation to review the dealership via text within minutes, when reviews are most accurate and likely to be acted on. This integration will save dealers time as well as increasing the number and quality of their online reviews of their dealership on Google, Facebook, and other key sites customers use when deciding where to find their next vehicle. As a part of Kia’s SMRM program, Podium is 100% DAS eligible. Roughly 25% of Kia dealerships in the United States have utilized this partnership and have used it to triple the amount of reviews they receive on a monthly basis. These dealerships have also improved their star rating on Google reviews by nearly half a star as a result.

“Kia is one of the leading OEM manufacturers working to improve the customer interaction experience in the automotive industry,” said Ross Tinkham, VP of Automotive Sales at Podium. “In adding Podium’s powerful online review and two-way messaging products to their SMRM program, we are confident this will supercharge their dealerships’ competitive advantage in bringing in new customers and keeping them Kia owners for life.”

ThoughtSpot Raises $248 Million at $1.95 Billion Valuation to Transform Enterprises with Search & AI-Driven Analytics

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August 28, 2019

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ThoughtSpot Raises $248 Million at $1.95 Billion Valuation to Transform Enterprises with Search & AI-Driven Analytics

ThoughtSpot growth accelerates as company approaches $100 Million run-rate, driven by 100% software subscriptions and multi-cloud deployments

The analytics industry is in the midst of a massive generational shift. The last comparable shift started in 1997, when Tableau was born as a Stanford PhD project by one of its founders. The data visualization technology pioneered by Tableau and Qlik was nothing short of revolutionary. Twenty one years later, in 2019, the productivity gains provided by data visualization has hit a plateau, while the technology itself has been commoditized by the likes of PowerBI. As innovations like cloud, mobile, and IoT make the world more software-driven, every industry is being transformed, and enterprises are demanding more. It’s time analytics software evolved to meet the needs of modern businesses, who can no longer depend on weekly dashboards to compete in a digital world.

To help enterprises compete in this new world, ThoughtSpot announced it has closed $248M in funding at a valuation of $1.95 Billion in an oversubscribed round, bringing the company’s total funding to $554M. New investors Silver Lake Waterman, Silver Lake’s late-stage growth capital fund and Fidelity Investments Canada ULC, joined existing backers Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sapphire Ventures, and Geodesic Capital in this round of funding.

With the new funding, ThoughtSpot will continue to invest in its go-to-market teams in North America, EMEA, and APAC to meet growing demand, expand R&D efforts, including hiring for its engineering and product teams, and invest in customer and thought leadership events, like the company’s annual customer conference Beyond 2019. Passionate builders are encouraged to check out and apply for open positions at the company.

“When I see the work our customers like Walmart, BT, and Daimler are doing with ThoughtSpot to transform their critical functions like supply chain or customer service, I’m incredibly inspired, but I also realize how much unlocked potential remains when it comes to data-driven insights,” said Sudheesh Nair, CEO, ThoughtSpot. “The world is changing fast, and businesses that change faster will thrive. As technology partners to our customers, we have only one job: provide the agility that’s like oxygen to these organizations so they can compete and win.”

“Seven years ago, we started ThoughtSpot to help create a more fact-driven world, whether in the boardroom or on the front lines of enterprises, by making data and insights available instantly to everyone, regardless of their technical skills,” said Ajeet Singh, Executive Chairman & Cofounder, ThoughtSpot. “We’ve been fortunate enough to have some of the most visionary customers supporting our mission since our inception. While today’s announcement is certainly a major milestone, we know we’re only 2% done in achieving our goals on behalf of our customers. We will not rest on our laurels and will continue to bring fundamental innovation to the market, because that is who we are.”

Charting the Future with AI-Driven Analytics

As technology redefines every industry, enterprises know they need to arm decision makers throughout their organizations with smarter insights in order to compete and grow their businesses in the digital era. This has made analytics one of the hottest areas in technology. Despite this investment, many enterprises have failed to digitally transform, shackled by tools predicated on data visualization. These tools have been too complex for anyone but the most sophisticated data professional to use. For even these technical professionals, existing data visualization technology couldn’t handle the massive – and growing – data volumes characterizing our modern world.

