AviaryAI Lead Definition & HubSpot Alignment

Overview

During the 2026-03-18 weekly sync, the AviaryAI and Asymmetric teams identified a misalignment around what constitutes a "lead" under the current contract. This article captures the agreed definitions, contractual targets, and HubSpot pipeline exclusion rules to ensure all campaign activity is measured consistently.

Lead Definitions

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)

A contact who is actively engaging with AviaryAI content — opening emails, clicking links, or visiting the website. MQLs indicate awareness and early interest but have not yet demonstrated purchase intent.

Contractual MQL target: 15–25 per month
HubSpot stage: Mark contacts as Marketing Qualified Lead upon sustained engagement (opens + clicks)
Example: A credit union VP who opened 2 emails and clicked through to the site

Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)

A contact who has demonstrated budget, authority, need, or timeline (BANT) signals — typically through a direct response, a booked meeting, or a conversation with Aaron. SQLs are Aaron's responsibility to qualify; Asymmetric's role is to surface and route them.

Contractual SQL target: 6–12 per month (this is the primary contractual benchmark)
HubSpot stage: Sales Qualified Lead
Note: As of the March 18 call, zero SQLs had been generated in the current contract period. This gap is the primary driver of the ^[3].

Action item: Mark Hope to pull the original contract language and confirm the exact SQL definition and monthly targets. (@Mark Hope)

HubSpot Pipeline Exclusion

To protect active sales relationships from being disrupted by marketing campaigns, all contacts currently in Aaron's HubSpot sales pipeline must be excluded from both the personalized ABM sequences and the broad nurture campaign.

Current State (as of 2026-03-18)

Contacts in active sales pipeline: ~69
Owner: Aaron Grossman
Blessin's pipeline: None — Aaron is the sole pipeline owner

Implementation

Mark Hope to build a HubSpot exclusion list segment based on pipeline membership
This segment will be applied as a suppression list across all outbound campaigns
Aaron does not need to manually flag contacts; the segment will pull dynamically from pipeline stage

Action item: Create HubSpot exclusion list for active sales pipeline contacts. (@Mark Hope)

Engagement-to-Lead Workflow

Email Sent
    ↓
Human Open / Click detected (bot activity filtered)
    ↓
Contact flagged as MQL in HubSpot
    ↓
Aaron reviews → personal outreach (email or call)
    ↓
Response / Meeting booked → SQL
    ↓
Active pipeline → excluded from all future campaigns

Bot Filtering

The ABM campaign revealed significant bot activity inflating engagement metrics. As of the March 18 call, Asymmetric has implemented filtering to separate human opens/clicks from bot activity:

Total email activity (first batch): 499 bot opens/clicks filtered out
Human opens: 30 | Human clicks: 18
All HubSpot reporting should reflect human-only engagement going forward

Highly Engaged Accounts

Contacts with multiple human opens and clicks should be prioritized for direct outreach by Aaron. These are the closest proxies to MQLs currently in the system.

As of 2026-03-18: 15 accounts with clicks identified in the first campaign batch
These accounts are visible in HubSpot with logged email activity
Recommended next step: Aaron to send a personalized follow-up email and call if a phone number is available

^[2] — The pivot to Tier 1 (top 2,000 CUs, personalized) + Tier 2 (remaining ~60K, nurture) that this lead definition framework supports
^[4] — Source meeting where these definitions were discussed