MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead)
An MQL is a lead who has shown enough engagement with your marketing — content downloads, demo requests, repeat site visits — to be worth handing to sales. It's the bar between 'visitor' and 'serious prospect'.
What it is
Marketing Qualified Lead is a lead that meets a specific threshold of demographic + behavioral fit, predefined jointly by marketing and sales. The threshold is usually a lead-scoring model: e.g., "job title matches ICP + downloaded a gated asset + visited pricing page = MQL".
How it differs from a raw lead
A raw lead is anyone who provides contact info — a newsletter signup, an unrelated form fill. An MQL has crossed a bar that says: this person is plausibly a buyer. The point of the MQL gate is to protect sales bandwidth from low-value follow-up.
Why it matters
MQL is the handoff metric between marketing and sales. Argued and re-argued in every B2B org. The shared MQL definition is the contract that prevents marketing from flooding sales with junk and sales from ignoring real opportunities.
Frequently asked questions
How does MQL apply to healthcare?
Adapted. A behavioral health MQL might be: family member submitted a verification form + responded to an outreach email + their insurance is in-network.
How fast should sales respond to an MQL?
Lead response time research is unambiguous: under 5 minutes. Response within 5 minutes is 21× more likely to qualify the lead than 30+ minutes.
What's an SQL?
Sales Qualified Lead — an MQL that sales has accepted and committed to working. The next stage after MQL.
