Intro to Engagement Minutes

What you’ll learn

This playbook explains how Demandbase Engagement Minutes—our way of scoring activity to measure engagement—work. You’ll learn how to track engagement at both the person and account levels, assign scores to important actions, and customize your scoring to fit your go-to-market (GTM) strategy. By the end of this playbook, you’ll:

• Understand the differences between Engagement Minutes and traditional lead scoring.
• Apply best practices for categorizing and measuring engagement across sales, marketing, and other teams.
• Set up Engagement Minute scoring models tailored to your CRM and MAP integrations.
• Use scoring methods like assumed and implied engagement to capture key customer behaviors.

Why is this important?

Traditional lead scoring doesn’t capture account-level engagement and overlooks important signals like anonymous web visits and intent data. It also lacks recency; traditional scoring shows a total number, while Engagement Minutes are always tied to a specific time frame, like the last 7 days or last 3 months. By including these missing signals and addressing the recency gap, Engagement Minutes give B2B teams more accurate and actionable insights. It’s also easier to explain that an account spent an estimated amount of time with your brand during a set period, rather than assigning it a vague score.

The benefits of implementing Engagement Minutes include:

• More in-depth engagement signals by including both known and anonymous activities
• Visibility into aggregated account-level engagement for identifying where an Account is in its buyer’s journey
• Faster, smarter decision-making using real-time, contextualized engagement data.
• Providing recency with scores brings a story into the changes of engagement.

What you need to get started

Before you begin, ensure you have the following prerequisites in place to effectively configure Engagement Minutes:

• Technology
  • A CRM integrated with Demandbase (e.g., Salesforce, Dynamics, or HubSpot).
  • A Marketing Automation Platform (MAP), such as Marketo, HubSpot, Eloqua, or Pardot, connected to Demandbase.
• Intent keywords setup
  • Demandbase intent keywords configured for data capture.
  • Optional: Third-party intent providers integrated with Demandbase (G2, TrustRadius, TechTarget, Bombora).
• CRM and MAP data alignment
  • Clean and standardized program/campaign names, statuses, and fields between your CRM and MAP.
  • Operational processes to track both marketing and sales activities.
• Team coordination
  • Alignment across sales, marketing, and operations teams on engagement goals and expectations.

Step-by-step playbook

Part 1: What are Engagement Minutes?

Engagement Minutes offer a complete, time-based way to measure engagement at both the individual and account levels. Unlike traditional lead scoring, which focuses primarily on people and known activity, Engagement Minutes give you a broader view. They include anonymous web visits, third-party intent signals, and the timing of activity, helping you understand not just who is engaging, but how recently and how meaningfully.

Key components of Engagement Minutes

1. Type of engagement
   Activities involving Engagement Minutes can be grouped into categories like marketing, sales, or even custom segments such as product or region. This helps you see which department an account or individual is interacting with. Unlike MAPs, where this kind of segmentation can be complex or manual, Demandbase makes it easy with a simple rule that segments all activities.
2. Time periods of engagement
   Instead of relying on a running total, you track Engagement Minutes over set timeframes like one week, one month, or one year. This helps you spot trends, spikes, or drop-offs in engagement. For example, analyzing changes in Engagement Minutes over the past month versus six months can reveal whether interest in a product is building or waning.
3. Activity-based assignment
   Activities are assigned Engagement Minutes based on their estimated or implied value. For instance, visiting a high-value webpage may earn a different score than attending a webinar. This granular approach allows organizations to prioritize activities that matter most during the customer buying cycle.

Why Engagement Minutes outshine traditional lead scoring

Traditional lead scoring often causes confusion. For example, if a salesperson sees that a lead now has a score of 80, there’s usually no context. That score could reflect recent strong interest, or it could be the remnants of a higher score that has been decreased via an arbitrary score decaying mechanism.

Engagement Minutes solve this by always tying activities to a specific time period at both the individual and account levels. This gives sales and marketing a clearer, more accurate picture of engagement they can act on.

