Engagement tracking helps you to identify which members who are highly engaged, and not engaged. The members who have low engagement are at high risk of canceling their membership. The engagement tracking will enable account managers to follow up (either automatically or manually) with those who have low engagement to help them get more engaged, therefore enjoying more of the benefits of membership and reducing the risk of canceling.
Another benefit is to be able to measure website and email improvements against engagement.
Engagement model
The first step is to build an engagement model on the various activities that are considered engagement activity, with points allocated to each, as the following example shows.
| Activity | Points |
|---|---|
| Opened email | 1 |
| Form submission | 10 |
| Opportunity won | 20 |
| Opportunity lost | -20 |
| Page view | 1 |
| Link click | 5 |
| Website login | 5 |
The number of points you assign to each type of activity will depend on the relative importance you place on that activity. In this example, a website login has 5 points and opening an email 1, because a website login is a relatively stronger measure of engagement.
There are two types of scoring that I set up in Pardot
- Lifetime score: overall score is the aggregate engagement score for the lifetime of the member.
- Active score: identify members who may have become inactive recently, despite having a high overall score from past activity.
The overall lifetime score will use Pardot default lead score. The active score will be a custom field.
Tracking engagement in Pardot
There are three main ways that Pardot can track activities and add points to a members score: built in tracking, automation rules and page actions.
Built in tracking
Pardot’s built in tracking can be used to add points for:
- Email opens
- Email clicks
- Form submission
- Page views
- Tracker click link
- Visiting website
- Opportunity won
- Opportunity lost
- Email bounce
Automation rules
Automation rules can be used for more control over updating engagement scores. Examples of incrementing engagement scores
- Submits a specific form or form hander
- Gets a specific tag
- Opted into a specific list
- Opted out of a specific list
- Open email in last X days/weeks
- Custom field contains a value or has a value
Page actions
Page actions can be used to track website activity and increment scores accordingly. For example:
- When prospects visit a specific page
- Can update their score based on this page visit
- Can make it a “Priority Page”, which means its called out specifically in prospects activity
- When a member logins (by redirecting to a specific page)
This is an example of a page action, with 5 points added when a member logs into the website and is redirected to the confirmation page.
Active engagement
Pardot only has 1 lead score and by default and it’s a cumulative score. This means that over time, a member’s points will keep growing. It isn’t possible to expire points after a certain amount of time.
This means that it a member could build up an engagement score, and then become inactive. In order to determine if members are still active, we will use an “active score” as well.
If a member is not active for a specific period of time, we will deduct points from their active score, as follows:
- 0: been active in last 3 months
- -1: not been active in 3 months
- -2: not been active in 6 months
- -3: not been active in 9 months
- -4: not been active in 12 months
Using both scores
By using both scores, you can compare them to get a more accurate picture. For example:
- high engagement score + low inactive score: they have been active and remain active
- high engagement score + high inactive score: they have been active but have since become inactive
– low engagement score + high inactive score: they have never been active
- low engagement score + low inactive score: they haven’t built up an engagement score but are currently active. They may be new members.
| Overall score | Active score | Description | Risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| High | High | The member is highly engaged and has been engaged at least once in the past 3 months | Low risk of canceling |
| High | Low | The member was highly engaged but has not actively engaged in the last 9 months | Medium risk of canceling |
| Low | High | The member is not highly engaged but has actively engaged in the last 3 months | Low-medium risk of canceling (may need more time to build score) |
| Low | Low | The member has never been actively engaged | High risk of canceling |
Wrapping up
This is an example of how you can use Pardot’s lead scoring functionality to measure engagement for a membership site. By leveraging Pardot’s built in lead scoring, you can measure a lifetime engagement value for each member.
And by using Pardot’s ability to track if someone has engaged in the past few months, you can build an active score in a custom field.
By comparing these two values, you can understand how engaged your members are and the risk of them cancelling.