MARDREAMIN’ SUMMIT 2025
MAY 7-8, 2025 IN ATLANTA - GA
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Most companies I work with—especially early in their journey with Pardot—never go beyond the default scoring model. I want to highlight the many ways to make scoring a more sophisticated process (and accurate metric) by discussing scoring categories, depreciation, and important watch-outs everybody needs to be aware of.
This session, led by Dan Umbros, Marketing Automation Solution Architect, explores how to move beyond Pardot’s default scoring settings to create a sophisticated, tailored scoring model using Decay, Custom Adjustments, Page Actions, and Scoring Categories. The goal is to make the prospect score a valuable, non-misleading metric for sales qualification and marketing segmentation.
Scoring vs. Grading: Scoring shows how interested a prospect is in us (engagement); Grading shows how interested we should be in the prospect (fit/attributes). Never confuse the two.
Customize the Default: The out-of-the-box scoring model is well-intentioned but rarely fits any organization’s specific needs. Every item must be reviewed, especially with input from the Sales team.
Zero Out Opportunity Scoring: Score should reflect prospect interest, not sales activity. It is recommended to set all Opportunity-related scoring to zero.
The Decay Necessity: Score decay (depreciation) is crucial to prevent high, misleading scores for prospects who haven’t engaged in a long time.
The default model should be updated to reflect the actual value of each marketing interaction.
Email Open: Reduce the score adjustment (e.g., to 1 point) and only score the first open to minimize the impact of unreliable/false opens.
File Access: Increase the score adjustment (e.g., to 10 points), as hosted files (ebooks, white papers) often represent high-value content consumption.
Form/Landing Page Errors: Set score deduction to zero. Errors are usually due to missed required fields and are corrected quickly, leading to unnecessary score fluctuations.
Opportunity Scoring: Set Opportunity Created/Lost/Won scoring to zero, as these are sales actions that distort the score’s primary purpose (prospect interest).
Social Activity: Set social link click scoring to zero unless you are actively using Pardot’s social posting functionality.
Retroactive Changes: Any changes to the default scoring model are retroactive and recalculate all past prospect scores. Ensure you have an inventory of any automation rules that rely on score thresholds to prevent unintended actions (e.g., inadvertently pushing unqualified leads to sales).
Limit Score to Engagement: Do not include grading attributes (job title, company size) in score adjustments; reserve these for grading.
The default model paints activity with a broad brush. Page and Completion Actions allow for granular, proportional scoring.
Page Actions (Website Activity): Use Page Actions to weight specific pages differently than the rest of the site.
Example: Award an additional 10 points for viewing the Pricing Page, as this indicates higher intent than a generic blog post.
Negative Adjustment: You can also negatively adjust the score for visiting certain pages (e.g., a “Careers” or “Jobs” section).
Completion Actions (Form Submissions): Use Completion Actions to override or adjust the default score for specific forms.
Example: A high-value Demo Request form should add significant points (e.g., +25), while a low-value Newsletter Signup might deduct points (e.g., -15) to ensure the prospect’s overall score remains accurate.
Score decay prevents high scores from being misleading when the prospect has been inactive for a long time.
Decay Logic: Set up an automation rule using the Repeat Rule function (e.g., repeating every 30 days) to check for inactivity.
Criteria: Prospect time :: Last activity days ago is greater than 30 AND Prospect Score is greater than 10 (to prevent negative scores).
Action: Adjust prospect score by -10.
Fine-Tuning: Score decay rules should be customized based on prospect status (e.g., don’t decay the score for current customers or prospects with active opportunities).
Negative Score Watch Out: If you do not include a rule to check that the score is above a minimum threshold (e.g., “Score is over 10”), the decay rule will run indefinitely, resulting in a misleadingly low negative score.
Scoring Categories allow you to track a prospect’s engagement interest across specific verticals or product lines.
Mechanism: You create a scoring category and assign it to a folder. Prospects earn points in that category when they engage with assets in the related folder. The prospect profile then displays both the overall score and the category score breakdown.
Usage: A high category score indicates where the prospect’s primary interest lies (e.g., “Kitten Content” vs. “Dog Content”).
Segmentation: This data allows for easy lead routing (e.g., sending all leads with a “Product A” score over 100 to the “Product A” sales specialist) and targeted content creation.
Watch Out: Moving content between folders or to the recycling bin triggers a category score recalculation. Deleting content removes points from the category score but leaves the overall score unchanged, which can be confusing.
