About relationship scores
Updated
by
Jaspreet Bakshi
What are relationship scores?
DotAlign uses email data to calculate a relationship score for every person or company a user interacts with. You can think of the relationship score as a measure of connection strength, on a scale of 1 to 99. While there are limits as to how accurately an automated system can calculate the true strength of a relationship, the score is a handy tool that can be used to bring attention to the right people or companies.
Score types
There are four main types of scores to know about:
- Person-to-person
- Group-to-person
- Person-to-group
- Group-to-group
Person-to-person
The person-to-person score is a basic building block for all other scores. It aims to capture the current strength of a relationship between a DotAlign user and another person. This score is especially useful when comparing which team member can best help you connect with a specific person.
The main factors affecting this score are:
- how much reciprocated activity there has been between the two people
- how recently they have been in touch
You will see this score when looking at who can introduce you to a specific person, when browsing the list of people a particular team member knows, or when looking at who can best introduce you to whom in a person-oriented Analyze Leads report.
Group-to-person
The group-to-person score aims to capture how easily a group of users - a specific team, for example - could reach a given person.
The main factor affecting this score is:
- the highest known score a team member has with the person
This score is most commonly used to indicate the likelihood that some team member can help you connect with a specific person. It is also very helpful when trying to answer, "of the many Globex employees we know, which can we most easily reach?"
This score is what you see when looking at a list of all people a team knows, or all contacts at a company, for example.
Person-to-group
The person-to-group score aims to reflect how much influence a user might have with a particular group. For example, if you are trying to identify which colleague to ask about navigating a specific company, the person-to-group score will guide you.
The main factors affecting this score are:
- the number of relationships a user has with people associated with that company
- the strength of each individual relationship a user has with those contacts
- for each contact, whether they are believed to be there currently or have left the company
- each contact's seniority level at that company
- how recently each contact has been associated with that company
You will see this score when looking at which companies one of your teammates knows, or when browsing the list of introducers who can connect you with a particular company.
Group-to-group
The group-to-group score helps provide the high-level context of how much influence a group of users might have with a company or other group. It is similar to the person-to-group score, and because it factors in the best relationship anyone in a team has with each contact, is useful when trying to understand the extent to which the network of relationships between two groups is both deep and broad.
The main factors affecting this score are:
- for a group of users, the number of contacts they know who are associated with that company
- for each contact, the highest known score a team member has with the person
- for each contact, whether they are believed to be there currently or have left the company
- each contact's seniority level at that company
- how recently each contact has been associated with that company
This score is what you see when you browse a list of all the companies a team knows or when you run an Analyze Leads report for a list of companies.
FAQs
Q: The scores don’t capture everything about my relationships; are they relevant for me to use?
While there are limits as to how accurately an automated system can calculate the true strength of a relationship, the score is a handy tool that can be used to bring attention to the right people or companies. Because the scores are largely based on email and meeting traffic, plus factors such as the seniority level of each contact, they are especially useful for highlighting the activity-based relationship strength between DotAlign users and the people and companies they interact with professionally.
Q: My score with a key contact has changed by a few points; what does this mean?
Scores are largely activity-based indicators of relationship strength; fluctuations of a few points are common and will vary based on your communication patterns. The differences between a 93 and a 97 are small – perhaps a matter of a few meetings or reciprocated emails, or a slightly longer time since you’ve connected. These small differences are typically immaterial; both scores indicate strong, active relationships.
Q: What score threshold is considered “good”?
There is no specific score that is considered “good”. It depends on context, and the system has no knowledge of this context around how strong different relationships should be. For example, you will have a higher score with someone you consistently do business with than with someone you connect with every few months. That could indicate a problem if you should have similar activity levels with each person but is often entirely appropriate.
Q: How should I interpret and use scores?
Scores are useful indicators of activity-based relationship strength and are helpful when answering questions such as, “which colleagues can best give me a warm intro to Jane Gold?”, “which companies are each of my colleagues most active with?”, and “who are our best contacts at ACME, Inc.?”. They are also valuable in conjunction with other information – for example, they can help you review whether there’s a good degree of activity with a list of key accounts, and the scores can help you prioritize a list of opportunities by ease-of-reach.