Additional differentiators include:

• Account-wide scoring
  Engagement Minutes aggregate scores from all individuals within an account. This approach makes it easier to identify trends across buying committees, not just the behaviors of a single lead.
• Known & anonymous activities
  Activities such as anonymous web visits and third-party intent, which are typically excluded in lead scoring, are critical engagement indicators and are included in this model, as well as the traditional known activities.
• Scoring decay
  Traditional lead scoring models rarely have an objective way to decay their scores, which means a user determines a methodology. Since Engagement Minutes are always referred to in relation to a time period, such as 1 month, these scores naturally decay as they move outside of that time period.
• Score customization
  Being able to identify engagement through activities is crucial, but with complex go-to-market strategies, multiple products or business units, many organizations require the need for more specificity in their scoring. Customizable Engagement Minutes are easily configurable when compared to customized lead scoring.
• Scoring recalculations
  When making updates to traditional lead scoring models, those changes only happen from that day forward. When Engagement Minutes assignments are changed, all the historical data is updated to ensure consistency across your platforms.

By understanding these aspects, businesses can transform Engagement Minutes into strategic drivers for prioritizing accounts and opportunities.

Part 2: Configuring Engagement Minute Scoring

Step 1: Identify activities

Once your MAP and CRM are integrated with DB1M, you can then identify which activities are available to be assigned Engagement Minutes. Below, we have listed out all of the activities by MAP, CRM, and those provided by Demandbase.

• Marketing Automation Platforms
  • Marketo
    • Program Memberships: Program Name and Member Status
    • Interesting Moments: Pulls in Type and Description
    • Click Email: Person clicked any link in a specific email sent by Marketo
    • Click Link: Person clicked a link on a webpage tracked by Marketo
    • Fills Out Form: Person filled out a form hosted by Marketo
    • Open Sales Email: Person opened an email sent from Marketo Sales Insight
    • Click Sales Email: Person clicked a link from an email sent from Marketo Sales Insight
    • Visit Webpage: Person visited a webpage tracked by Marketo
  • HubSpot
    • Email Open: Person opens an email sent by Hubspot
    • Email Click: Person clicks a link in an email sent by Hubspot
    • Email Forward: Person forwards an email sent by Hubspot
    • Email Print: Person prints an email sent by Hubspot
    • Form Submit: Person filled out a form hosted by Hubspot
    • Web Page Visit: Person visited a webpage tracked by Hubspot
  • Eloqua
    • Email Open: Person opens an email sent by Eloqua
    • Email Clickthrough: Person clicks a link in an email sent by Eloqua
    • Form Submit: Person filled out a form hosted by Eloqua
    • Page View: Person visited a webpage tracked by Eloqua
  • Pardot
    • Page View: Person visits a web page tracked by Pardot
    • Email Open: Person opens an email sent by Pardot
    • Email Click: Person clicks a link in an email sent by Pardot
    • Registered for Webinar: Person registers for a webinar via the Pardot Webinar Connector
    • Attended Webinar: Person attended a webinar via the Pardot Webinar Connector
    • Email Click (Third Party): Person clicks a link from an email with Pardot-specific tracking parameters
    • Form Success: Person filled out a form hosted by Pardot
    • Event Registered: Person registered for an event tracked by Pardot
    • Event Checked In: Person attends an event tracked by Pardot
    • Pardot Click: Person clicks on a page tracked by Pardot
    • View File: Person views a file hosted by Pardot
    • View Form: Person views a form on a page hosted by Pardot
    • View Landing Page: Person views a page hosted by Pardot
    • Video View: Person views a video hosted on a page hosted by Pardot
    • Video Conversion: Person converts on a video CTA hosted by Pardot
    • Video View Watched (> 75% Watched): Person views more than 75% of a video hosted on a page hosted by Pardot
• CRMs
  • Salesforce CRM
    • Campaign Members
    • Tasks
    • Events
  • Dynamics CRM
    • Campaign Members
    • Activity
    • Appointment
    • Email
    • Meeting
    • Phone Call
    • Task
  • HubSpot CRM
    • Engagement Call
    • Engagement Communication
    • Engagement Email
    • Engagement Meeting
    • Engagement Note
    • Engagement Task
• Demandbase
  • Anonymous Page Visits
  • 3rd Party Intent
  • Demandbase Intent (Keyword Intent, Geo Keyword Intent, Trending Intent)
  • Integrated Partner Intent (TechTarget, TrustRadius, Bombora, etc.)
  • Custom Uploaded Intent via CSV
  • Email Tracking (Gmail or Outlook)

Step 2: Identify marketing programs by MAP & CRM

Every organization uses a different combination of CRM and MAP systems, and each tracks marketing programs in its own way. To help you track engagement effectively, DB1 supports multiple CRM and MAP integration options.

Below, you’ll find the different integration variations available in DB1. Each variation has its own set of best practices when it comes to configuring Engagement Minutes for Marketing Programs.

