Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)
A lead that meets agreed marketing criteria indicating stronger fit or engagement than other leads, but is not necessarily sales-ready.
A shared MQL definition helps marketing and sales manage volume, measure qualification quality and focus follow-up on records more likely to progress.
A target-account contact who attends a relevant product webinar and requests an assessment becomes an MQL, then enters sales review under a documented service-level agreement.
MQL is an organisation-specific operational label, not a universal measure of purchase intent. Weak thresholds can inflate pipeline, bias reporting and create poor hand-offs.
MQL criteria combine explicit profile data and selected behaviours, often through rules or scoring. The designation should trigger a defined review, nurture or hand-off and remain distinct from a sales-qualified lead and an opportunity.
Data Engineering, Intelligent Automation
HubSpot — Lead generation strategies — https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/beginner-inbound-lead-generation-guide-ht; HubSpot — MQL vs SQL — https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/sales-qualified-lead
