Lifecycle stages in HubSpot

Lifecycle stages can be tracked in HubSpot for both contacts and companies. In this article, we'll take a look at setting up lifecycle stages for contacts.

Default lifecycle stages in HubSpot

HubSpot offers the following basic lifecycle stages:

1. Subscriber 

Contact who has subscribed to the newsletter or blog. This is a contact who has shown at least minimal interest in your content, but has not yet shown any deeper interest in your products or services.

2. Lead 

A contact who has taken some action beyond subscribing, such as filling out a form on the site, downloading an e-book, or engaging in some other type of interaction.

3. Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)

A contact that meets certain criteria of the marketing team and is deemed ready to be handed over to the sales team. Criteria may include, for example, interest in the product, number of interactions with the site, expressing interest in a demo, or answering specific questions on a form.

4. Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) 

Lead that has been verified by the sales team as a potential customer. SQL represents a contact that salespeople see as having a high probability of successfully closing a deal. This stage typically includes sub-stages that are driven by the Lead Status property

5. Opportunity

A contact or company that is directly related to the business case (deal). This means that he or she is actively involved in negotiations about a possible cooperation or purchase.

6. Customer

Contact or company that has closed at least one deal. This phase is usually set automatically after a successful transaction.

7. Evangelist 

A customer who actively recommends the company to other people. These contacts are very valuable for building organic growth and spreading brand reputation.

8. Other

Contacts or companies that do not fit into any of the above categories.

How to work effectively with lifecycle stages

1. Define the lifecycle stages

Use HubSpot's default lifecycle stages. They are generic and applicable to almost any lead generation process. Internally, however, you need to determine when a contact becomes a Marketing Qualified Lead for you and how salespeople should decide when a lead becomes a Sales Qualified Lead. While HubSpot already includes general definitions of stages, you need to make sure you know how to apply these stages to your own process. 

The default lifecycle stages can be customized and it's possible to create your own (custom) stages. If you decide to create custom stages, be careful. It will probably affect your reporting. HubSpot offers prebuilt reports that work with the default lifecycle stages, so any customizations may mean having to manually adjust your reporting. Therefore, creating custom lifecycle stages is not recommended.

2. Ensure that the contacts pass through all phases

If you want your system to be efficient, contacts should properly go through all the lifecycle stages and not skip any. This will give you a clear overview in the subsequent report of how many leads you have acquired in a given period and how long it took to transition between the stages. You'll see where new leads are getting stuck, what percentage of new leads became qualified leads and eventually customers, and you'll get the ability to measure the success of your marketing team, which is often underestimated precisely because of the lack of data measuring the impact of marketing activities on actual customer numbers and conversion rates.

The ideal way to ensure that contacts pass through all stages is to automate the lifecycle stages in workflows. 

3. Division of responsibilities for leads in individual stages

Lifecycle stages help to organize when which team is responsible for communicating with potential and existing customers.

• The Marketing team handles the contact from the very beginning when they show interest in a particular marketing activity, your website, blog or other channel. They take care of communication with the lead at the Subscriber, Lead and then Marketing qualified lead stage. They continue to pass on qualified leads to the sales team.
• The Sales team takes care of the transition from Marketing qualified lead to Sales qualified lead and they take over the communication with the potential customer through the Opportunity and Customer phases.
• The Customer Success team or Onboarding team (if you have one) attends to existing customers, tracks their satisfaction and identifies potential evangelists.

4. Automate transitions between stages

Manually setting lifecycle stages can lead to errors and inconsistencies. Therefore, it is advisable to use workflows (automated workflows) to ensure that contacts follow the correct path through the process.

For example, if a lead meets the defined criteria for an MQL, the workflow will automatically move them to that stage. This prevents contacts from getting stuck in the Lead phase and not being processed further. In addition, a well-crafted workflow will ensure that the lead does not skip any stages. 

In part, the transition to each stage can be automated in the Lifecycle Stages setting itself, which moves leads to the next stage based on events in CRM.

However, for a comprehensive solution, we recommend setting rules for transitioning between stages in Workflows.

5. Make sure that each contact in the database has an assigned lifecycle stage

Each contact in HubSpot should have a corresponding phase assigned to them from the moment they enter the CRM. This allows you to track exactly what impact your marketing and sales efforts are having. If contacts are not categorized correctly, you won't be able to properly analyze your team's performance and the effectiveness of each campaign.

Lifecycle stages vs. Deal stages

A common mistake is confusing lifecycle stages with deal stages. While lifecycle stages follow a contact from the first contact to closing the deal and beyond, deal stages focus only on the business opportunity and its status within the deal process.

If you only tracked deal stages, you'd lose track of how contacts move through the entire acquisition process and the impact your marketing efforts have on the company's overall results.

Use of HubSpot Lifecycle Stages

Contact segmentation

Using lifecycle stages, you can segment contacts according to their location in the customer journey. This enables more precise targeting of marketing campaigns.

For example: you can create a list of contacts in the "Opportunity" phase who have expressed interest in a particular service and send them relevant offers.

Personalisation and smart content

By segmenting contacts by lifecycle stages, you can create personalized messages and offers. HubSpot allows you to leverage smart content that dynamically adapts based on user attributes and behavior.

For example: newsletter subscribers may see a prompt to download an e-book, while MQLs may be motivated by a "Schedule a demo" button

Automation of marketing and sales

Automation according to lifecycle stages helps to streamline processes and save time.

For example: when a contact progresses from the "Opportunity" stage to "Customer", the automation can trigger a welcome email and onboarding sequence.

Reporting & Analysis

Lifecycle stages provide accurate metrics on marketing and sales performance.

For example: measuring the ratio of leads to opportunities shows the effectiveness of conversions, while analyzing the transition time between stages helps reveal bottlenecks in the sales funnel.

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