MQLs → In-Market Accounts
Marketing-qualified leads, or MQLs, refer to leads who have engaged with marketing content and are considered ready to be engaged by sales. The definition of an MQL differs from one organization to the next, and what qualifies someone as an MQL is usually based on hunches rather than data.
The truth is, people engage with content for a number of reasons, like:
- Looking for statistics
- Doing preliminary research
- Trying to contact a company about something irrelevant to sales
So just because someone downloaded an ebook or clicked on an ad doesn’t mean you should start blasting them with follow-up emails or phone calls.
Look for in-market accounts instead. “In-market” is a term used to describe accounts that match an ideal customer profile and are actively showing buying signals. Whereas MQLs focus on the actions of a single person, measuring at an account level enables you to strategically engage multiple members of the buying team to move a deal forward.
This is critically important because research shows many different stakeholders are part of buying teams. If you can get multiple buying team members engaged, you can dramatically increase your chances of landing a deal.
SQLs → 6QAs
Sales-qualified leads, or SQLs, refer to leads that have been determined to be legitimate opportunities. Just like MQLs, what makes an account an SQL is entirely subjective.
6QAs (6sense Qualified Accounts) is a 6sense-developed metric that empirically marks when an account is approaching a purchase decision based on:
- Buyers’ activity
- The number of buying team members who are engaged at the target account, and
- Historical information about your past deals
When multiple members of the same team are researching your brand, that sends a huge signal that the team is serious about purchasing a solution. And with this signal, you’ve got the green light to begin further conversations and outreach with those buyers.
Pipeline Attribution → Conversion of Accounts to Pipeline and Revenue
Digital marketers strive to attribute leads to specific marketing channels. But today’s B2B buying cycles can take months and involve dozens of touchpoints. Trying to attribute a contact to a single marketing channel can be a fool’s errand — and a giant waste of your time.
By understanding how your campaigns are influencing accounts throughout their buying journey, you can see which campaigns are nudging them forward along the path toward revenue. This allows you to maintain a broader picture of which efforts are and aren’t working, rather than attributing most of the success to just the first or final touchpoint.
Conversion Rate → Account Engagement Score
Conversion rate is simple: How many people interacted with your marketing content, and what percentage then became a customer.
But it lacks the nuance that could help you win more customers.
An Account Engagement Score takes a look at account behavior and how closely an account’s behavior matches past, A score between one and 100 is assigned telling marketing and sales how engaged that account is, based on research, website visits, clicks, keywords researched, and videos played.
The higher the score, the higher likelihood that the account is ready to buy, so it’s time to target them with more content or pick up the phone.
