How to Set Up Lead Scoring in HubSpot Using Engagement Data
From Lead Overload to Sales-Ready Pipeline
It’s a common and frustrating pain point: your marketing team is working tirelessly to fill the top of the funnel, generating a ton of leads. But when those leads are passed to the sales team, the feedback is always the same: “They’re not ready to buy.” This disconnect creates friction, wastes time, and leaves money on the table.
How do you bridge the gap between marketing activity and sales readiness? The answer is engagement-based lead scoring. This powerful methodology automatically prioritizes your leads based on their actions, not just their demographics. It provides an objective, data-driven signal that separates the casually interested from the genuinely sales-ready.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know to set up a powerful lead scoring model in HubSpot. We’ll cover the “why,” the strategic planning, a step-by-step HubSpot walkthrough with real-world examples, and show you how to put your new score into action to drive tangible business results.
The Power of Scoring Based on Behavior
Before you start building, it’s crucial to understand why a behavior-based lead score is so effective.
Beyond Demographics: Traditional lead scoring often focuses on demographic or firmographic data—who a person is, what their job title is, or where they work. While this information is useful for a basic fit, it doesn’t tell you anything about their intent. Engagement scoring, on the other hand, scores prospects on their actions—what they download, which pages they visit, or how many emails they open. These actions are direct signals of interest.
Key Benefits for Your Business:
Sales Efficiency: Your sales reps will stop wasting time on cold leads and focus their energy on prospects who have shown active, recent interest.
Marketing & Sales Alignment: A lead score creates a universally agreed-upon definition of a “Marketing Qualified Lead” (MQL), backed by data. This eliminates guesswork and creates a seamless handoff between teams.
Improved Nurturing: You can identify a crucial middle-ground—leads who are warming up but not yet sales-ready. This allows you to nurture them with targeted content that helps them along their journey.
Clearer Marketing ROI: You can demonstrate how specific marketing activities (like a webinar or a new e-book) directly contribute to creating sales-ready leads, proving your team’s value and justifying your budget.
Before You Build a Single Rule
The success of your lead score depends entirely on how well you plan. The most important step happens outside of HubSpot’s settings.
Crucial First Step: Talk to Your Sales Team
Sit down with your sales team and have an honest conversation. What actions do their best customers take before buying? Which pages do they visit? Which forms do they fill out?
What are the “deal-breaker” signals? For example, visiting your careers page might signal they’re a competitor or a job seeker, not a prospect.
Collaboratively define the score that officially makes a lead an MQL. Is it 50 points? 100 points? 125? Agree on this number so everyone is on the same page.
Identify Your High-Value Engagements
Create a hierarchy of actions. A “Request a Demo” form submission is a high-intent action, while a single blog view is a low-intent action. Your point system should reflect this value.
A simple framework for categorizing actions:
High Intent (25-50 points): “Contact Us” form submission, Pricing page views, Trial sign-ups.
Medium Intent (5-15 points): Webinar registration, e-book download, multiple solution page views.
Low Intent (1-3 points): Single blog post view, email open, social media click.
Step-by-Step: Building Your Lead Score in HubSpot
With your strategy in place, you’re ready to build your score in HubSpot.
Step 1: Navigate to HubSpot Score Properties
In your HubSpot portal, click the Settings (gear icon) in the top right.
Navigate to Properties in the left-hand menu.
Search for the property “HubSpot score.”
(Note: HubSpot provides a default “HubSpot score” property, but you can also create a custom score property if you have a specific need for multiple scores.)
Step 2: Setting Up Positive Attributes (Rewarding Good Behavior)
Click “Add criteria” under the “Positive” section. Here’s a look at some of the most common engagement rules you can set up:
Website Activity:
Number of page views is greater than 5(+5 points)Contact has visited URL containing 'pricing'(+15 points)Contact has visited URL containing 'demo-request-thank-you'(+50 points)
Form Submissions:
Form submission on 'Contact Us' page(+40 points)Form submission on any 'eBook Download' page(+10 points)
Email Engagement:
Number of marketing emails opened is greater than 10(+5 points)Number of marketing emails clicked is greater than 3(+10 points)
List Membership & CTA Clicks:
Contact is a member of list 'Webinar Attendees'(+15 points)Contact has clicked CTA 'Start Free Trial'(+30 points)
Step 3: Setting Up Negative Attributes (Penalizing Bad Behavior)
Your lead score should also deduct points for signals of disinterest or poor fit. Click “Add criteria” under the “Negative” section.
Disengagement:
Marketing emails bounced(-25 points)Contact property: Marketing emails unsubscribed is 'true'(-100 points)
Poor Fit Indicators:
Contact has visited URL containing 'careers' or 'jobs'(-50 points)Job Title contains 'Intern' or 'Student'(-20 points)(Note: Be cautious with rules like ‘Email contains ‘gmail.com’. While this can filter out some poor fits, it may also exclude founders or legitimate business users.)
Step 4: Test Your Logic
HubSpot allows you to “Test” your score against an existing contact. Find a known good lead and a known poor lead in your database.
Run the test on both to see if the resulting score makes sense. Adjust your points as needed until the score accurately reflects your team’s collective definition of a qualified lead.
Putting Your Score to Work: Automation and Analysis
A score is just a number until you put it to work. Here’s how to turn your new HubSpot score into a powerful engine for your business.
Create Active Lists for Segmentation:
MQLs:
HubSpot Score is greater than or equal to [Your MQL Threshold, e.g., 100]Engaged but Not Ready:
HubSpot Score is between 30 and 99Needs Re-engagement:
HubSpot Score is less than 10 AND Last Seen was more than 90 days ago
Build Workflows to Automate Hand-offs:
Create a workflow that triggers when a contact joins your “MQLs” list.
Actions:
Change Lifecycle Stage to “Marketing Qualified Lead.”
Assign a Contact Owner (e.g., rotate between sales reps).
Send an internal notification to the new owner.
Create a task for the owner to follow up.
Use the Score in Reporting:
Build a custom report to track how many MQLs your marketing team generates each month.
Analyze which specific marketing channels (e.g., Organic Search, Paid Social, Referrals) produce the highest-scoring leads.
Iterate and Evolve Your Scoring Model
Engagement-based lead scoring is the bridge that connects your marketing efforts to your sales team’s results. By creating a collaborative, data-backed system, you can transform your funnel from a source of friction into a predictable, efficient, and profitable engine.
Lead scoring is not a “set it and forget it” solution. Schedule a quarterly review with your sales team to analyze lead quality and refine your scoring criteria based on what’s actually leading to closed-won deals. As your business evolves, so should your scoring model.
Ready to stop guessing and start prioritizing your hottest leads?
Implementing a robust lead scoring model can be complex, but Mobius NEXT can help. Our team of HubSpot experts specializes in sales and marketing alignment, helping businesses like yours design and implement a lead scoring strategy that drives real results.
for a personalized strategy session on lead scoring and sales alignment, contact Mobius NEXT today.
Resources:
HubSpot Knowledge Base – Lead Scoring: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/lead-scoring/set-up-lead-scoring
HubSpot Knowledge Base – Workflows: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/workflows
HubSpot Blog – Lead Scoring: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/lead-scoring-guide
