What is Lead Scoring?
Lead scoring in OpenApply enables you to categorize and prioritize alumni or prospective leads by assigning weighted scores based on their activities. You can create custom categories—such as Hot Lead, Warm Lead, or Cold Lead—with labels and colors to help identify those most likely to convert (e.g., for donor engagement).
Lead scoring categories and scoring factors can be fully customized under Settings> CRM Preferences > Lead Scoring > Alumni. Scores can be assigned based on specific actions, such as logged events, form submissions, or pending updates. You also have the option to apply scoring only to future leads.
Lead scoring can be used as a filter for targeted email campaigns, allowing you to engage specific groups—such as Hot Leads—with tailored messaging.
By using lead scoring, schools can focus efforts on the most promising leads, improving engagement and conversion outcomes.
How to start using Lead Scoring?
-
Navigate to Settings > CRM Preferences > Lead Scoring. Select the appropriate group that the scoring categories will apply to:
Contacts – for categorizing prospective lead
Applicants – for categorizing current applicants and students
Alumni – for categorizing former students
Once you've selected the group, you can create your own custom scoring categories.
- For each category, you can define custom scoring factors, specify the number of points awarded for each completed activity, and set the total points required to qualify under that category.
- After configuring the scoring factors for each category, choose whether the settings should apply only to new contacts, applicants, or alumni going forward, or also be applied to existing records in the system. Click on Populate Lead Scores to activate the configuration.
- On the student profile, you can view whether a contact, applicant, or alumnus belongs to a specific category, as well as their complete scoring history.
- On the CRM roster, you can filter by scoring categories.
6. When creating email campaigns, you can also add Lead Scoring as criteria. To learn how to create an email campaign, please click here.