Not all leads are created equal.
If you send every form-fill and ebook download straight to sales, your team wastes hours chasing people who were only mildly curious. On the other hand, if you keep high-intent leads stuck in long nurture journeys, you lose revenue. That’s exactly why you need a clear, practical B2B lead scoring model for email marketing – one that combines fit, intent, and engagement.
At Way2Connect Solutions, we treat lead scoring as the bridge between marketing activity and sales pipeline. This blog breaks down how we think about “Lead Scoring 2.0” and how you can adapt the same approach inside your CRM.
What Is Lead Scoring 2.0?
Traditional lead scoring gives points for random actions:
- +5 for an email open
- +10 for a click
- +20 for a form fill
The problem? Someone who opens five newsletters might score higher than a decision-maker who visited your pricing page once. That’s upside down.
Lead Scoring 2.0 fixes this by combining three dimensions:
- Fit – Are they the right kind of company and person?
- Intent – Are they actively moving toward a purchase?
- Engagement – Are they consistently interacting with your emails and content?
When you combine these three, it becomes much easier to see how to prioritize sales ready leads in CRM and who should go back to nurture instead.
Dimension 1: Fit (Who They Are)
Fit is about demographic and firmographic attributes – the “who” behind the lead.
Typical fit signals include:
- Job Title & Role – CMO vs Marketing Executive vs Student
- Seniority – decision-maker vs influencer
- Company Size – number of employees or revenue band
- Industry & Region – do they match your ICP niche?
- Tech Stack – are they already using tools you integrate with?
For many lead scoring criteria for B2B SaaS companies, fit is non-negotiable. A junior intern from a non-target industry might engage heavily, but they aren’t a sales-ready lead.
How we score fit at Way2Connect (high level):
- A-Fit (High) – Ideal title, target industry, right company size
- B-Fit (Medium) – Partially relevant profile or adjacent industry
- C-Fit (Low) – Poor match to your ICP
Fit scoring is the foundation. If fit is wrong, all the behavior in the world won’t save the lead.
Dimension 2: Intent (What They Do That Signals Buying)
Intent is different from generic engagement. It’s about actions that indicate buying interest, not casual browsing.
High-intent behaviors include:
- Visiting pricing, plans, or comparison pages
- Requesting a demo, free trial, or consultation
- Viewing case studies and ROI calculators
- Returning to your website multiple times within a few days
- Searching brand + solution terms (if you have intent data sources)
In a strong B2B lead scoring model for email marketing, you give more points to these actions than to simple email opens. For example:
- +40 for a demo request
- +30 for visiting the pricing page
- +20 for downloading a product-focused whitepaper
- +5 for reading a general blog
This is where intent signals help you decide how to prioritize sales ready leads in CRM. If someone hits multiple intent actions in a short timeframe, you don’t wait. You notify sales.
Dimension 3: Engagement (How Often They Interact)
Engagement is all about patterns over time:
- Email opens and clicks
- Webinar or event attendance
- Repeat visits to learning content
- Social interactions (if they’re tracked in your system)
Engagement tells you who is warming up and who is cooling off. For example:
- A good-fit lead who hasn’t opened anything for 60 days might need a reactivation sequence.
- A medium-fit lead with very high engagement might still make sense as a pipeline opportunity, especially in emerging markets.
At Way2Connect, we often separate:
- Cold – No meaningful engagement in 60–90 days
- Warm – Intermittent opens/clicks
- Hot – Multiple engagements in the last 7–14 days
Combined with fit and intent, engagement helps define who goes where: Sales, Nurture, or Disqualify.
Putting It All Together: A Simple Scoring Framework
Here’s a simple way to structure your lead scoring criteria for B2B SaaS companies and other B2B businesses:
- Assign Fit Score (0–50)
- Ideal ICP = 40–50
- Partial match = 20–30
- Poor match = 0–10
- Assign Intent Score (0–40)
- High-intent actions (demo, pricing, comparison) = 30–40
- Mid-intent actions (case studies, product sheets) = 15–25
- Low-intent actions (top-of-funnel blogs, generic guides) = 5–10
- Assign Engagement Score (0–30)
- Multiple interactions in last 7–14 days = 20–30
- Occasional opens/clicks = 10–20
- Very little activity = 0–10
Add them up and define thresholds:
- 80+ → Sales-ready (MQL → SQL, notify sales)
- 40–79 → Nurture (stay in email journeys, watch for intent spikes)
- Below 40 → Early stage or disqualify (minimal effort, low-cost touches only)
This structure gives your team a clear, shared language to talk about lead quality.
How Way2Connect Implements Lead Scoring with Clients
When we work with B2B brands, we don’t just plug in numbers. We start by asking:
- Who are your best existing customers?
- What did they do before they became closed-won deals?
- Which channels contribute the most revenue, not just leads?
Then we:
- Map your ICP and tiers (Fit)
- List your high-intent behaviors (Intent)
- Audit existing engagement patterns in your CRM and email tool (Engagement)
- Build a B2B lead scoring model for email marketing that mirrors what actually happens in your pipeline
- Configure this inside your CRM so it’s visible to both marketing and sales
Over time, we optimize the scoring model by looking at conversion rates from each score band. If many low-score leads still become customers, we adjust. If high-score leads don’t convert, we refine the criteria.
Next Steps: Turn Scoring into Revenue, Not Just Numbers
Lead scoring is not about vanity dashboards. It’s about:
- Giving your sales team clarity on where to focus
- Keeping not-yet-ready leads in smart nurture journeys
- Aligning marketing and sales around one prioritization logic
If you’re not sure how to prioritize sales ready leads in CRM, or your team is still treating all leads the same, it’s time to upgrade to Lead Scoring 2.0.
Way2Connect Solutions can help you design, implement, and refine a custom scoring model that matches your ICP, your SaaS or B2B offering, and your actual buyer journey—so your next campaign doesn’t just generate leads, it generates pipeline.
A B2B lead scoring model for email marketing is a framework that assigns points to leads based on their profile (fit), behavior (engagement), and actions (intent). It helps marketing and sales teams understand which leads are most likely to convert so they can focus on high-priority prospects instead of treating every email subscriber the same.
To prioritize sales-ready leads in your CRM, combine three scores: fit (job title, industry, company size), intent (demo requests, pricing page visits, comparison views), and engagement (email opens, clicks, repeat visits). Leads with higher combined scores should be routed to sales, while lower-score leads stay in nurture journeys until they show stronger intent.
Effective lead scoring criteria for B2B SaaS companies include ICP fit (role, seniority, industry, company size), product-related intent (trial sign-ups, feature pages, pricing views), and ongoing engagement (webinar attendance, content downloads, regular email interaction). These criteria help SaaS teams quickly identify which accounts are most likely to book demos and move into the sales pipeline.
