Identify your Perfect Leads with AI-Powered Lead Scoring

Lead scoring data helps sellers spend their time on the conversations that matter.

And if it’s AI-powered data delivered to you effortlessly? That’s as good as money in your pocket.

Earlier this year, the Apollo AI writing assistant was introduced and now we’re eager to share our newest AI lead scoring feature that helps go-to-market teams supercharge how they find the perfect leads and boost prospecting efficiency.

In this article, we'll dive into how AI improves lead scoring, the benefits it brings, and how Apollo’s new AI-generated scoring models win sellers more conversations and opportunities.

Our AI-generated scoring models are currently available to a selected number of customers, but we have ambitious plans to make them more widely available – which can be facilitated by you and your usage of Apollo. Read on to learn what you can do! 

More precise prospecting with AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the secret sauce behind cutting-edge prospecting tools, including scoring models. With advanced machine learning algorithms, these models can crunch vast amounts of data and deliver precise lead scores that tell sales teams who is best-fit and most likely to buy.

Defining ICPs and building buyer personas is an iterative, challenging journey that can take months or years. For small businesses, it involves multiple pivots as you find the best product-market fit. And as time goes on ICPs and personas shift as your product and service evolve which will change how you should be prioritizing your leads.

AI-generated lead scoring changes that.

AI models synthesize all your data and are able to adapt as your ICPs and personas shift—all without you lifting a finger. 

These models analyze patterns and trends within your customer interactions, sales history, and even social media engagement to constantly refine the understanding of your target audience. Then, automatically update lead scores based on these insights, ensuring that your sales efforts are always aligned with the most current and relevant customer profiles. 

No more manual tweaks or wasting time – just efficient lead prioritization and more conversions.

Benefits of AI-generated scoring vs manual scoring 

AI-generated scoring offers significant advantages over traditional manual methods in lead scoring. Here’s why:

• Humans make errors. Algorithms can analyze swaths of data and spot patterns more quickly and accurately than any human salesperson. You can trust that the recommendations coming from AI are reliable and error-free. 
• AI is continually optimizing. One of the most powerful use cases for AI lead scoring is that your scoring models stay evergreen. Algorithms are continuously learning and improving with time and as more data rolls in and trends change, scoring models auto-adjust themselves along with your ICP.
• AI is always on. AI operates continuously, providing up-to-date insights 24/7. It helps you stay on top of the latest opportunities, without the constraints of human work hours enhancing productivity without overextending our resources.
• AI increases confidence in decision-making. AI-powered lead scores are instantaneous and rank your leads based on the freshest data available. This means sellers can review their prospect lists and make informed decisions with certainty, rather than relying on intuition. This data-driven approach ensures that every outreach is grounded in solid information

Introducing Apollo Scores

With over 270M people and 73M companies, Apollo has the world's largest, most accurate B2B database. With that many potential prospects, how do you determine who to prioritize and who has the highest potential to convert?

That’s where Apollo’s AI-generated Scores come in! 

Apollo Scores combines the power of AI with your data history to help you prioritize the best-fit leads, maximize team efficiency, and convert the most valuable customers. Experience easy score setup, transparency into score details, and real-time, data-backed scores.

How do Apollo’s AI-generated scores work?

Our AI model delves deep into your team's past prospecting efforts by tapping into your contact and account stage data history in Apollo. It keenly identifies the contact and account features that drove your previous successes, highlighting the critical criteria of your ideal customer and what matters most to your team. 

We then assess the relative importance of these criteria, assigning each one a weight for a precise ranking. The result? An AI auto-generated scoring model that empowers you to swiftly spot prospects with the highest potential for success!

But that's not all! We're constantly on the lookout for ways to enhance your prospecting journey. To keep your AI-generated scoring model continuously optimized we regularly refresh it based on your Apollo data history. 

So, as you continue prospecting and updating contact and account stages, your AI-generated auto-scores level up, propelling you toward even better prospecting results! The golden rule? The data you put in directly affects the quality you get out.

What data are the AI-generated scores being trained on?

In order for Apollo to automatically generate a scoring model for you using AI, we need enough information about what has worked well for you in your prospecting in the past and what could have been better.

In this early version of our AI model for lead scoring, we look at the account and contact stages. As we make the AI model more sophisticated, additional data input and data history from your Apollo account will be taken into account. 

To generate an AI scoring model for companies, we need to see at least:

• a number of accounts that are in a succeeded stage 
• and a number of accounts that are in a not succeeded stage 
• or have been in an in progress stage for over 30 days

In Apollo, you can either use the stages that we provide or create your own account and contact stages. Even when creating your own stage, each stage, regardless of the stage name, would go under one of these 3 categories: Succeeded, In Progress, or Not Succeeded.

If you can’t find auto-score models for contact and accounts here, it means that we didn’t have enough data history from your Apollo account in order to create those for you. 

Now, it’s not too late to get started! We want to make this available to as many of our customers as we can (note. this is a professional and custom plan-only feature), so if you’re already actively prospecting in Apollo, make sure you keep your contact and account stages up-to-date – and you do so by either: 

1. Manually update contact and account stages one at a time
2. Bulk update contact and account stages 
3. Auto-update contact and account stages using plays
4. Connect your CRM and sync over your contact and account stages to Apollo
   1. Salesforce CRM users can use “Status” picklist field and map to the Apollo stages 
   2. HubSpot CRM users can use “Lifecycle stage” or “Lead status” fields and map to the Apollo stages 

When can I get access to AI-generated scores?

We regularly check for when new customers have enough data updated under their contact and account stages in Apollo in order to make available AI-generated scores for you. 

You can always go to scores here, to see if you have any new scoring models that Apollo has created for you – that’s your AI-generated scores right there! 

With AI as their ally, sales teams can confidently conquer more customers and hit their quotas!

 

In the meantime, quickly build your own scoring model in less than 5 minutes by leveraging Apollo's industry-leading data. Check out our guide to creating your first lead-scoring model! 

If you don’t have an Apollo account and want access to this new feature, sign up for free here.