Event Match Quality (Matching Score)
Understand Meta's Event Match Quality score, what a good score looks like and how LeadJourney automatically raises it by sending rich, hashed customer data back through the Conversions API.
When LeadJourney sends an offline conversion to Meta, Meta has to figure out which person that conversion belongs to – so it can credit the right ad and learn from it. The Event Match Quality score (often just called the Matching Score) tells you how well Meta managed to do that. The higher the score, the more of your conversions Meta can actually use.
The good news: LeadJourney already sends the richest set of customer data it can, hashed and through the Conversions API. This article explains what the score means, why it matters, and the few things on your side that push it higher.
What the Matching Score is
Every event you send to Meta carries customer information – an email, a phone number, the click that brought the person in, and so on. Meta hashes that data and tries to match it to a real Meta user. Event Match Quality is Meta's rating of how successful that matching is, shown per event inside Meta Events Manager on a scale of roughly 1 to 10:
| Score | Meta's rating | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 8.0–10 | Great | Almost every conversion is matched to a user. Nothing to do. |
| 6.0–7.9 | Good | Solid – most conversions match. Small gains still possible. |
| 4.0–5.9 | Ok | Usable, but you're leaving matches (and optimisation) on the table. |
| below 4.0 | Poor | Many conversions can't be matched – worth fixing. |
A low score isn't a bug
The score reflects the data you have, not a fault in LeadJourney. If your CRM only stores an email, Meta has fewer signals to match on than if it also has a phone number and the original ad click. Adding more clean customer data is what moves the number.
Why it matters
The Matching Score isn't a vanity metric – it directly limits how much value you get out of Meta:
- More conversions count. Only matched conversions can be attributed and used. A higher score means more of your real leads and sales actually reach Meta's reporting and algorithm.
- Better optimisation. Meta's algorithm learns from the people behind matched events. The more it can match, the better it gets at finding more buyers like them – which typically means a lower cost per qualified lead.
- Cleaner attribution. A well-matched event ties back to the exact campaign, ad set and ad, so your reports reflect what truly drove the outcome.
- More resilient tracking. Strong server-side matching via the Conversions API fills the gaps left by iOS limits, ad blockers and cookie loss in the browser.
In short: raising the score means Meta can use more of your data, and a smarter algorithm spends your budget on the people most likely to convert.
How LeadJourney feeds the score
You don't assemble any of this by hand. Whenever Meta Ads is connected, an ad account is mapped to a pixel, and an event has Send back to Ads? enabled, LeadJourney sends each matching conversion to Meta through the Conversions API – with every identifier it has, hashed before it leaves:
- Email address and phone number
- First and last name, city, region, ZIP and country
- The Meta click ID (
fbc) and browser ID (fbp) captured when the lead first clicked your ad - IP address and user agent
The more of these are present and accurate, the more ways Meta has to match – and the higher your score climbs. So most of "improving the Matching Score" comes down to making sure that data exists and is clean.
How to raise your Matching Score
Make sure the click is tracked
The strongest single signal is the ad click itself (fbc / fbclid). It only exists if
your campaigns carry LeadJourney's tracking parameters, so Meta can stamp the click onto the
visitor. Confirm the URL parameters are set on your live campaigns – see
Connect Meta Ads.
Capture rich customer data in your CRM
Match quality scales with the number of identifiers you provide. Wherever possible, collect and store both an email and a phone number for every lead, plus name and location. Clean, complete contact records are the single biggest lever you control – they let Meta match on several fields instead of just one.
Send the right events back to Meta
Open the Events Manager in LeadJourney
(Settings → Events) and turn on Send back to Ads? for the milestone events that
represent real value – e.g. QualifiedLead, BookedCall or WonClient. From that point on,
LeadJourney sends each matching conversion automatically.
Approve a custom event in Meta's Events Manager
This step is important and easy to miss. When LeadJourney sends a custom event – for
example a Lead event labelled “Event by LeadJourney” – Meta first needs you to confirm
it belongs to you. Open your pixel / dataset in Meta Events Manager and approve /
confirm the event.
Until it's approved, you can't optimise toward it
Meta may receive and match the data, but a custom event stays unusable for optimisation until you confirm it. Repeat this for every new custom event you start sending.
Optimise toward the event at the ad set level
Once the event is approved and matching well, put it to work: in Meta Ads Manager, open the ad set and choose your LeadJourney event as the conversion / optimisation goal. Meta will then deliver to people most likely to trigger that outcome – the whole payoff of a high Matching Score.
Give it a few days
After improving your data or approving a new event, the score updates as fresh conversions flow in – it isn't instant. Check back in Meta Events Manager after a few days of live data.
Common questions
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Ask Atlas (AI chat)
Atlas is the AI assistant built into LeadJourney. Ask about your campaigns, leads and traffic in plain English – Atlas reads your workspace data and answers with numbers, tables and follow-ups. Use the full Chat page or the floating widget on any screen.