ThoughtSpot was built from the ground up to break this bottleneck, allowing enterprises to truly reap the benefits of their cloud, IoT, and big data efforts by turning data into insights at scale. Anyone who can use Google can find insights using a simple search to make data-driven decisions in seconds. The system takes this further by using AI and machine learning to automatically find and deliver insights to users they didn’t even know to look for. All of this happens in seconds, across billions of rows of data, with ThoughtSpot’s in-memory calculation engine. As a result, enterprises achieve the agility they need to delight their customers, identify new revenue opportunities, and drive the bottom line.

“The retail landscape is evolving at a dizzying pace. The only way to keep up is to leverage our data in new, innovative ways to improve our operations, delight customers, and transform our business,” said Pravin Rangachari, VP of Planning, at Haggar Clothing Co. “ThoughtSpot gives us granular levels of insight into our merchandising data to help manage online and store inventory at a speed and scale to match the demand of the modern day retail shopper. I’m excited to see how their Search & AI capabilities will accelerate with the new funding to bring even more value to enterprises like ours.”

Read More: Javelin Agency Names Tina Posey CEO

A Record Breaking Year

The funding comes on the heels of a year of record growth for ThoughtSpot across all facets of the company, which includes

Growth Among Global Enterprises: More than half of the Fortune 10 and companies like Walmart, Hulu, Daimler, 7Eleven, PetCo, and Rolls Royce have become ThoughtSpot customers. The company also has an average sale price of $250k, contributing to sales growing 195% in the first half of the fiscal year as the company approaches $100M run-rate.
Expanding the Global Footprint: Since it’s Series D funding, ThoughtSpot has opened new offices in Singapore, Tokyo, Dusseldorf, and invested $25M in it’s office in Bangalore, India.
Attracting the Right Talent: in the last year, ThoughtSpot has grown employee count by more than 65% to nearly 500 employees. This includes several new executive hires, such as CEO Sudheesh Nair, Chief Data Strategy Officer Cindi Howson, SVP of Products Raja Mukhopadhyay, SVP of World Wide Sales Brian McCarthy, SVP of Business Operations David Freeman, VP of Public Sector Monica McEwen, VP of People Operations Marta Molina Paul, VP of Channels & Alliances Toni Adams, and VP of EMEA operations Spencer Tuttle
Building the Analytics Ecosystem. ThoughtSpot has announced partnerships with innovative companies like Google Cloud Platform, Snowflake, Dell, DataRobot, Alteryx, and Carahsoft to help customers tackle challenges across the data pipeline.
Recognition as a Market Leader. ThoughtSpot was named the first new leader in six years in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Analytics & BI Platforms, a technology pioneer by the World Economic Forum, one of the 100 most important cloud companies by Forbes, and one of the 50 best cloud companies to work for by Glassdoor and Bessemer Ventures.

Certain funds managed by Fidelity Investments Canada ULC

Undertone Names Daniel Aks as President

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August 28, 2019

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Proven leader with broad managerial expertise steps down from Perion’s Board and assumes leadership role with Undertone to boost its cross-platform Synchronized Digital Branding

Perion Network Ltd. a global technology company that delivers Synchronized Digital Branding solutions across the three main pillars of digital advertising – Ad Search, Social media and Display / Video, announced the appointment of Dan Aks as President of Undertone starting on September 16, 2019. Dan has stepped down from the board of directors of Perion, effective as of August 26, 2019.

Dan’s C-level career is marked by an impressive and demonstrated ability to drive success in digital businesses with complex supply and demand dynamics, and that depend on the integration of data, sales, operations and product to achieve ideal market fit and dramatically accelerate business trajectories.

His wealth of management experience includes CEO of Antenna Audio Inc, COO/Chief of Staff at McGraw Education, where the strategy, information technology, business development and public relations teams reported to him. Dan also served as COO for PRIMEDIA Consumer Magazines, where – as President of their Internet business unit – he led the successful digital transformation of this $1.5B magazine publisher.

Dan has a successful track record from his time as a partner at Booz, Allen & Hamilton, Inc. (BA&H), a highly successful consulting firm that works with information, media, entertainment, telecommunications, and technology companies. Prior to BA&H, Dan was a manufacturing and industrial engineer with IBM Corporation.

