When thinking about developing the campaign you’re running now, or one that you’ll be running soon, you might begin with the audience you’re trying to reach. But how do you know if your reach is being effective? Propensity and Engagement scores, that’s how.


A resounding discussion among many of our recent projects at MarketMatch has been the topic of customer reach and ensuring that the campaign is successful. But before you dig too far down into customer reach and messaging, let’s take a step back and establish what reach really is and how to capitalize on it.

Who’s in The Market for a New Car?

When thinking about developing the campaign you’re running now, or one that you’ll be running soon, you might begin with the audience you’re trying to reach. Let’s say you do that. No, really. Do that first.

For example, since it’s spring time, let’s say it’s an auto loan campaign. So for argument’s sake, our audience is all current and prospective customers that are in the market for a new car or are looking to refinance their loan for a lower rate, payment, term, etc. No brainer.

Hold up

But wait just a second. What about all of those happy folks out there that aren’t in the market for a new car or refinance – yet. Maybe they will be and don’t know it yet. I’m not crazy – this happens every day. People are going about their lives and then suddenly, BOOM, they’re hit with a deal that is too good to be true.

So the question then becomes: how do you filter out your true prospects from the rest of the noise (read: the window shoppers)?

Four Steps

Here are your four key steps to measuring propensity in a way that will mean something between marketing and sales.

  1. Define Your Scores. There are two types of scores to consider. Propensity and Engagement scores. Have a prospect open and click on an email offer? Decent propensity score. Did they fill out the form on your landing page that the click sent them to? Now we’re talking through the roof propensity and an added bonus of an engagement score.
  2. Define the Line. After you’ve established your scoring system between propensity and engagement, you need to define where the line between marketing and sales exists. This will also define who is responsible for the lead. Is your prospective customer still in click-through-but-no-further-action-no-man’s land? That’s still a marketing lead. Where engagement takes over, so should your sales department.
  3. Define Your Leads. Did your prospect come in via a marketing channel, or did they visit your website from a Google search and trip over your promotion? The difference produces a HUGE swing in scoring. If someone is out looking – and finds you – guess what? They automatically move to the sales side of the teeter-totter.
  4. Represent Opportunities. Lead generation success comes in a variety of forms. While one auto loan shopper might yield a low propensity score and exclude them from the rest of that campaign series, they might also find themselves shopping for another opportunity on your site. Knowing when to represent opportunities is paramount to a successful and robust lead generation platform.

These four steps will help produce a successful and well-defined campaign strategy. Keeping in mind, of course, that it will take some trial and error to find the sweet spot. After all, lead generation doesn’t have to happen in a linear form.