How are scores calculated?

Score calculations

Ortto’s Scoring feature lets you design a personalized scoring system to evaluate contacts' actions and characteristics using your key metrics. Here, we clarify how scores are calculated based on your chosen method during setup.

• Normalized: An individual contact’s score is compared against another contact’s 95th percentile score.
• Whole number: An individual contact’s score is determined by their actions according to the set criteria, without comparison to other contacts.

Score system

For a normalized score in your CDP, each person receives a 5-point score represented by emojis, where 5 emojis signify the highest score and 1 emoji represents the lowest. Conversely, a whole number score is indicated by a numerical value. Both score types are calculated over the specified half-life period.

Calculation process

In the calculation process, activities from the older half of the half-life period contribute half the points, while activities from the more recent half contribute full points. For instance, in a 30-day half-life period, a Clicked email activity from 3 weeks ago might be worth 125 points, whereas one from 2 days ago is worth 250 points.

However, filter criteria retain their full points throughout the half-life period without depreciation. For example, in the same 30-day period, a filter criteria like Clicked email has occurred would be worth 250 points whether it happened 3 weeks ago or 2 days ago.

Activity vs filter criteria

Activities criteria accumulate points each time the activity occurs, whereas filter criteria contribute points only once, upon meeting the criteria. If filter criteria are no longer met (switch from true to false), the points added for that criteria will be subtracted in the subsequent calculation cycle.

See the normalized and whole number score calculations for an illustrated example.

Normalized score calculation

Normalized score is computed based on the maximum person value rather than the maximum available points value. Outliers are then eliminated, retaining only the 95th percentile, and the score is calculated relative to this value. Thus, an individual contact’s score is compared against the highest (95th percentile) score among existing contacts.

The calculation for normalized scores is as follows:

total points amassed by the user (points per activity x number of activity occurrences, for each activity) / total possible points (95th percentile score)

The result is a percentage, which corresponds to the score represented by 1 to 5 icons:

• 0% (no score) receives 0 icons,
• 1—​19% receives 1 icon,
• 20—​39% receives 2 icons,
• 40—​59% receives 3 icons,
• 60—​79% receives 4 icons, and
• 80%+ receives 5 icons.

Example 1. A contact’s normalized score calculation

Say your scoring activities are configured like this:

Contact activity within recent half-life period:

• Field values:
  • Industry: Retail (+50 points)
  • Country: United States (+30 points)
• Activities:
  • Clicked email with email name "New products: July" (+20 points)
  • Clicked email with email name "New products: July" (+20 points)
  • Trial expired occurred ( -50 points)

The contact’s score is calculated as follows:

• 1 field value at +50 points = 50
• 1 field value at +30 points = 80
• 2 clicks at +20 points each = 120 (The Clicked email activity receives points twice because it's an activity criteria. If Clicked email were a filter criteria, it would count only once when met.)
• 1 activity at -50 points = 70 (total individual contact score)

1. All contacts who meet the score criteria have their scores calculated, and we find the 95th percentile score. In this example, the 95th percentile score is 200.
2. We then calculate this contact against the highest contact score: 70 (total individual contact points) / 200 (95th percentile score) = 0.35
3. The contact’s score is 35% which corresponds to 2 icons.

Whole number score calculation

A whole number score is determined by the maximum available points value rather than the maximum person value. Consequently, an individual contact’s score is computed against the scoring criteria you establish, resulting in a whole number score.

The calculation for a whole number scores is as follows:

points per activity x number of activity occurrences

The result of this calculation is a whole number value.

Example 2. A contact’s whole number score calculation

Say your scoring activities are configured like this:

Contact's activity and score calculation:

• Field values:
  • Industry: Retail (+50 points)
  • Country: United States (+30 points)
• Activities:
  • Clicked email with email name "New products: July" (+20 points)
  • Clicked email with email name "New products: July" (+20 points)
  • Trial expired occurred ( -50 points)

The contact’s score is calculated as follows:

• 1 field value at +50 points = 50
• 1 field value at +30 points = 80
• 2 clicks at +20 points each = 120 (This Clicked email activity gets points added twice because it is an activity criteria. If Clicked email had been created as a filter criteria, it would only count once, when met.)
• 1 activity at -50 points = 70
• The contact’s score is 70.