Contact Scoring FAQs - Online Help | Zoho Campaigns

Contact Scoring FAQ

Contact Scoring

1. How does contact scoring work in Zoho Campaigns? 

Contact scoring in Zoho Campaigns assigns scores or points to contacts based on their actions, like opening emails or clicking links. You define the scoring rules, and the system automatically updates scores as contacts engage with your campaigns. This helps you identify and focus on highly engaged contacts.

Contact scoring is automatic. You can assign different scores for various actions such as opens, clicks, bounces, and unsubscribes. You must set the score for various activities but the scoring process on the contacts is automatic.

You can assign different scores for campaign activities like opens and clicks. The scores you assign to various activities don’t need to be the same score. For example, you can assign a score of 10 for opens and 20 for clicks. Scores are updated automatically in real time according to the contact’s most recent activities.

2. How to set up contact scoring?

To setup contact scoring in your Zoho Campaigns organization:
  1. Navigate to Settings (Gear icon at the top right).
  2. Under Contacts and Customization, click Contact Scoring.
  3. Click the Enable Contact Scoring button.
AlertNote: Contact Scoring is available in the Professional plan.

3. How can the contact score be negative for a contact? 

The overall contact score can be negative for a contact depending on the actions they perform. A negative score is usually associated with negative actions. By default, the below actions will have a negative score for a contact:
  1. Received a Negative Reply
  2. Soft Bounced
  3. Hard Bounced
  4. Marked as Spam
But, this is completely dependent on how you want to score your contacts because you can edit the default scores assigned to various actions. Therefore, if you want to assign a positive score for a Soft Bounced contact (say, a score of 1), you can do that. You have the complete freedom for scoring your contacts.

For example, if you're sending a campaign for a contact and they provide only negative replies, then the score can go below zero. You must enable an option for the overall score of a contact to be negative.

4. Is contact scoring available for all plans? What else do you need to know about contact scoring? 

Contact scoring is available for all users under the Professional plan. If you’re currently in another subscription plan, you need to change to the Professional plan to access this feature.

In the roles and permissions setup, both organization and workspace admins have access to edit, reset, and enable/disable contact scoring. Other users are only allowed to view scores.

You can't view the score details under the Contact Score section in settings once the subscription is expired or canceled. However, on your subscription renewal, you can view and access contact scoring.

5. Because your business uses Contact Score extensively, can you display the Contact Score in the All Contacts view?  

Yes, it’s possible to display the contact score of your contacts in the view or page that appears as soon as you click All Contacts from the Contacts module.

To do this:
  1. Navigate to Audience -> Contacts.
  2. Click the Customize Columns icon at the far right.
  3. Search for the Contact Score column and select it.

    Displaying Contact Score as a column in the Contacts list view.

  4. If needed, drag this column to the top using the icon present to its left so it is easily visible.
  5. Click Save.
This displays the Contact Score in the All Contacts view.

6. Is there a limit on the number of resets you can do for contact scoring? 

No. You can run as many resets as you like, but once you reset, you won't be able to see past scores. Make sure every reset is necessary.

7. What are the types of contact scoring available?

Zoho Campaigns calculates six scores for every contact:
    ● Total Score — the overall value of a contact.
    ● Engagement Score — how actively a contact interacts with your campaigns.
    ● Email Score — engagement with email campaigns specifically.
    ● SMS Score — engagement with SMS campaigns specifically.
    ● WhatsApp Score — engagement with WhatsApp campaigns specifically.
    ● Fit Score — how closely a contact matches your ideal customer profile, based on attributes rather than behavior.
Every one of these six scores is available for use in filters, segments, and workflows, so you can build audiences around exactly the score that matters for a given campaign or automation.

8. You get an error when trying to filter contacts with a negative contact score. What are you doing wrong?

If you're using the Filter option to filter contacts with a negative contact score, you need to filter a bit differently.

Let’s assume that you have contacts with scores are between -40 and -45 and you want to filter them. When you use the Filter option in the Contacts list view page, you probably filter it as: Total Score -> is between -> -40 and -45. If so, you'll face an error and you won't be able to apply the filter.

Negative score filter error

Because the From score and To score are both negative, you should enter the lowest score first and the highest score next.
Idea
When you use the "is between" modifier while filtering, the value entered should always be lower value in the first box and higher value in the second box. In this scenario, -45 is the lowest score and -40 is the highest score.

