How can HubSpot Lead Scoring be best used within education organisations?

What is Lead Scoring?

Lead Scoring is a system used to rank and prioritise potential customers or students based on their behaviour and interactions. The system assigns a score to each lead based on their level of engagement, the actions they have taken and other factors such as demographics, interests and location. This information can help organisations focus their efforts and resources on the most promising leads, rather than those less likely to convert.

Best practice for implementing lead scoring using HubSpot

Define your ideal student

Before you can begin scoring leads, have a clear idea of what your ideal student looks like, including information such as age, gender and location, interests, goals and their reasons for applying. A scoring system can then be created that aligns with your ideal student profile to help identify those leads most likely to be a best fit. Be aware that ideal student profiles may vary across different locations.

Create a scoring system

Once the ideal student profile is defined, create a lead scoring system that reflects their characteristics and behaviour, which involves assigning points for specific actions such as visiting your website, completing a form, or attending an event. The scoring system should reflect the importance of each action in relation to your goals.

Identify highly qualified leads

Lead Scoring allows you to prioritise your outreach efforts and focus on the leads that are most likely to convert. By assigning scores to leads based on their engagement with marketing materials (e.g. website visits, email opens and social media interactions) you can swiftly identify the most interested and engaged prospects.

Use Lead Scoring to prioritise outreach

Once a list of scored leads has been created, the information should be used to prioritise outreach efforts. Leads with higher scores (those more likely to convert) should be contacted first as this can help focus outreach efforts and ensure optimisation of your resources. Contacting the most promising leads first increases your chances of converting more students.

Use Lead Scoring to improve marketing strategy

Lead Scoring can be used to improve your marketing strategy. By analysing the behaviour of high scoring leads you can identify which marketing channels and tactics are most effective in generating successful student recruitment. This information can then help you allocate your resources and budget more effectively.

Improve lead nurturing

Once you've identified your most qualified leads, you can use Lead Scoring to create targeted, personalised nurture campaigns that help move them through your admissions process. By understanding the specific interests and pain points of each lead, content and messaging that resonates can be created to encourage them to take the next step in the enrolment process.

Steps for setting up Lead Scoring in HubSpot

To get the most out of Lead Scoring in HubSpot, try following these best practices:

Define Your Ideal Customer Profile: Before you can start scoring your leads you need to have a clear understanding of your ideal customer profile. This includes demographics, psychographics, pain points and interests. Once you have a clear understanding of your ideal customer, you can start to identify the behaviours and actions most indicative of a highly qualified lead.

Identify Your Scoring Criteria: Once you define your ideal customer profile, you can identify the actions that indicate a strong lead. This might include things like website visits, email opens, social media interactions and more. You will also want to assign weights to each behaviour based on its level of importance to your enrolment goals.

Set Your Scoring Thresholds: Once you've identified your scoring criteria you should set thresholds for each behaviour. For example, you might give a score of 5 to a lead who visits your website for more than 5 minutes, but only a score of 1 to a lead who only visits your website for 30 seconds. We recommend setting your thresholds within a scoring range of 5 where the most positive action a Contact can take would score them +5, but the most negative would be –5. This will help to ensure your lead scores are meaningful. You'll also need to set a threshold for the total lead score that indicates a highly qualified lead.

Test and refine your Scoring Model: Lead scoring is an iterative process and it's important to test and refine your scoring model over time. This might involve adjusting your scoring criteria, revising your weightings, or tweaking your scoring thresholds. By regularly analysing your lead scoring data, you can identify areas for improvement and make data-driven adjustments to your scoring model.

Tips for optimising your Lead Scoring strategy

To get the most out of your Lead Scoring strategy in HubSpot, here are a few tips to keep in mind:

Use personalisation to improve ‘Nurture Campaigns’: Once your highly qualified leads have been identified, it's important to create personalised ‘nurture campaigns’ that speak to their specific interests and pain points. This might include targeted emails, social media content and personalised website experiences. By using personalisation to tailor your messaging to each lead's specific needs the effectiveness of your nurture campaigns can be improved and increase the likelihood of conversion.
Monitor Lead Scores over time: Lead scoring is an ongoing process and monitoring your lead scores over time is important to identify trends and patterns. This might include tracking the average lead score for each marketing channel, monitoring changes in lead scores over time or analysing lead scores by demographic or psychographic factors. Regularly review your scoring criteria, weightings and thresholds to identify areas for improvement and use data analytics to make data-driven adjustments to your scoring model.
Align your sales and marketing teams: Aligning your admissions and marketing teams is important to get the most out of your lead scoring strategy. This may involve setting up regular meetings between the teams to discuss lead scoring data, shared insights and feedback on lead quality, or creating joint sales and marketing campaigns that target highly qualified leads. By aligning these teams, communication and collaboration can be improved and overall enrolment efforts will be more effective.
Use automation to streamline your Lead Nurturing: HubSpot offers a wide range of automation tools to help streamline your lead nurturing and improve campaign effectiveness. This may include setting up automated, triggered emails based on specific lead behaviours, using workflows to move leads through the enrolment funnel, or using chatbots to provide personalised support and guidance to leads. By using automation to streamline lead nurturing, the efficiency of your enrolment efforts can be improved and increase the likelihood of conversion.

While website visits offer a general sense of interest, lead scoring becomes far more valuable when it analyses the type of content contacts engage with. This deeper insight allows you to prioritise leads who are actively consuming content relevant to their stage. Someone downloading a document on the admissions process indicates a higher sign-up intent compared to simply visiting the homepage. By focusing on content engagement, lead scoring paints a clearer picture of a lead's needs and readiness to convert, enabling you to target efforts towards the most qualified leads.

Lead Scoring is a powerful tool for education organisations looking to attract and enrol new students using HubSpot. By assigning scores to leads based on their engagement with your marketing materials, it is possible to swiftly identify prospects that are the most interested and engaged, prioritise your outreach efforts, and create targeted, personalised nurture campaigns that help move them through the enrolment funnel. To maximise the benefits of lead scoring in HubSpot, it's important to follow best practices for setting up lead scoring, testing and refining your scoring model over time, and optimising your lead scoring strategy using personalisation, monitoring, alignment, and automation. By using lead scoring effectively, you can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your enrolment efforts and, over time, drive growth in student enrolment.