Mr. Aks commented, “Doron and his team have done a tremendous job of turning the company around financially while simultaneously investing in its Synchronized Digital Branding platform, which is truly differentiated in the marketplace. This platform is gaining traction with brands and agencies every day, making this a pivotal time in Undertone’s development.”

“With his vast knowledge of media, Dan was a key contributor to Undertone’s new strategic direction” said Doron Gerstel, CEO of Perion. “I am thrilled Dan is taking on the role of president and will foster Undertone’s transition to offering a holistic solution. I have confidence that his talent, skills and leadership abilities will help us meet and exceed our aggressive growth plans.”

Eyal Kaplan, Perion’s Chairman of the Board, commented, “Dan was an insightful board member whose background, wisdom and deep knowledge of Perion’s business and long-term goals will be tremendously valuable in his next role as president of Undertone.”

Dan holds both a Bachelor of Science degree in Manufacturing/Industrial Engineering and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Administration from Rutgers University and received his MBA from Harvard Business School.

Experian Makes Strategic Investment In PlaceIQ’s Location Intelligence Products and Capabilities

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August 28, 2019

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Experian Makes Strategic Investment In PlaceIQ’s Location Intelligence Products and Capabilities

PlaceIQ’s Location Intelligence Products and Capabilities Become Complementary Elements for Key Initiatives Across Experian’s Marketing Division

PlaceIQ, the company building a new model of consumer behavior with location data, announced a comprehensive strategic partnership with Experian, which includes a financial investment from the global information services company. This investment represents a growth round of financing for PlaceIQ, enabling the company to continue its strong forward market momentum by scaling its data operations, meeting increasing product demand, and supporting future innovation.

Under the agreement, PlaceIQ’s flagship compiled data product, LandMark, will be incorporated into Experian’s suite of data activation and measurement products and services. The combined capabilities open the door for brands and agencies to better measure the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and create more relevant messages that resonate with customers.

“Today’s announcement is a moment of tremendous pride for me as a founder, and for our talented team,” said Duncan McCall, CEO, PlaceIQ. “At the inception of our company, we set out to build the best, most accurate view of behaviors in the physical world from location data—with the intention of equipping the most sophisticated organizations on the planet to harness this powerful data set to deliver optimized marketing communications and create an improved customer experience. In a year when we have deliberately pursued a data-only strategy for our business, we’ve been selected for a pivotal partnership with one of the most respected data companies in the industry for their next-generation omnichannel offerings. It is not only an extraordinary honor, but also a rewarding validation of our chosen course.”

PlaceIQ’s LandMark leverages foot traffic patterns to provide a real-world view of the customer journey and can connect with multiple marketing touchpoints to create a truly integrated approach. Combined with Experian’s suite of marketing products and solutions, LandMark will help brands and agencies to build effective audiences, activate campaigns across channels and more accurately measure campaign success.

“Customer behavior has evolved significantly over the years. People interact with brands through a variety of digital touchpoints—whether it’s mobile, social media or video,” said Kevin Dean, President of Marketing Services, Experian. “With the mindset that consumers need to be at the heart of every marketing strategy, brands and agencies need to find ways to reach them and deliver more relevant messages. We believe quality data and advanced technology underpin that entire approach, and our collaboration and investment with PlaceIQ reinforce our commitment to helping brands meet that expectation.”

Enjoy E-Commerce Platform Expands to UK Backed by New Funding

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August 28, 2019

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Enjoy E-Commerce Platform Expands to UK Backed by New Funding

Enjoy Inc. announced that it has secured a significant investment from LCH Partners (“LCH”), L Catterton’s new consumer technology platform. This Series C growth round brings the total investment in Enjoy, which launched in May 2015, to more than $350 million. Other previous investors include Riverwood Capital, Stamos Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Highland Capital, and Oak Capital Management. The capital raise will be used to accelerate innovation and international growth. The Company is also announcing today that it will serve over 80% of UK households in 2020 with Enjoy Partner, EE, a British mobile network operator and part of British Telecom Group.

