How to improve account scoring for ABM with key data points

B2B marketing teams have always scored leads and placed them in categories like Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) or Sales Accepted Leads (SAL). These lead scores have been a roadmap for marketers to plan their strategies, focus their efforts, and drive sales pipeline and revenue. But a common challenge B2B marketers face is that lead scores are often independent of other information an organization might have about an overall account, leading to poor prioritization and outreach at the wrong time. This is where account scoring comes in.  

An account score can help you keep track of the likelihood of an account to make a purchase, which helps your team better focus your resources for outreach. This score combines the activity from all associated leads with other data sources, like intent data, to show overall interest and engagement associated with that prospect company. An account score can be a great marker of an organization’s overall purchase intent, position in the buying cycle, and can be a better indicator for outreach than just an individual lead score.  

Why account scoring  

Established marketing strategies depend on predetermined factors such as demographic attributes, lead source and estimated budget. While leads driven from these traditional practices might contain behavioral data such as online activity, page views, email engagement and content downloads baked into a lead score, they cannot not tell the full story about an account.  

Today, many marketers are layering different types of scoring to get the full picture. According to our research from 2023 and 2024, all scoring methodologies are growing and gaining traction—isolated lead scores are becoming a thing of the past. Instead, marketers are taking as much information into account as possible when scoring accounts. 

Most B2B purchase decisions involve a group of four or more people.  If your sales representative talks to a prospect who doesn’t have the complete decision-making authority, it might not make them ready to buy. However, that person might also be part of a buying group at the account, and still worthy of attention. Traditional lead scoring might not indicate that since you don’t get a complete picture of the account. Account scoring lets you keep track of all at a company, giving you some insight into the buying group. 

Account scoring isn’t one-size-fits-all 

Lead scoring isn’t an exact science. Each company and marketing department have different objectives and goals. And, they most likely have different lead scoring and ranking methodologies.  

When a lead flows into a Marketing Automation Platform or CRM, sometimes that’s where the data flow stops. Account scoring takes the guesswork out of your outreach strategy.  

By combining intent signals, first party data, and multiple lead scores together, you can now have a more precise and better indicator of what the status of an account is.  

Account-based marketing influences a move beyond lead scoring  

With multiple stakeholders now involved in B2B purchase decisions, account-based marketing (ABM) is now a vital part of most organizations’ marketing strategies. Instead of targeting individual leads, ABM focuses on reaching and engaging qualified accounts through appropriate outreach and campaigns.   

Account-based marketing benefits:  
1 – Robust alignment between sales and marketing teams  
2 – Consistent voice and customized messages with the account  
3 – Expand and upsell through existing account relationships  

That’s probably why many B2B companies use ABM alongside other traditional marketing strategies. For companies that run ABM, lead scoring alone becomes less effective, and should be just one component to the account score that ABM marketers care about.  

Account scoring in ABM with intent data  

Both first-party and third-party intent data can be beneficial components to your organization’s account scoring method. Your first-party data sends real-time indicators of behavior of active accounts on your website, or any other interactions that might have directly with your brand through any outreach you control. Third-party intent data can indicate account interest across the web, in other places you might not have direct visibility into. You’ll need to work with a data partner to get access to third-party intent data. 

 Using this data as the backbone for an account score, you can layer in other data into your scoring such as revenue, size, geography, and number of employees.   

 The resulting account score can help to better allocate your time and resources towards accounts that have the best possibility of conversion, rather than those who aren’t actively in market.  

Efficiency and accuracy with intent-based account scoring  

Intent-based account scoring goes a step further than traditional lead scoring to help you better understand prospect accounts. In our recent research, we found that marketers using intent for personalization increased growth opportunities. They were 30% more likely to have seen a significant increase in revenue in 2023, 26% more likely to be extremely confident in ABM, and 11% more likely to be tapping into new demos and segments in 2024. Implementing account scoring in your strategy will help you streamline sales and marketing activities and make them more efficient.