If your HubSpot engagement score barely moves, check whether form submissions are in it. It's common to build the fit score from the sales form's answers and the engagement score from page views and email opens, and leave the submission itself out of engagement. That skips the strongest action a lead takes. Add form submissions as engagement events, weight them above visits, and cap the light signals.
A marketer at a B2B company that sells to hospitality venues brought this to a mentoring call. They'd split HubSpot lead scoring into fit and engagement. Fit used the talk-to-sales form: business type, number of venues, how often they'd use the product, how urgent the need was, and whether the email was on a business domain. After a week of monitoring, fit looked right. Engagement was very low, and they weren't sure why.
Why the engagement score stays flat
HubSpot builds the two scores from different data. Fit scores use property values, such as company size or industry. Engagement scores use events, such as visiting your website, clicking a CTA or opening a marketing email.
Their engagement score counted visits to main pages and the blog, ad interactions and marketing email opens. The form's answers were in the fit score, but the act of submitting the form wasn't scored as engagement at all. Someone who arrived from an ad and filled in the sales form got a few points for the visit and nothing for the strongest action on the site.
There's a tracking side too. Fit gets its data straight from the form fields. Engagement relies on the browser sending activity to HubSpot, and in our experience some of that goes missing when people use blockers or decline cookies. That's one more reason not to lean on page views alone.
How we'd rebuild it
- Add form submission events. In the engagement score, add event criteria for form submissions and filter by form name, so each form can be scored on its own.
- Weight by intent. Points only mean something relative to each other. With a page visit at 5, a sales form at 15 was about right. If visits were 15, the form should be closer to 30. A pricing page visit should beat a product page visit, and a content download should score below a talk-to-sales form.
- Cap each group. HubSpot lets you set a limit on each event group, and once a record hits it, that group adds no more. Without one, someone who browses 10 pages can score as high as someone who asked for a call. On the call, the marketer capped web visits at 30 and set the other groups, forms, emails and ads, so the caps added up to 100.
- Test before turning it on. HubSpot lets you test the score on a single record and preview the score distribution across records first.
HubSpot's own guidance points the same way. Its example limits a group of awareness events, such as page visits, and allows more points for a group of conversion events, such as sales form submissions and meetings.
Map it to the buying journey
Before setting points, list every event you can track and put them in the order a buyer moves through them, from first visit to asking for a call. The later the step, the more points it earns. Our own engagement scores usually rely on three signals, ads, forms and emails, and give general web visits little weight unless they're demo or trial activity.
Once the score works, the next step is sending the leads it flags to your ad platforms. See sending HubSpot lifecycle stages to your ad platforms.
The takeaways
- Fit scores use property values. Engagement scores use events. Form answers alone don't count as engagement.
- Add form submissions to the engagement score as events, filtered by form name.
- Set points relative to each other: a sales form well above a visit, a download below a sales form.
- Use group limits so repeat page views can't fill the score.
- Test on a record and preview the distribution before you turn the score on.
Common questions
What's the difference between a fit score and an engagement score in HubSpot?
HubSpot's fit scores qualify records on property values, such as job title, company size or industry. Engagement scores qualify them on actions, such as visiting your website, clicking a CTA or opening a marketing email. A combined score includes both and also keeps the separate fit and engagement values.
Why is my HubSpot engagement score so low?
Check what the score counts. If it only scores page views, ad interactions and email opens, and form submissions sit in the fit score as answers, the strongest action a lead takes isn't scored as engagement at all. Some web activity also goes untracked when people block tracking or decline cookies, while form answers still arrive.
How many points should a form submission get?
There's no fixed number, because points only mean something relative to each other. We'd give a sales form two to three times a page visit (15 if a visit is 5, 30 if a visit is 15), and keep content downloads below sales forms. HubSpot's own example caps awareness events like page visits and allows more points for sales form submissions and meetings.
What does a group limit do in HubSpot lead scoring?
It caps how many points one group of events or properties can add to or subtract from the score. Once a record reaches the group's limit, that group adds no more. All group limits count toward the overall score limit, which defaults to a maximum of 100.
Which HubSpot plans include lead scoring?
HubSpot's lead scoring tool is available with Marketing Hub or Sales Hub Professional and Enterprise. Contact scores need Marketing Hub and deal scores need Sales Hub, and the types and number of scores depend on your subscription.