Enjoy has pioneered a new channel for premiere companies – the on-demand Mobile Store. The mobile retail platform pairs the convenience of online commerce with the confidence of a physical store, by delivering the on-demand store to the customer’s home with a trained Expert. Enjoy has established tightly integrated, strategic partnerships with leading providers such as AT&T, EE, Google, and Sonos. With each of these partner companies, Enjoy is a feature that customers can select at checkout and is fully integrated with retail locations and call centers. The customers who purchase products with an Enjoy Partner can elect to have expert delivery and setup, often the same day, free of charge with the ability to purchase additional product solutions, just as they would in a physical store.

“One of the highlights of my retail career was creating a new channel for Apple customers, which was the Apple Retail Store,” said Ron Johnson, CEO and Co-Founder of Enjoy. “Now I get to do it again by creating the mobile retail store for not just one company, but for many great companies around the world. As we look to drive the next phase of our growth, L Catterton was a natural choice as our partner, given their expertise in building consumer and technology brands on a global scale.”

“By extending the retail experience to the customer’s home with a team of on-the-go, full time employee experts, Enjoy has a tremendous opportunity within the evolving, connected, and increasingly personalized retail landscape,” said Michael Chu, Global Co-CEO of L Catterton. “Ron and the Enjoy team have built an incredible next generation retail format, positioned to capture the generational shift in purchases toward digital orders and home delivery. We look forward to supporting Enjoy as they build on their vision to bring more products to life on-demand for more consumers around the world.”

With the expansion plans announced today, Enjoy now operates in more than 54 US markets, covering more than 50% of the US population, and will be available in 11 markets in the UK, covering more than 60% of the UK population, by the end of 2019. In 2020, Enjoy will be available to 80% of the UK population. Plans are also underway to expand to one more country this year and additional countries in 2020.

“At EE we’re always working to provide our customers the best, most personal, and local service to match the UK’s biggest and fastest mobile network,” said Marc Allera, CEO of BT’s Consumer Division. “By partnering with Enjoy, we’re able to offer our customers a unique superfast, super-flexible, personal delivery service, complete with on-the-spot expert set-up – ensuring they get the best smartphone experience, and we’re now making this available to even more customers across the UK.”

LCH is L Catterton’s seventh fund strategy, and invests in fast growing companies at the intersection of consumer and technology. As part of more than 200 investments in leading consumer brands over the past 30 years, L Catterton has significant experience investing globally in leading consumer technology companies including Peloton, ThirdLove, Vroom, and Cellular Line.

Ksquare Announces Partnership with FinancialForce

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August 28, 2019

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Ksquare Announces Partnership with FinancialForce

Implementation Partnership To Help Boost Customer Success in the Professional Services Economy

Ksquare formally announces its partnership with FinancialForce, bringing Salesforce development and implementation support to FinancialForce’s leading Professional Services Automation (PSA) and ERP solutions.

The partnership will offer enhanced customer-centricity to professional services teams and service organizations, allowing these companies to streamline data and gain real-time visibility across sales, delivery, and financial teams. Ksquare’s extensive experience with the Salesforce Platform, coupled with FinancialForce’s PSA solution, provides an end-to-end solution tailored to individual customer needs.

According to Dirgesh Patel, CEO of Salesforce Business at Ksquare, “Partnering with FinancialForce was a natural complement to our Salesforce professional services division. We are both committed to ensuring professional services companies have the best solutions and support to help them compete effectively as everything-as-a-service models continue to evolve.”

Jeff Edwards, Vice President – Global Channels at FinancialForce added, “FinancialForce has a long-standing commitment to System Integrators (SIs), who provide the majority of our services work. Ksquare is a critical new partner in helping us expand our capabilities and deliver an outstanding customer experience.”

Ksquare has successfully delivered over 300 Salesforce projects, worked with more than 120 customers, and is a registered Salesforce partner. In partnering with FinancialForce, Ksquare will leverage its technical knowledge and capabilities to deliver FinancialForce’s solutions across the US and Mexico in a diverse range of sectors, including high-tech, manufacturing, financial services, and nonprofit, from SMEs to enterprises.

NoxInfluencer Helps People Use YouTube Channel Stats for Channel Optimization

Content Sharing

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August 28, 2019

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NoxInfluencer Helps People Use YouTube Channel Stats for Channel Optimization

NoxInfluencer, a free-to-use YouTube analytics tool, is allowing people to view YouTube channel stats, including YouTube earnings and rankings, YouTube video analytics and live subscriber counts. Besides helping YouTubers and social media managers with optimizing and improving their YouTube channels, the analytics tool also helps people view and compare YouTube channel stats.

