Glossary / Marketing qualified lead (MQL)

What is Marketing qualified lead (MQL)?

A marketing qualified lead is someone who has shown enough interest to be worth a sales conversation, but who has not asked to buy yet.

Not every email address is a prospect. An MQL is a contact whose behavior says they might be. They downloaded the pricing guide, visited the demo page twice, and opened the last four emails. Marketing hands them to sales.

The definition has to be written down and agreed on by both sides. If marketing labels anyone who grabs a checklist an MQL, sales will stop trusting the label within a month. Fit matters as much as activity.

Review the bar every quarter against deals that actually closed. If most MQLs go nowhere, the threshold is too low. If sales is starving, it is too high. The label only helps when both teams believe it.

In Creaiter

Creaiter's lead scoring ranks contacts by fit and activity, so the ones worth a call rise to the top of the list.