The same is applicable even if you want to find contacts whose scores are between 1 and -10. -10 should be entered first, and 1 should be entered next. If you're searching for contacts whose scores are between 8 and 10, you need to enter 8 first and 10 next.
The contact's Timeline provides valuable history about the contact and its activities, right from when it was added until the present. But if you want to view the full history of a particular activity, that is possible.

Say you want to view the activities related to a contact’s contact score to understand the entire history of the score assigned to it. To do this, follow these steps:
  1. Navigate to Audience -> Contacts.
  2. Click a contact to open its detail view.
  3. Click the Timeline tab at the top.
  4. Click the Filter icon at the far-right.
  5. Select only the Score activity.

    Filtering only the contact score in the timeline of a contact.

  6. If needed, use the date filter beside the filter button to make further granular searches.
This filters the contact timeline based on a particular category.

10. Does scoring backfills past campaign activity once you enable it, or only counts activity going forward?

Once you enable contact scoring, the contacts will not be scored based on the past campaign activity that they performed. Instead, only the activities (such as open, click, reply) they perform after enabling contact scoring is recorded and they get scored accordingly.

11. For contacts you bring from another email service, do their historical opens and clicks get scored retroactively?

No, the historical opens and clicks do not get scored retroactively for the contacts you bring in from another multi-channel marketing software. The scoring will start fresh for all the contacts you add.

12. What happens to the scores if you downgrade from Professional plan and then upgrade again later?

Consider that you are using the Professional plan of Zoho Campaigns and you're actively using the contact scoring feature. When you downgrade to a lower plan, you cannot use contact scoring anymore; it will be disabled. And the feature won't function. So, even if your contacts perform activities when you are in the lower plan, the scoring will not be recorded and updated when you move to the Professional plan again.

13. Can you disable contact scoring? If so, what happens to the scores?

Once contact scoring is enabled, you cannot disable it. Hence, there is no concept of the scores being paused. But, based on the time set under the Decay Scores, your contacts' score can reduce or increase if they are inactive for a prolonged time.

14. How do you find out whether Total Score is capped at 999 independently, or whether it can exceed that if Engagement and Fit Scores are both maxed out?

Each of the three scores is capped independently. Engagement Score, Fit Score, and Total Score are each capped between -999 and 999, so Total Score can't exceed 999 even when Engagement Score and Fit Score are both at their own maximum.

15. Is scoring recalculated instantly after every activity?

Scoring happens in real time. Zoho Campaigns updates scores automatically as soon as a contact performs a scored activity, rather than at a scheduled time.

16. Can you set different decay periods for each channel?

If you want to set a faster decay for WhatsApp than email, instead of one shared setting, there isn't an option for that. You can't set separate decay periods per channel. The Decay Scores setting, with the field name Consider engagement relevant for, is a single shared period that applies to the whole Engagement Score, not to Email, SMS, and WhatsApp individually.

17. How do you know if a decay period change applies retroactively to old activity, or only to activity going forward?

When you change the decay period from, say, 1 month to 2 months, the score for your contacts will not get impacted drastically or immediately after this change. Simply, the period of the score decay calculation will change.

18. Can you weight one channel's contribution more heavily than another when calculating Engagement Score?

If you are looking for a behavior where counting a WhatsApp click as more valuable than an email click – there isn't a separate weighting multiplier, but you can achieve the same effect through point values. Each channel has its own independent set of scoring rules, so you can simply assign a higher point value to a WhatsApp click than an email click, or the other way around.

19. What happens when a contact matches two overlapping Fit Score rules at once? Do both scores stack, or does only the higher one apply?

Right now, you can configure the same Fit Score (but with a different rule name) with the same criteria. And both the fit scores will stack. Consider you have two fit score rules with the same criteria and scores as 10 and 20 respectively. If contacts satisfy this criteria, then their score will be 10 + 20 = 30. 

20. Can you preview how a new Fit Score rule would affect your existing contact base before saving it live?

It is not possible to preview how the score will get affected for your contacts when you configure a new fit score rule or when you include or modify an engagement activity for different marketing channels. 

21. Does a Fit Score rule expire automatically after a promotional period instead of running indefinitely?

Fit score rules do not have an expiration period. Once you configure a rule, it will remain active and running until you modify or delete it. 

