Using Lead Validation with CRM Lead Scoring Rules

In most CRMs, lead scoring is used to determine the viability and likelihood that a lead will become a paying customer. Generally, lead scores are a sum of points assigned to a lead based on a series of actions they have taken, like visiting a product page, completing a form or requesting a demo. Positive and negative points are assigned to actions that your business has deemed important in the sales process. The lead score is meant to help your Sales team identify which leads are likely to buy at that time.

Most CRMs overlook a key area when scoring a lead, the accuracy of the lead’s contact details. By using a lead validation tool, your contact records can be verified and corrected, while each element of their contact record can be scored for accuracy.  These validation scores provide insight into the ‘realness’ of the lead and also provide an excellent set of data points to create additional lead scoring rules.

A Little About Lead Validation

A lead validation service, like Lead Validation – International enables your business to perform multi-point verification on contact records against hundreds of authoritative data sources. The service helps ensure leads are genuine, so your sales and marketing teams can confidently work with prospects that have the most potential to close. With Lead Validation – International, each of the main contact record elements; name, email, address, phone and IP address are validated and scored individually for both certainty and quality. The elements are also cross-validated with each other to provide a composite quality and certainty score.

Using the resulting scores from each of the elements and the overall composite score, you can create a set of scoring rules in your CRM focused on the accuracy of the lead information captured.

Using Lead Validation Scoring Rules in your CRM

Name:

Name validation checks against a global database of millions of names, returns the common gender for the name and identifies vulgar, celebrity, dictionary-derived, and garbage names, and also provides an overall Name Certainty and Quality rating. These ratings can be simply translated into Lead Scores in your CRM. Here are a few examples of rules that can be created from the results:

Address:

Within Lead Validation, addresses are verified and corrected to each country’s postal address format. Like Name Validation, Certainty and Quality ratings are returned and can be used to create scoring rules:

*This address was corrected, with the missing Suite number appended.

Email:

Email addresses are validated and corrected, along with clear indicators if the email is attached to potential spam traps, honeypots and known spammers. Using the simple Certainty and Quality scores, you can generate a number of scoring rules that are focused on specific needs, like determining if a lead is a good fit for a nurture email campaign.

Phone:

Validated phone numbers, their Certainty and Quality scores, and some of the additional data points are excellent elements to use for scoring rules. Here are several examples:

IP Address:

IP addresses are used to determine the location and device type the lead is using and flag proxies and malicious IP addresses.  It can also be used to flag compliance concerns and fraud.

Overall Scores:

Cross-validating each of the main contact details against one another allows us to determine the overall quality of each lead. For example, a lead may enter an address in the United States but their IP address says they are in Belarus, resulting in poor Quality and Certainty scores. The service also determines if the lead is a business or consumer lead. These overall scores can be used in place of the individual ones above or in conjunction with them.

Summary

Whether you capture the full details of your leads or just their name and email address, a lead validation service provides new criteria to create lead scoring rules, ensuring your teams are dealing with highly qualified consumers with real contact information.

Want to see how lead validation can work with your CRM? Contact us and we would be happy to show you.