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Lead Scoring 301: Webinar and Video Lead Scoring


Traditional lead scoring allows us to score on profile data from within our marketing automation system and even from outside platforms such as CRM and data-warehouses.  We can also score based on engagement data stored in our marketing automaton system such as e-mail clicks, website visits, and form submits.  However, this misses one important factor (and perhaps the most powerful of all) – scoring engagement data stored outside the marketing automation system.  Luckily, technology is now making this easier than ever by allowing us to quickly integrate our Marketing Automation system with other applications.

When it comes to integrating your Marketing Automation system with outside applications there is really no limit to the possibilities.  As long as you are collecting engagement data somewhere you can easily pump it into your Marketing Automation system and leverage it in lead scoring.  In my opinion, one of the easiest places to start is with webinar and video engagement data.

Scoring Webinar Attendance

Most webinar platforms are capable of tracking the number of minutes each attendee is logged into your webinar.  This data is stored in the platform and linked to the attendees email address.  Many of these platforms also offer integration with the major Marketing Automation platforms to allow you to push the attendance data into the Marketing Automation system and onto a contact record with the matching email address.  The end result is a contact field, often called ‘Minutes Attended’ or ‘Attendance Duration’ that stores a numeric value showing how long they attended the last webinar.

Now that you have this data it’s easy to incorporate it into your lead scoring program.  To start, determine attendance ranges and how they will impact the lead score.  For example, contacts that have attended 1-5 minutes may not have learned much but the fact that they showed up is enough to tell you they have a heartbeat and somewhat of an interest in you so you can award them 5 points.  Someone who attended 5-19 minutes didn’t stay for the full webinar but did make a strong effort so we’ll give them 10 points.  Someone who attended 20+ was willing to put some serious time into the webinar and is likely very engaged so you can give them 20 points.

The attendance ranges and points awarded may vary depending on how long your webinars typically run and how important you think this metric is compared to your other lead scoring criteria.  In some webinar platforms it may be possible to use more advanced data such as ‘% attended’, which gives you more flexibility if your webinars are not all the same length.

Some webinar platforms that integrate with Marketing Automation:

Scoring Video Views

If scoring on webinars is so easy it stands to reason that we should be able to score on video engagement in the same way.  Unfortunately, YouTube doesn’t track engagement at this level (or at least does not expose this data to us).  However, if you’re an Eloqua customer there is now a video platform that does allow you to collect engagement data at a contact level and push it to your Marketing Automation platform through pre-built integration.  The platform is called Vidyard.  They have recently launched integration with Eloqua.  The great thing about Vidyard is it works with YouTube so you can publish your existing YouTube videos and start tracking who’s watching them.

The integration works by tracking which contacts are watching videos and monitoring the length of each view (and some other data such as video title) then writing it to a custom data record in Eloqua.  This custom data record is mapped to an individual contact so you can quickly get a view of all the videos and engagement data for that contact.

To incorporate this into your lead scoring program you can follow a similar model as described in the webinar section above to assign scores based on the length of time the video was viewed.  Since Vidyard is also pushing the Video Name to Eloqua you can start limiting your scoring to certain videos.  For example, if your videos contains a product name you can build lead scoring criteria such as ‘if [View Duration is >5 and <19] AND [Video Name contains ‘Product A’] assign [10 points]’.


Stay tuned to the Vidyard Blog for more details as they continue to expand the capabilities of this great platform.


Lead scoring has always been a critical component of marketing automation as it offers enormous value in many ways.  As users demand more powerful features and integrations I’m sure we’ll see this piece of the automation puzzle continue to grow.  I’ve been waiting for several years for a video platform to offer functionality that would allow us to tie it into lead scoring in the same way we do with webinars.  The wait is finally over thanks to Vidyard. But don’t stop at webinar and video.  Always keep looking for more ways to track your prospects engagement and bring it into your lead scoring engine.

Full Disclosure

Upon hearing that someone had successfully addressed this pain-point I quickly became and continue to be a Vidyard investor.