Your MQLs Are Miserable. How Marketing Automation Turned B2B Marketers Into Boiler Room Bros.

It's a cold and starless night. Early 2000s.

My wife and I walk briskly down a cobbled street, in the West End of London. Jackets clutched, teeth clenched. 

My eyes are red and watery.

But not from the stinging cold. 

We just experienced “Les Miserables,” at London’s Queen’s Theatre. The tragic injustice imposed upon the life of Jean Valjean… it moved me.

A week later, I was back at my job at Red Hat, in North Carolina. Enthusiastically building out one of the industry's early MQL nurture sequences - in a fancy new tool named Eloqua.

It took over a decade for me to realize that in that moment, I was not the heroic figure, Jean Valjean.

“5 years of nurturing were for downloading an eBook. 

The other 14 were because you tried to run. MQL 24601.”

No. I was not Jean Valjean.

I was his captor.

I was Javert.

Why MQLs Were Created.

Marketing Qualified Leads were defined as a way to prioritize leads within a contact database. The Marketing Qualified moniker was supposed to confirm that Marketing had indeed validated: These leads are ready to be passed on to our Sales counterparts.

How Marketers Abused Them.

The rapid proliferation of Marketing Automation platforms, coinciding with the rise of the web, empowered Marketing teams to scale their efforts really quickly.

We could entice, "capture," and force-feed leads (or force-feed them to Sales.)

This meant more leads coming in the front door, and finally, a measurable ability to prove our worth to the sales executives and the company at large.

Marketing Automation platforms gave us the ability to score our leads - using dimensions like:

• Fit (Demographics/Psychographics), and
• Behavior (Activity/Intent)

They gave us the ability to efficiently broadcast key messages to thousands of contacts - even programming and scheduling the communications. This was heady stuff!

And so - Marketing Automation platforms and MQLs became a linchpin of Enterprise Marketing, for 20 years.

But there's quietly been a growing problem.

The Problem With MQLs

1: MQLs are (often) Inaccurate.

Fit, or matching your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), is a critical first step. But that doesn't mean they're ready to buy. Intent is also important. A profile being the "right" profile doesn't mean they're the "right now" profile.

(Unless of course, we know better than them, and they NEED to be buying us now whether they know it or not.)

An MQL has not been shown to accurately indicate that a sales opportunity is imminent. Intent is important as well.

(But not so fast. Hold your "Intent" horses. More on this in a bit...)

2: MQLs are (often) Incomplete.

The MQL may only be an influencer, rather than the project champion.

Treating that individual as if they are the single decision maker can take the focus off of the full buying committees.

We could literally miss the opportunity to grow awareness, interest and desire among the supporting cast. And in so doing, prolong the sales cycle, or leave the door open for a competitor to influence the full committee while we're pressuring that one member to buy our product.

(Kevin's not here.)

3: MQLs can distort pipeline metrics.

Marketing teams incentivized to generate as many MQLs as possible, optimize their campaigns and team resources for just that.

They generate massive contact lists for their Marketing Automation database (and nurture sequence). They send hundreds or thousands of reluctant, unwitting or unwilling MQLs to Sales every month.

4: MQLs (often) create busy work.

• Gumming up the pipes with leads who will never convert —eating up scarce time, resources, focus and energy.
• Bloating our Marketing Automation Platforms with busy work...
• And forcing us to prioritize Marketing and Sales ACTIVITY over Marketing and Sales PRODUCTIVITY.

p.s. No one likes your MQLs.

No buyer WANTS to be an MQL. Buyers want to be treated like… well… humans.

I assure you - I’m very much over your incessant lead nurturing emails that insist on force feeding me information I didn’t request, don’t want, don’t enjoy, and don’t find convenient.

No salesperson WANTS to call an MQL.

There’s too many of them, the individuals typically aren’t in an actual buying cycle, and they’re almost never the full picture. So naturally conversion rates are much lower than inbound demo requests (more on THIS in a bit.)

And we marketers don’t seem to care much for MQLs either - reducing them to a number on our weekly chart, force feeding them, and throwing them over the wall callously in the direction of a Salesperson.

We may as well call them Prisoner 24601. 

The Dark Side of Generating MQLs

1: On the prospect:

• The human behind the MQL count goes through a prolonged negative experience. Your brand goes from potential savior to perennial nuisance.

2: On the marketer:

• Gaming the system.
• Flooding the CRM with “good FIT/demographics” leads... even if they barely know who your company is.
• Tripwire gotcha “bait-and-switch” lead capture...
• Spamming these 1000s of leads

3: On the salesperson:

• Ignoring MQLs (because they don't convert.) Or,
• Harassing MQLs (regardless of how ready they are.)
• Loss of trust in the Marketing team. (Anyone been there?)

