Should You Score Your Prospect List?

Scoring Your Prospect List

Receiving a new prospect list is exciting and full of possibilities. The question is where do you start? If you have a set budget and limited number of resources, how do you choose which records to use? You can take a random selection, or you can score your prospect list.  

Scoring your prospect list is a great way to identify the prospects most likely to respond. Data scientists will take your prospect list and create a model to score and rank each prospect. The criteria used to create the model will be based on who you are trying to target and what your goals are for the campaign.  

Depending on what you want to accomplish, data scientists might even append additional information to your data. They might add lifestyle demographics, behavioral data, or geographical data to help them see a better picture of who the people are on your list. 

After they have analyzed the data, they will give each record a score based on a customized algorithm. The records on your list will be ranked from the highest scoring to the lowest scoring. You can take your newly scored prospect list and use it to make informed marketing decisions.  

Making Selects 

With a scored prospect list, you can easily see which records are the most qualified and most likely to respond. Determining which records to use is simple. All you have to do is decide how many people you want to target and pull from the top of your list, using the record’s score as your guide.  

Tiered Marketing 

Tiered marketing helps you focus on the people most likely to respond while still engaging with others. It also helps you allocate your marketing budget. For this type of marketing plan, you will spend more on and advertise more to your top tier prospects. Each additional tier will receive a different level of marketing and spend per prospect. How many tiers you create and how you target each group is entirely up to you. 

For those in your top tier, you might mail them the full catalog and target them with email and social ads. Tier two might receive a smaller mail piece like a postcard as well as digital ads. And for your third tier, you might decide to target them with digital only. Those towards the bottom of the list can be trimmed from your marketing plan since they are the least likely to respond. 

A scored prospect list removes the guesswork and clarifies where you should breakdown the different tiers in your marketing plan.  

If you want to know how your list scores, reach out to us. Our team loves helping business identify their best targets and creating customized solutions.