# Best Practices for seprating Leads **URL:** \ **Category:** CRM\ **Tags:** contacts\ **Created:** [March 5, 2020, 5:23pm UTC](https://community.hubspot.com/t/best-practices-for-seprating-leads/19253 "2020-03-05T17:23:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Jordo](https://d10pqhm3lwygmk.cloudfront.net/user_avatar/community.hubspot.com/jordo/32/22074_2.png) [@Jordo](https://community.hubspot.com/u/Jordo)\ **Post date:** [March 5, 2020, 5:23pm UTC](https://community.hubspot.com/t/best-practices-for-seprating-leads/19253/1 "2020-03-05T17:23:32Z")
I am looking for suggestions on best practices as I set up my CRM for the first time. Our DB will be made up of leads that I have resewearched and place in the CRM for direct sales efforts such as cold calls or cold direct personal emails (not the mailing list emails). As they have not yet opted-in to our mailing list I want them to be seprate for compliance reasons and as such they will not be getting group emails. The 2nd group are people who have signed up to our mailing list to be informed of when we launch the product. So basically, I am asking for the best way to separate my outbound leads from the inbound leads. What would be the best practice for seprating these two groups? ---
**Author:** ![Mike\_Eastwood](https://d10pqhm3lwygmk.cloudfront.net/user_avatar/community.hubspot.com/mike_eastwood/32/70075_2.png) [@Mike\_Eastwood](https://community.hubspot.com/u/Mike_Eastwood)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2020, 2:07am UTC](https://community.hubspot.com/t/best-practices-for-seprating-leads/19253/2 "2020-03-06T02:07:33Z")
Hi @Jordo I would take advantage of the [“Lifecycle Stage” property](https://knowledge.hubspot.com/contacts/use-lifecycle-stages) in HubSpot. In your examples I would consider everyone a **Subscriber** or **Lead** depending on your criteria. If the **Lead** has qualified themselves as a **Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)** then I would send them information about your new product. If they show interest, email back or visit the order page then I would upgrade them to **Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)**. A key point is the Contact taking the action to move themselves from Lead \> MQL \> SQL. In the olden days it was the Sales and Marketing Team deciding if a lead is Sales Qualified or Marketing Qualified. With HubSpot you can let people self-select. Oh, and it’s ok for leads to go back up the funnel e.g. SQL \> MQL if they aren’t ready. Have fun Mike ---
**Author:** ![Jordo](https://d10pqhm3lwygmk.cloudfront.net/user_avatar/community.hubspot.com/jordo/32/22074_2.png) [@Jordo](https://community.hubspot.com/u/Jordo)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2020, 11:14pm UTC](https://community.hubspot.com/t/best-practices-for-seprating-leads/19253/3 "2020-03-06T23:14:48Z")
Thanks Mike! I am going to look into that. What I did so far was create a static list for the outbound leads and applied the filter Original Source\>Any Offline Source. Then created a second list that should automatically populate with the optin leads from the web form. ---
**Author:** ![Mike\_Eastwood](https://d10pqhm3lwygmk.cloudfront.net/user_avatar/community.hubspot.com/mike_eastwood/32/70075_2.png) [@Mike\_Eastwood](https://community.hubspot.com/u/Mike_Eastwood)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2020, 1:03am UTC](https://community.hubspot.com/t/best-practices-for-seprating-leads/19253/4 "2020-03-12T01:03:23Z")
Hi @Jordo Apologies for the delayed reaction. When you import your Contacts you can “add them to a list” from the Import Screen. ![create-list-from-import.jpg](https://d2qpr2jzcazej7.cloudfront.net/original/3X/1/0/10c425e9f8f31389b72d1bd922a9e33015becb49.jpeg) This is great because you can then keep track of who, and when, they were imported. When you add new contacts (e.g. a form or an import) they will deduplicate based on the email address. Cheers Mike