Marketo & Salesforce

• In Settings > Company Settings, you’ll need to choose whether to primarily score Marketo Programs or Salesforce (SFDC) Campaigns. Because Marketo can sync with SFDC, setting this preference helps prevent duplicate scoring between the two systems.
• However, you can still score both Marketo Programs and SFDC Campaigns, as long as they are not synced together within Marketo.
• We don’t recommend assigning Engagement Minutes to Marketo Form Fills. Since these typically feed into either Marketo Programs or SFDC Campaigns, scoring them separately could lead to duplicate counts. The same logic applies if you’re thinking about scoring Marketo Interesting Moments.
• Instead, we recommend scoring based on SFDC Campaigns for two reasons:
  • When deduping people records in bulk, the Marketo-to-SFDC sync may update Program/Campaign activity before the records merge; this can cause Engagement Minutes to be double-counted.
  • Demandbase can read custom fields on SFDC Campaign Members, giving you more flexibility for reporting and analysis. Demandbase can not read custom fields on Marketo Program Members.
• Regardless of which you choose, the primary fields needed for each option are listed below:
  • Marketo Programs
    • Program Name
    • Channel
    • Program Member Status
  • SFDC Campaigns
    • Campaign Name
    • Campaign Type
    • Campaign Member Status

Marketo & Dynamics

• Marketo and Dynamics do not have a direct connection between Marketo Program to Dynamics Campaign, and due to this, we need to be careful how we assign Engagement Minutes to these objects to ensure no duplicate scoring occurs.
• We recommend choosing to assign Engagement Minutes to either Marketo Programs or Dynamics Campaigns only.
• It is recommended not to assign Engagement Minutes to Marketo Form Fills, since the assumption is that those feed into either Marketo Programs or Dynamics Campaigns, which would create duplicate scoring. This thought process is also similar if you wish to score Marketo Interesting Moments.
• Regardless of which you choose, the primary fields needed for each option are listed below.
  • Marketo Programs
    • Program Name
    • Channel
    • Program Member Status
  • Dynamics Campaigns
    • Campaign Name
    • Campaign Type
    • Campaign Member Response Code

Marketo & HubSpot CRM

• Since HubSpot CRM does not have the concept of a Campaign, we recommend utilizing Marketo Programs to capture all your program activities.
• It is recommended not to assign Engagement Minutes to Marketo Form Fills, since the assumption is that those feed into Marketo Programs, which would create duplicate scoring. This thought process is also similar if you wish to score Marketo Interesting Moments.
• For utilizing Marketo Programs, the primary fields needed are listed below.
  • Program Name
  • Channel
  • Program Member Status

Eloqua, Pardot, or HubSpot MAP & Salesforce or Dynamics

• All three MAPs listed here do not have the concept of a Marketing Program similar to Marketo, and due to this, it is recommended to utilize either Salesforce or Dynamics Campaigns for assigning Engagement Minutes to marketing programs.
• While all of these MAPs have form fill activities, they most likely would be duplicates of the campaign they relate to, and you will not be able to identify progressive activities for events or webinars with statuses such as Registered, Attended, or No Show.
• Regardless of which you choose, the primary fields needed for each option are listed below.
  • SFDC Campaigns
    • Campaign Name
    • Campaign Type
    • Campaign Member Status
  • Dynamics Campaigns
    • Campaign Name
    • Campaign Type
    • Campaign Member Response Code

Eloqua, Pardot, or HubSpot MAP & HubSpot CRM

• All three MAPs listed here do not have the concept of a Marketing Program, and HubSpot CRM does not have the concept of a Campaign. Due to this, we must utilize Form Submission activities.
• While all of these MAPs have form fill activities, you will not be able to identify progressional activities for events or webinars with statuses such as Registered, Attended, or No Show.
• Due to the restriction of using only form fills, we recommend that you review all the forms you have in place today to ensure you are the right architecture to score forms differently, given what those forms represent. For example, you might want to assign a lower amount of Engagement Minutes to a webinar registration form than you would to a demo request form.
• Review your Form Name in your MAP, as this will be the way to differentiate scoring.

