What is lead scoring?
Last updated: June 2026
Lead scoring is the practice of giving each prospect a number that reflects how likely they are to buy, so a team can work the most promising leads first.
Key takeaways
- Lead scoring turns signals about a prospect into a single number so you can decide who to contact first.
- Classic models combine fit (who they are) and behavior (what they did); intent scoring adds what they said they need.
- A score is only useful if it is explained - you should be able to see why a lead got a 92 and not a 40.
Lead scoring started in marketing automation: add points when a lead matches your ideal customer profile, add more when they open emails or visit the pricing page, and pass them to sales above a threshold. The number replaces gut feel with a consistent rule, and it lets a small team ignore the long tail.
There are three broad inputs. Fit scoring looks at company size, role, and industry. Behavioral scoring looks at actions such as page visits and downloads. Intent scoring looks at what the person actually says - for example, publicly asking for a tool, comparing two products, or describing a deadline. Intent is the strongest predictor when it is available, because the buyer stated the need in their own words.
On Reddit, fit and behavior data are mostly missing: you do not know someone's company or their page visits. What you do have is the text of their post. That is why Reddit lead scoring is almost entirely intent scoring, reading the language of the thread against a definition of what a good lead looks like for you.
Examples of lead scoring
- A B2B team adds 20 points for a director title, 15 for a pricing-page visit, and hands leads above 60 to sales.
- A Reddit post saying “switching off our current CRM this month, need recommendations” scores 90 for buying intent.
- A comment that mentions a category in passing - “we used a CRM at my last job” - scores 15 and is skipped.
How to score Reddit leads for intent
- 1Write down what a good lead means for you: the problem, the stage, and phrases that disqualify a post.
- 2Score each captured post or comment against that definition, and record the reason alongside the number.
- 3Work leads from the top of the score down, and review a sample of low scores each week to catch misses.
Why it matters for lead generation
Monitoring finds hundreds of matches; scoring decides which ten deserve a reply today. PluckLead scores every Reddit post and comment 0-100 against your own lead definition and shows the reason, so the queue starts with buyers instead of noise.