NoxInfluencer is a video analytics tool that lets YouTubers view YouTube channel stats.

Users of the analytics tool can easily view their YouTube channels’ global and country ranks, as well as estimated YouTube earnings. The analytics tool gives users a comparative overview of subscriptions and views. If the users find from the YouTube channel stats that subscriptions and views have dropped compared to last month, they can take necessary steps to optimize their video content to boost video popularity.

NoxInfluencer doesn’t only let users view YouTube channel stats, but also tells them why their subscribers increased or decreased. With these analytics, users can assess the viewing habits of their audiences. In addition to that, NoxInfluencer also records the important milestones for YouTube users who use the tool. Users can view engagement rate and video view graph. They can filter out fake subscribers. If the subscription rate is below 5%, there is a high chance that a YouTube channel has fake subscribers. Moreover, number of “likes” help users determine what sort of topics the users prefer. Number of comments indicate how much discussion-worthy a video is.

YouTubers shouldn’t feel shy and they need to ask their audiences to like their videos. NoxInfluencer, the video analytics tool that lets YouTubers view YouTube channel stats, also shows them how to optimize the time for posting a video, the best video duration, top tags and the optimal number of tags to be used with a video. Users can view video earning, engagement rate and views and use relevant keywords using the suggestions of NoxInfluencer. The tool auto-updates every second and provides real-time and accurate data. Users can also browse through top channels and videos that are sorted by country and category to find out trending topics within a niche. Use NoxInfluencer to get a comprehensive overview of your YouTube channel traffic-related statistics.

LeanData Appoints Chief Revenue Officer to Drive Next-Level Growth

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August 28, 2019

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LeanData Appoints Chief Revenue Officer to Drive Next-Level Growth

Seasoned sales executive Steve De Marco brings proven track record for scaling B2B SaaS leaders

LeanData, the leader in Revenue Ops solutions, announced a significant expansion of its leadership team with Steve De Marco joining as Chief Revenue Officer. Bringing more than 25 years of software sales experience, De Marco will lead the company’s entire revenue organization, overseeing all aspects of sales, business development, revenue operations and enablement.

“At this strategic point in our company’s evolution, we’re excited to welcome Steve to our leadership team,” said Evan Liang, LeanData CEO. “Steve brings a wealth of experience with fast-growing B2B SaaS businesses like ours, including the development of world-class sales teams and expansion into strategic markets such as the enterprise.”

Veteran software sales executive Steve De Marco joins Revenue Ops leader LeanData as Chief Revenue Officer

Most recently, De Marco served as Chief Revenue Officer at Conga and Senior Vice President of Sales at Malwarebytes. Prior to that, he spent 12 years leading Xactly’s global sales, alliances and business development teams, scaling the organization from pre-revenue to over $100 million, leading to a successful IPO and subsequent acquisition by Vista Equity Partners.

In 2018, LeanData experienced record growth, achieving 2X year-over-year revenue growth, expanding its customer base to 500+ enterprises, and deepening its executive bench with the appointments of Rachael McBrearty, Chief Customer Officer and Larry Cheng, Senior Vice President Finance. This year, the company raised new capital with a Series C round of funding and launched the world’s first Revenue Operations platform.

“This is an exciting time to join LeanData, with a tremendous opportunity to extend the company’s leadership position in the emerging Revenue Operations market,” said De Marco. “As a former customer of LeanData’s solutions, I know the value we deliver in helping companies orchestrate and align data, people and processes across the revenue chain. I look forward to scaling our sales and alliances organizations to support LeanData’s next stage of growth and further strengthening the value we deliver to customers.”

RollWorks Launches Account Scoring Powered by Machine Learning to Help Account-Based Teams Prioritize the Accounts that Matter Most

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August 28, 2019

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RollWorks Launches Account Scoring Powered by Machine Learning to Help Account-Based Teams Prioritize the Accounts that Matter Most

New capabilities in the RollWorks Identification Solution provide recommendations and enable precise prioritization of target account lists

RollWorks, a division of AdRoll Group, announced a new account scoring feature to help account-based sales and marketing teams score and prioritize target account lists. The new functionality in RollWorks’ Account-Based Platform uses a predictive machine learning model that ranks accounts within a target list based on firmographic and technographic fit characteristics.