Step 3: Choose a scoring methodology

• As with any scoring mechanism, we do not just want to assign things subjectively. Engagement Minutes, while not tracking the actual time spent, are designed to help estimate the time someone has or will spend with your organization.
• This section will explain 5 different methodologies to use when assigning Engagement Minutes. You most likely will use various combinations of these methodologies across your engagement minute assignments.
  • Assumed Time Spent
    • Assumed Time Spent is a way to estimate how long someone is likely to spend on an activity, even though you don’t have the exact data.
      For example, if someone attends a webinar that lasts 20–45 minutes, you might assume they stayed for about 25 minutes and assign 25 Engagement Minutes. It’s about using your best judgment to assign a realistic amount of engagement time to an activity based on its typical duration.
  • Implied Time to Spend
    • The Implied Time to Spend methodology allows you to assume how much time someone plans to spend with your organization. Actions like filling out a Demo, Pricing, or Trial Request form only take a minute, but they imply the person will spend 30–60 minutes in a sales conversation. This is why we recommend assigning these activities higher Engagement Minutes, based on the time they imply to spend in the future, not just the time they actually spent.
  • Progressional Statuses
    • Progressional Statuses are used in programs where a person’s status changes as they move through the experience, like moving from “Registered” to “Attended” in a webinar, or from “Registered” to “Certified” in a training program.
    • When assigning Engagement Minutes to these statuses, the points aren’t added up; they get replaced as someone progresses. For example, if “Registered” is worth 5 points and “Attended” is worth 25, someone who moves from “Registered” to “Attended” will end up with 25 points total, not 30.
    • To make sure people who don’t progress (like “No Show”) still get credit for their initial action, it’s best to group early statuses like “Registered” with any potential negative outcomes like “No Show.” That way, they keep their original points, but don’t get more if they don’t fully engage.
  • Progressional Statuses – Minimum Activity Scoring
    • When scoring programs like webinars or events, people often take smaller actions, such as registering, before their final status (such as Attended or No Show) is known. We still want to give credit for that initial step, even though it’s not the final outcome.
    • That’s where a Minimum Activity Score comes in. Most companies assign a score of 5 Engagement Minutes for registration, since filling out the form takes effort and shows interest. The person had to find the form through an email, ad, search, or your website, and they’re signaling they plan to spend more time with the program. This ensures early engagement is captured and scored meaningfully.
  • Maximum Program Score
    • Not all programs are equal. Attending a webinar is valuable, but submitting a demo request shows even stronger interest and higher value to your team.
    • Even though we usually score based on Assumed or Implied Time, some actions are so important that they should have a Maximum Program Score to ensure they significantly boost a person’s or account’s engagement.
    • These high-value actions, like demo requests, pricing inquiries, contact us forms, trial requests, and course completions, are great examples. You likely won’t have many of these, but they should stand out in your engagement minute model.
    • A best practice: create two levels of Maximum Program Scores, one for Implied Time programs (e.g., demo forms), and one for Assumed Time programs (e.g., training courses or webinars). This helps keep your scoring both fair and meaningful across different types of engagement.

Step 4: Segment activities by department

Demandbase pulls in both marketing and sales activities from your other systems, but because these serve different purposes, it’s important to keep them separate. In the Database section of DB1M, you can easily do this by using the built-in activity segment called Sales Engagement vs. Marketing Engagement.

• Marketing activities: The activities available will be dependent on which MAP and CRM you have connected to DB1. Typically, they include activities from people and accounts that indicate engagement with marketing programs, your website, and third-party intent such as event attendance, web visits, and intent signals.
  Once segmented, these activities are best reviewed via Marketing Engagement Minute fields.
• Sales activities: The activities available will be dependent on the CRM you have connected to DB1. Both inbound and outbound sales activities, such as emails, LinkedIn messages, and meetings.
  Once segmented, these activities are best reviewed via Sales Touches, which are derived from Sales Engagement Minutes.

Step 5: Define time periods for scores

• Create separate Engagement Minute fields for different time periods (e.g., last 1 month, 3 months) to monitor both short-term spikes and long-term trends.
• The most common periods we see customers implement are
  • 1 week
  • 1 month
  • 3 months

The results

By successfully implementing and optimizing Engagement Minutes, you can expect:

• Sharper prioritization: Your Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success teams can focus on the people and accounts with the highest engagement.
• Easier comprehension: Instead of a vague total score with no context, sellers see exactly how much time someone spent engaging in a specific time frame.
• Deeper insights: Uncover new buyer behaviors by tracking both known and anonymous activity.
• Scalability: Engagement Minutes create a self-sustaining system that adapts to your evolving go-to-market strategy with minimal manual effort.