In theory 'MQL' (Marketing Qualified Lead) is an individual's stage in the marketing funnel. In my organisation it is one of the key stages in the funnel, because it is the trigger for further qualification and opportunity detection. One might say that 'MQL' is the stage that all our demand generation activities are driving towards. So there is a high interest in reporting and reviewing the number of MQLs that our marketing activities generate.
For such reporting most of our stakeholders will turn to SFDC. This is the CRM we use in connection to Eloqua.
Here we run into a real challenge: MQL is a stage i.e. it passes/changes. So how could we report on something like the number of MQLs we generated in the past 2 quarters, or the number of MQLs generated by specific campaign(s)? We can report on how many MQLs we currently have, but how many we generated during a specific time and/or through specific campaigns...?
We are thinking of creating a new/custom object in SFDC which will represent this MQL: when the combined activities and profile of a person meet the thresholds of our lead scoring model(s), such an MQL record will be created in SFDC and will be linked to that individual's contact/lead record.
That MQL-record will then be the basis for further telemarketing qualification and opportunity detection. When an opportunity gets detected, this is created as an opportunity record and will be linked to the MQL-record. So we'll have Contact + MQL + Opportunity records which will be interlinked and which will have stages to identify their current place in the marketing/sales funnel. At some point an MQL will reach the end of its cycle. A specific stage will indicate this and the stage on the Contact record will be reset to one of the earlier stages in the buying cycle. This way we'll have an ever existing record of MQLs that were generated, their current stage and the opportunities/revenue associated to them.
Of course this is quite a development and it introduces a new kind of (custom) object in SFDC which will need to be managed and related to all the other SFDC objects.
I was wondering, are there similar set-ups like this 'out there' or did you implement alternative solutions to have a more permanent representation of MQLs in your CRM (SFDC); so that you can historically report on marketing's performance in creating MQLs and their progression into opportunities/revenue?
Best regards
Roger