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Knowing where your contacts are in the buying process allows you to tailor content that steers them towards conversion. By providing the right information at the right time, you can establish long-term relationships that generate repeat business.
Throughout my career, I have architected lifecycle models across various martech ecosystems. In my experience, this is the general criteria and formula to help you quickly identify where prospects are dropping out of the sales funnel:
Contacts never move backwards through stages.
| Stage | Criteria |
|---|---|
| Lead | Email Identified |
| MQL | Ideal company/customer profile + relevant marketing trigger |
| SQL | Declared intent signal (demo request, contact us, pricing inquiry) |
| SQO | Deal created, contact in discussion with sales |
| MRL | First deal is closed/lost or on hold |
| Customer | First deal is closed/won |
| Evangelist | Custom criteria based on your business |
| Lapsed Customer | Did not renew contract, no longer a customer |
| Disqualified | Does not meet any criteria, do not contact |
A well crafted email can help you identify contacts’ interests or potential pain points in the customer journey that you can solve by building trust and establishing yourself as a valuable resource/partner.
Here is an example of a typical email nurture framework that covers every stage of a contact lifecycle, with the goal of moving leads towards becoming customers:
Once you’ve established a solid foundation to a/b test and experiment, segment contacts based on their interests to accelerate pipeline velocity:
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