Distinguish Imported Leads from Inbound Leads

[shiri]

Hi all!

HubSpot has two types of leads for us:
Inbound leads, coming from marketing.
Imported leads, coming from lists the SDR team uploads.

The first group - marketing leads - reached out to us asking to read a piece of content or learn about our product.
The second group, the imported one, may have never heard of us before, and may not reply to the SDRs' reach outs at all.

The marketing team would like to include imported contacts in the marketing efforts - if they haven't answered the SDRs within a month.

To distinguish between the two, we were thinking of using Custom Lifecycle Stages for our contacts, and have a stage for imported leads vs. marketing leads (and actually we were thinking of using this because we were missing the stage "SAL", too).  What do you think about this solution? For instance, having "Lead" for marketing leads and "Imported Lead", or "Lead" for imported contacts vs. "Marketing Lead".

Another option is flagging both as "Lead", and distinguish them from one another using another property that is not their lifecycle (not sure which).
What would work best?

Really appreciate your help, thank you!

*It's important for us that whatever path we choose, it's easily accessible in reports, workflows, filters, etc.

[HubSpotMaster]

 Test

[shiri]

Hi all!

HubSpot has two types of leads for us:
Inbound leads, coming from marketing.
Imported leads, coming from lists the SDR team uploads.

The first group - marketing leads - reached out to us asking to read a piece of content or learn about our product.
The second group, the imported one, may have never heard of us before, and may not reply to the SDRs' reach outs at all.

The marketing team would like to include imported contacts in the marketing efforts - if they haven't answered the SDRs within a month.

To distinguish between the two, we were thinking of using Custom Lifecycle Stages for our contacts, and have a stage for imported leads vs. marketing leads (and actually we were thinking of using this because we were missing the stage "SAL", too).  What do you think about this solution? For instance, having "Lead" for marketing leads and "Imported Lead", or "Lead" for imported contacts vs. "Marketing Lead".

Another option is flagging both as "Lead", and distinguish them from one another using another property that is not their lifecycle (not sure which).
What would work best?

Really appreciate your help, thank you!

*It's important for us that whatever path we choose, it's easily accessible in reports, workflows, filters, etc.

[karstenkoehler]

Hi @shiri,

I would not create a Lifecycle phase for this for several reasons. First, the Lifecycle phase is meant to track a contact's progress through the sales process and not about their original. Second, this information is already available in the Original source drill-down properties: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/reports/what-do-the-properties-original-source-data-1-and-2-mean

If you want to find all of the contacts from imports, you would simply filter a contact list or view by "Original source drill-down 1 is any of IMPORT". HubSpot will then return all imported contacts.

For contacts who have not replied to a sales email from your SDRs, you can use the default contact properties Last Engagement Date, Last activity date or Last contacted, definitions can be found here: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/contacts/hubspots-default-contact-properties

Best regards!

[shiri]

Thanks Karsten, think we'll try this -

As suggested keep Leads for all sources (and distinguish sources in the original source/drill downs fields), 

And will label "inactive" imported leads in the Lead Source field - and will then act on them on the marketing side. Once they're back live, we'll label in the Lead Source as well. Thanks!

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Glad to hear, @shiri!

By the way, there is also a Lead status field which comes with default options but can also be customized. HubSpot suggests that this be used as "sub-stages within a Sales Qualified Lead lifecycle stage": https://knowledge.hubspot.com/contacts/use-lifecycle-stages#lead-status

If my posts helped you solve your query, you can help the community by marking them as solutions.

If you have any follow-up questions, let me know!