Definition
A Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) is a prospect whose behavior indicates marketing-driven interest strong enough to justify sales outreach. Common MQL triggers include: downloading a whitepaper, attending a webinar, visiting high-intent pricing pages multiple times, or scoring above a threshold in a lead-scoring model. MQLs are the handoff point between marketing and sales pipelines.
Key points
- MQL is a marketing-defined threshold; SQL is sales' acceptance
- Typical MQL-to-SQL conversion rates: 20-40%
- Too-loose MQL criteria creates junk for sales; too-tight starves the pipeline
- MQL definition should be reviewed quarterly against conversion data
A prospect downloads your pricing guide, attends a product webinar, and visits the /pricing page 3 times in a week. Your lead-scoring model crosses the MQL threshold and the record is routed to a sales rep.
Stop stitching tools to track this
CRM, communications and operations share one database here, so the numbers this term describes are a dashboard rather than a spreadsheet.
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