“RollWorks has been essential to the development and execution of our account-based strategy,” said Izabella Bray, senior manager, demand generation, Dialpad. “We recently started leveraging RollWorks’ Identification Solution to update and manage our target account list and discover new accounts to engage with. We’re looking forward to utilizing account scoring and suggestions to identify and prioritize the targets with the highest likelihood to become our customers.”

The account scoring feature is a significant update to RollWorks’ Identification Solution and taps into data insights from over 18 million accounts and over 320 million contacts. The feature helps customers focus and prioritize sales and marketing outreach to targets that have a higher propensity to buy based on existing closed-won customers.

“Organizing around a strong target account list is an essential component of an account-based approach, whether you’re just getting started or have already developed a market-leading ABM program,” said Robin Bordoli, president, RollWorks. “However, too often, selecting and prioritizing the right target accounts is a game of guesswork. That’s why bringing account scoring powered by high-quality data and machine learning to our platform was a must. This new feature not only empowers our customers with a more precise and objective solution for account prioritization, but also improves overall collaboration between marketing and sales teams.”

The update to the Identification Solution includes Account Scoring and additional features:

Account Suggestions: RollWorks’ predictive-scoring model surfaces new high-fit accounts from the RollWorks B2B database, enabling customers to target accounts they’re not currently tracking in their Salesforce CRM.
Salesforce Syncing: The solution includes a bi-directional, automated sync with Salesforce, creating dynamic target account lists that can be updated daily and update any ongoing engagement campaigns to target those lists. This feature promotes closer alignment between sales and marketing teams as they jointly focus on a prioritized account list for marketing air cover and sales outreach.
Account Groups: Customers can segment their target account list into account groups based on firmographic attributes and account scores, which can then be used to target specific audiences with digital ads using the RollWorks Engagement Solution.

“B2B companies pursuing an account-based strategy are dealing with limited resources between sales and marketing,” said Mihir Nanavati, senior vice president of product, AdRoll Group. “It’s extremely difficult to develop and manage a centralized target account list, and even harder to align on which target accounts to prioritize. Our new account scoring feature will give our customers a more precise and objective method for account prioritization with predictive modeling powered by our advanced machine learning technologies.”

Read More: Javelin Agency Names Tina Posey CEO

What is Lead Scoring?

STS Staff Writer

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August 28, 2019

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When companies start with their Lead Generation efforts, the primary aim is always to bring in more leads to the Sales funnel. The quality of leads is not really a concern at the beginning. But once there are enough leads to move forward to the next step, a necessity to prioritize certain leads over another leaps up. They need to figure out which prospects are the most interested in buying, and which are just “looking around” at the moment.

This makes it easier for the Sales team to contact the most probable customers first and the Marketing team to nurture the leads into customers over time.

Enter: Lead Scoring

As per Marketo, Lead Scoring is a shared Sales and Marketing methodology for ranking leads in order to determine their Sales-readiness. You score leads based on the interest they show in your business, their current place in the buying cycle and their fit in regards to your business. Companies can score leads by assigning points, implementing rankings like A, B, C, D, or using terms like ‘hot’, ‘warm’ or ‘cold’. The key point is that Marketing and Sales increase their combined efficiency and productivity based on the clarity of a Sales-ready lead.

HubSpot defines it as “the process of assigning values, often in the form of numerical “points,” to each lead you generate for the business.” It explains that a business can score its leads based on multiple attributes, including the professional information they’ve submitted and how they’ve engaged with the website and brand across the internet. This process helps Sales and Marketing teams prioritize leads, respond to them appropriately, and increase the rate at which those leads become customers.

Yet, 79% of B2B marketers have not established Lead Scoring in their systems!

TechTarget defines Lead Scoring as “a methodology used by Sales and Marketing departments to determine the worthiness of leads, or potential customers, by attaching values to them based on their behavior relating to their interest in products or services. The “value” of each lead varies from company to company, but generally is characterized by the interest shown in the company or their places in the buying cycle.

