Building a Lead Scoring System with HubSpot + Clay
Step-by-step guide to building an automated lead scoring workflow that actually reflects buying intent.
Most lead scoring systems are broken. They score based on form fills and page views — not actual buying signals. Here's how we build lead scoring that works.
Why Traditional Lead Scoring Fails
HubSpot's default scoring is based on behavioral data it can see: email opens, page visits, form submissions. But these signals are noisy. An intern downloading your whitepaper gets the same score as a VP who visited your pricing page three times.
The Clay + HubSpot Approach
We use Clay to enrich leads with external signals that actually indicate buying intent, then feed those scores into HubSpot.
Signal 1 — Hiring Patterns: If a company is hiring for roles your product serves, they're likely in a buying cycle. Clay can pull job postings and flag relevant ones.
Signal 2 — Tech Stack Changes: Companies adopting or dropping complementary tools are prime targets. Clay's technographic enrichment catches these shifts.
Signal 3 — Funding Events: Recently funded companies have budget and urgency. Clay monitors funding announcements and flags them automatically.
Signal 4 — Engagement Recency: Combine Clay's external signals with HubSpot's behavioral data for a composite score.
Implementation
- Set up a Clay table that runs daily on your HubSpot contacts
- Create columns for each buying signal
- Build a weighted scoring formula (we typically weight hiring 30%, tech stack 25%, funding 25%, engagement 20%)
- Push the composite score back to HubSpot via the native integration
- Create HubSpot workflows that route high-score leads to reps immediately
Results
Our clients typically see a 3x improvement in SQL-to-opportunity conversion after implementing signal-based scoring versus traditional behavioral scoring alone.