Are your MQLs Roses... Dandelions... or Kudzu?

The Right Way to MQL

1: Start with FIT

It's a nonstarter if you don't have your Ideal Customer Profile (Demographics/Psychographics) defined. Get that ICP dialed in. But don't do it in a vacuum, or let Sales dictate it to you.

2: Take (real) Intent into Account: 

• It's not activity on your site. “1 eBook + 2 webinars + 3 site visits = Intent. Yes?” (No.)
• It's not activity on 3rd-party sites. “3 people at the company searched on my keyword. Let's call the entire org chart! Yes?” (No.)
• It's actual and explicit desire to speak to your salesperson. (Boring, I know.)

3: Ungate (Most Of) Your Content.

Let people research you without harassment... or fear of harassment.

As a modern marketer, frankly, I don't WANT your email address. I start amassing those things, and I'm likely to start thinking of ways to infest your inbox again... :)

If I can add value to you, and you're "my type", let's hang out somewhere where you can hear me.

If I earn your attention and provide value (without being annoying), then I earn the privilege to do it again the next time I have something of value to say.

I can't put my energy into building MQL wells... if I'm putting my energy into building MQL jails.

When to use forms as a modern marketer:

1. Demo Requests. For scheduling and follow-up. This is an explicit request to speak to sales.
2. Contact sales form.
3. Product Trials. For fulfillment and follow-up.
4. Virtual event registration. Entertain, educate, but please don't nurture afterwards. They didn't sign up for that. And especially don't forward to Sales for carpet-bomb selling. Earn the right to entertain and educate the next time.

The Right Way to Nurture

No more force feeding. Every subscription should be:

• Explicitly Requested
• Actually Expected
• Eagerly Anticipated

Channels Currently Working Well:

• LinkedIn social feed
• Branded shows (Wistia does a good job of this.)
• Audio: Podcasts
• Video: Podcasts, YouTube
• Interactive Q&A webinars
• Private communities

(This is in my industry, and from my perspective. It may differ in your industry. Point is: Find what's currently working.)

When to (still) use email nurturing:

• Sales Acceleration on opportunities (they’re actively tuned in, and in a buying cycle.)
• Customer Success (They're already tuned in, no active selling)
• Sharing valuable (entertaining and educational) information with whatever audience you have - without trying to sneakily push them into a sales conversation.
• And in a throw-back - newsletters. (But don't get carried away! Ones that are very short, have been explicitly opted into, and ideally provide no more than 1-to-3 pithy pieces of value.)

Can automated email nurturing still work?

Yes - but in more and more limited situations. It's positive efficacy has dropped precipitously. And it's annoyance (spam) factor has increased exponentially.

If it's still a big part of your marketing mix, it might be time for you to modernize.

Conclusion:

1: Keep a Stricter MQL definition.

Stop using behavioral activity as an excuse to claim good fit leads are sales-ready. to define MQLs, and send leads to Sales. An MQL should be someone who in your ICP who has explicitly asked to talk to Sales

2: Ungate your TOFU content.

• The more you gate it, the fewer people in your TAM will see, consume, and be influenced. 
• The less you gate it, the more people in your TAM will see, consume, and be influenced.
• The less you gate it, the less full your Marketing Automation database will be of contacts that either will never convert into opportunities, or contacts who may convert at some point in the future, but don’t want to be harassed constantly on their way to converting.

3: Earn Permission to Nurture.

• Providing an eBook or webinar doesn’t earn you permission to spam my inbox into oblivion. 
• Look for channels where your audience is currently opting-in (-ex- podcasts, LinkedIn social feed, smaller private communities), and provide regular, entertaining, valuable content there to stay top-of-mind, and establish your brand.
• On the down side: It DOES mean that, unlike email where you can reach these prospects at zero variable cost… you will now have to start advertising to reach them.
• On the upside: You’ll avoid annoying them, they will see and consume your content more. Which is the whole point of creating and sending the content?

4: Focus on Demand Generation, not just Demand Capture

• Demand Gen: Awareness, Interest, Desire
• Demand Capture: Getting them to take Action
• That means publishing TOFU, MOFU and BOFU content - enough of it to earn permission to keep contacting your prospects (regardless of where they are in the funnel) with timely, relevant and valuable content. When you have it.

Release the Kudzu.

Liberate the Dandelions.

Put the time, resources and energy you save into cultivating those roses.

"Free Jean Valjean in 2021."