Companies assign point-based systems in qualifying leads or simply refer to them as “hot,” “warm” or “cold” based on the history of interactions.”

What Makes Lead Scoring Important?

Now that you have obtained a list of prospects, how do you proceed forward?

If you go about contacting every lead on the list one by one, it would be too late to contact those prospects that are way down on the list. It has been found out by InsideSales that 35-50% of sales go to the vendors who respond first. So, by the time you would contact a lead, chances are some other company might have already contacted them and the lead becomes nothing more than a useless contact to you.

In order to avoid this, organizations make use of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to score leads. In this way, the leads that are more likely to convert into customers can be assigned top priority and contacted at the earliest. Don’t forget, as much as 70% of opportunities are lost because of poor follow-up.

The Process of Lead Scoring

Marketing Automation helps companies obtain historical data that they may use to foresee a typical path that a customer takes before buying. In conjunction with Inbound Marketing, Lead Nurturing, and Customer Data, Marketing Automation can help organizations to find out which pieces of content worked best in converting a prospect into a customer.

For instance, let’s say a large number of prospects have downloaded an e-book, but haven’t bought anything. This may mean that they might be interested, but do not intend to buy any soon.

On the other hand, if a large section of the prospects have filled-in a form to request a demo of your offerings, and have then gone on to actually buy something, this means the forms are performing well. Thus, downloading e-books will get a prospect much fewer points on the Lead Scoring table than someone who requests a demo.

As simple as that!

In order to score leads, the Sales and Marketing teams of an organization need to decide on a common definition of qualified lead.
The next step is to gather information about the lead’s occupation and role in that industry. Information about the lead’s activities, interests, and demographics, etc., help with deciding if the lead is relevant or not. Browsing behaviors and engagement with the brand can signal if the prospects are likely to convert.
A CRM system comes in handy to assign a point value depending on how likely the software forecasts that action will lead to a purchase. Points can be assigned for relevant actions such as reading a blog post, commenting on a post, opening e-mails, replying to e-mails, time spent on website, reviewing your products/services, making enquiries, etc.
Prospects that have expressed a high interest in the company or the products/services are termed as “Marketing Qualified Leads” (MQLs) and passed on to the Sales teams. Only 25% of all leads are genuine enough to be passed on to the Sales department.
Prospects that are good fit, but have had less interaction (and have thus scored less) are passed on to the Marketing teams for the purpose of Lead Nurturing.

Source: Pardot

Having a proper lead scoring system can help organizations increase conversation rates and bring down the number of lost opportunities.

In addition, productivity improves as priorities and road-maps are set in advance. The marketing and sales teams collaborate well and align better towards achieving higher ROI for the company. No wonder 68% of the best B2B marketers attribute their success to Lead Scoring.

Read More: What is Demand Generation?

Podium Announces Partnership with Kia Motors America, Inc. in their Social Media & Reputation Management Program

ThoughtSpot Raises $248 Million at $1.95 Billion Valuation to Transform Enterprises with Search & AI-Driven Analytics

Charting the Future with AI-Driven Analytics

A Record Breaking Year

Experian Makes Strategic Investment In PlaceIQ’s Location Intelligence Products and Capabilities

Enjoy E-Commerce Platform Expands to UK Backed by New Funding

Ksquare Announces Partnership with FinancialForce

RollWorks Launches Account Scoring Powered by Machine Learning to Help Account-Based Teams Prioritize the Accounts that Matter Most

What is Lead Scoring?

Enter: Lead Scoring

What Makes Lead Scoring Important?

The Process of Lead Scoring

Popular Posts

Podium Announces Partnership with Kia Motors America, Inc. in their Social Media & Reputation Management Program

ThoughtSpot Raises $248 Million at $1.95 Billion Valuation to Transform Enterprises with Search & AI-Driven Analytics

Experian Makes Strategic Investment In PlaceIQ’s Location Intelligence Products and Capabilities

Enjoy E-Commerce Platform Expands to UK Backed by New Funding

Ksquare Announces Partnership with FinancialForce

RollWorks Launches Account Scoring Powered by Machine Learning to Help Account-Based Teams Prioritize the Accounts that Matter Most

What is Lead Scoring?

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