How to Use Marketo to Score Leads and Hand Them to Sales

The short answer: scoring, routing and alerts and the CRM sync are ticked on Growth, Adobe's smallest package, at 10 users and 20,000 API calls a day, so build the scoring program there before anyone sells you a tier for it (pricing page, checked on 5 November 2026); agree the hand-off threshold with sales, put the point values in score tokens inside one operational program, build one smart campaign per signal with a Change Score step, add the demographic campaign, alert the owner when the score crosses the line, push a test record through, and connect Claude to Adobe's MCP server to read the queue each week while a person decides who goes to sales.

Disclosure: I may earn a commission through some links on this site. It does not change what this page says.

A score is a promise to sales: when this number crosses that line, the lead is worth a call. Most scoring models fail at the promise, not the arithmetic: marketing sets the line alone, sales ignores the alerts, and six months later nobody trusts the field. Adobe's own guide starts with the agreement, and so does this page. What Marketo is and costs is in the Marketo glossary entry.

Before you start:

• The arithmetic of the line. For example, with the sample values in Adobe's guide, a demo request is +50, a tradeshow visit +15 and a white paper +5, so a threshold of 100 is reached by one demo request, one tradeshow and seven white papers, 50 + 15 + (7 x 5) = 100, and by two demo requests alone. Decide now whether two forms with no company data should reach sales; if not, the demographic score has to hold them back.
• Closed deals from the CRM. Adobe builds the demographic model from closed-won and closed-lost opportunities with sales in the room, mapped to fields that exist in your instance (person scoring guide).
• A baseline. From the CRM, take the share of marketing leads sales accepted and the share that became an opportunity over the last two quarters. The program is judged against those two numbers.
• Admin access, or an administrator to create the fields, tokens and API user; each is a separate grant (role permissions).

1. Agree the signals and the line with sales

Adobe's guide says to "work with your sales team to determine which activities indicate a lead has the intent to purchase", to list the activities that show no interest as well, and to set the threshold high enough that several touchpoints are needed, because "one email open is unlikely to be a sufficient qualifier" (person scoring guide). Then do the same for fit: industry, company size, title and department, with positive points for closed-won traits and negative points for poor fit; Adobe's example is aerospace +10, manufacturing +5 and fewer than 10 employees -10. Two tables, written down. They become tokens.

2. Create the scoring program and its tokens

Create a Default program as the operational home; Default is the type for anything that is not an event, an engagement stream or a single email (programs guide). On its My Tokens tab, add one Score token per signal, named after the signal, such as {{my.Demo Request}} with the value 50; Score is the token type made for "the change score flow step", and a token created in a folder above is inherited by every program below it and can be overridden in one of them (tokens guide). Adobe's guide keeps a central program that cannot be changed locally beside a local copy with configurable scores.

3. One smart campaign per behavioural signal

Create a smart campaign per signal. Its smart list uses a trigger, which fires the flow "the moment someone does something", such as filling out the demo form; its flow holds a Change Score step on the Person Score field with the token as the change (smart campaigns guide, Change Score guide). Decide per signal whether it scores once (a form) or every time (a webinar attended), keep the two sets mutually exclusive, and if you also keep a separate Behavior Score field, make the same change in both flow steps so the totals stay equal (person scoring guide).

4. The demographic campaign, as a batch

Fit is not an action, so this smart list uses filters, which collect everyone who qualifies at the time the campaign runs, and a schedule that repeats (smart campaigns guide). Score each trait once only; the negative values belong here.

5. Hand off at the threshold

Build a trigger campaign on the score changing, with a filter for Person Score at or above the line, and a flow that alerts the lead owner, which Adobe's guide lists as the last implementation step (person scoring guide). The Salesforce sync then carries the person across: each cycle runs, pauses for 5 minutes and runs again; leads, contacts and Salesforce campaigns move both ways; and only the data the sync user's credentials can reach is included (Salesforce sync guide).

6. Test with one record

Submit a test record through the demo form and check its score in the database, as Adobe's guide does, then check that the alert reached the owner. Before any batch campaign runs, set the restriction on smart campaign size that Adobe's admin checklist recommends "to prevent accidentally emailing your whole database" (admin checklist).

7. Let Claude read the queue, and a person decide

Adobe's MCP server at https://marketo-mcp.adobe.io/mcp turns an AI client's requests into Marketo REST API calls, authenticated with a client ID, a client secret and the Munchkin ID in request headers; the documented clients include Claude Desktop, Claude Code and Cursor (MCP server guide). Create a dedicated API user with its own role and only the permissions required, as Adobe advises, and connect a sandbox first.

Each Monday, ask: "List the people whose Person Score crossed 100 this week, with company, title and lead owner, and tell me which of them are not yet in the MQL list." The agent reads and drafts the hand-off note. The human check: a person reviews that list before any lead is added or alerted, and the API user holds no write permission; Adobe's operations page says "Some operations that change or delete data require confirmation and additional access", and scheduling smart campaigns is not supported with client credentials (MCP operations).

Every MCP request, every webhook call and every CRM sync draws from the same allowance, 20,000 API calls a day on Growth and 50,000 from Select up (pricing page), so a busy hand-off is also the moment Adobe's grid points one package higher; the allowance is the dial Adobe turns, not the feature list.

8. Review the scores against the baseline

Adobe's instruction is to "Continuously review and adjust scores and thresholds as you gather more data" (person scoring guide). Each quarter, put the acceptance rate and the opportunity rate beside the baseline: fewer accepted means the line moved the wrong way; more accepted and fewer converted means the demographic table is too generous. If the hand-off keeps failing after the scores are right, the problem is the two teams rather than the tool, and a one-week review like the Startup Fixer covers it.

What Adobe's docs flag

• Moving a smart campaign to another program. Any smart list or flow step that references the original program has to be updated by hand (smart campaigns guide).
• Once and every time, mixed. A signal that scores both ways double-counts; keep the lists exclusive (person scoring guide).
• No size restriction on smart campaigns. A filter with a typo selects the database (admin checklist).

FAQ

Do I need Salesforce to use Marketo?

No. The native integration covers Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics and Veeva on every package (pricing page); with any other CRM, the REST API is the route (developer guide).

Can Claude change a score through the MCP server?

Only with an API user that has write access, and even then Adobe's operations page says changes and deletions require confirmation and additional access (MCP operations). For reading the queue, give it none.

Why does Person Score not equal Behavior Score plus Demographic Score?

A campaign changed one field and not the other; Adobe's guide requires the same update in both flow steps (person scoring guide).