22. Is there a limit to the number of Fit Score rules you can create?

Yes, you can create a maximum of 10 Fit Score rules and not more than that. If you want to create a new rule, you have to either edit an existing rule and include the criteria or delete a rule and create the new rule.

23. Can you identify if editing a Fit Score rule's criteria to be stricter automatically removes points from contacts who no longer qualify?

It doesn't remove points automatically. Changes to a Fit Score rule only apply to contacts who become newly eligible after the change. Contacts who already matched the rule keep the score they were already awarded, and they aren't re-scored even if they no longer meet the updated criteria.

24. What happens to a contact's score when two duplicate contact records are merged?

This scenario doesn't come up, because Zoho Campaigns doesn't have a contact merge or deduplication feature. Zoho Campaigns treats every contact record independently, so there is no contact merge behavior for a score to carry over or lose.

25. Does a contact's score resets automatically when they unsubscribe and later resubscribe?

The score of a contact is unaffected when either they unsubscribe from their end or you mark them as unsubscribed. Similarly, if you move them back to being a reachable contact or if they do it, the score will not change. But, the score can change for each contact due to the presence of Decay Scores and that cannot be stopped. 

26. Do opens and clicks that happen before a contact confirms a double opt-in still count toward their score?

If you have enabled double opt-in in your Zoho Campaigns organization, the contacts you bring in via import or manually add should have provided consent already to receive marketing communications from you. Otherwise, we suggest not to send them campaigns to prevent spamming them. Logically, your contacts cannot actually open or click a campaign if they have not yet provided consent. Hence, no scoring will be recorded.

27. Do bounced or suppressed contacts continue accumulating negative scores, or get frozen out of scoring entirely?

The scoring rules do include Soft Bounced, Hard Bounced, and Marked as Spam as scoreable activities, each with a negative default score, so a bounce or spam complaint does register as a scoring event when it happens. Once a contact reaches Bounced status, though, you can no longer send them campaigns, so in practice there is nothing further to trigger new score changes except for the Decay Scores which is applied on all the contacts. 

28. In what timezone does the decay period calculation for contacts take place?

Your contacts may be from different countries and hence they can have different time zones. But, whenever the contacts' score changes due to Decay Scores, it will happen in the time zone you have set up in your Zoho Campaigns organization.

29. Can you manually override or directly edit an individual contact's score outside of the rule based system?

There is no direct edit field for a contact's score. The only score adjustment outside the automatic rules is the workflow Score action, which can increase or decrease a contact's Fit Score as part of an automated workflow, such as after they attend a webinar. That is still rule driven rather than a manual override typed directly into a contact record.

30. How do you reset scores for just one segment of contacts instead of your entire contact base?

You cannot reset contact scores for a particular set of contacts alone. The Reset options under both the Engagement Score and Fit Score tabs cover resetting the scoring configuration, resetting all contact engagement scores, or resetting all contact fit scores. All three apply organization wide, not to a single segment.

31. Can you bulk import a starting score for contacts you're bringing in from a CSV or another platform?

When importing contacts in Zoho Campaigns, you cannot import a contact score for them as well. Contact scoring is done organically based on the activities your contacts perform on various campaigns or based on other fields. 

32. How do you restrict which non admin roles are allowed to view contact scores?

Only an Admin and a Workspace Admin can view and configure contact score under Settings. The users who do not have either of this role can only view contacts' score in the Contacts module; they cannot edit or configure contact scoring itself under Settings.

33. What happens to your scoring rules if the admin who configured them loses admin access?

The scoring rules will remain intact even if the admin's role changes to a non-admin role like Member. Say there is another admin who has changed your role from admin to a member. The scoring rules that were set up by you will not be affected.

34. Is a contact's Zoho Campaigns score visible or usable inside Zoho CRM?

Yes, it can be. In the Zoho CRM integration setup, under Sync from Zoho Campaigns to Zoho CRM, you can map a Zoho Campaigns field, including Contact Score, the contact's total engagement score, to a corresponding field in Zoho CRM. The matching field has to already exist in CRM, or you will be prompted to create it there first.

35. Are the scores shared across multiple workspaces within the same organization, or calculated separately per brand?

Contact scoring is shared across multiple workspaces within the same Zoho Campaigns organization. So, the scoring you set up for Workspace A will be present in Workspace B as well.

Only for multiple Zoho Campaigns organizations, the scoring will be independent.