Marketing Qualified Account (MQA)
The account-level equivalent of an MQL: an account showing enough aggregate engagement to warrant sales attention.
Why the account is the better unit
B2B purchases are made by groups. Several people from one company each engaging moderately is a stronger buying signal than one person engaging heavily, but lead-level qualification reports the former as several mediocre leads and misses it.
It changes the handoff
How to define the threshold
Decide what counts as engagement and over what window. Aggregate engagement is only meaningful if the window is short enough that the signals are contemporaneous.
Weight by role rather than counting people equally. Three engaged practitioners and one engaged economic buyer are different signals with the same headcount.
Require breadth, not just depth. Several people engaging moderately is a stronger buying signal than one person engaging heavily, which is the whole reason to use the account as the unit.
Validate against outcomes: score last year's accounts with the threshold and check whether MQAs converted at a materially higher rate than non-MQAs.
Agree the handoff with sales before deploying. An MQA that arrives with no guidance about which person to contact is a list, not a qualified account.
Where it misleads
Aggregate engagement can come entirely from one team doing research with no budget, and the account-level view makes that harder to see rather than easier.
Large accounts generate more engagement simply by having more people, so an unweighted threshold systematically favours enterprise accounts regardless of intent.
Anonymous or de-anonymised traffic attributed to an account is frequently wrong, and the error propagates into the score invisibly.
Running MQA and MQL in parallel without deciding which governs the handoff produces two queues and an argument about which one sales should work.
RELATED TERMS
Account-Based Everything (ABX)
Coordinating marketing, sales and customer success around a defined set of target accounts rather than around lead volume.
Account Scoring
Scoring at the account level rather than the individual, reflecting that B2B purchases are made by groups.
Buyer Intent
Signals suggesting an account is actively researching a purchase, drawn from on-site behaviour or third-party data.
Lead Routing
The rules assigning each inbound lead to a specific owner — by territory, segment, product, account ownership or round-robin.
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)
A lead that marketing considers ready for sales attention, according to a definition both teams have agreed. Without that agreement it is a marketing activity metric wearing a pipeline costume.
COMMON QUESTIONS
- What is a marketing qualified account?
- An account showing enough aggregate engagement across its people to warrant sales attention — the account-level equivalent of an MQL. It exists because B2B purchases are made by groups: several people from one company each engaging moderately is a stronger buying signal than one individual engaging heavily.
- What is the difference between an MQA and an MQL?
- The unit. An MQL qualifies an individual person; an MQA qualifies the whole organisation by aggregating signals across everyone at it. The MQA fits how B2B buying actually works, but it requires deciding how to weight roles and how to handle the fact that larger accounts generate more engagement simply by having more people.
- Should we use MQAs instead of MQLs?
- In an account-based motion, usually yes as the primary unit — but you still need a person to contact, so most teams keep both and are explicit about which one governs the handoff. Running the two in parallel without deciding produces two queues and a recurring argument about which sales should work.
- How do you weight engagement across an account?
- By role and by breadth rather than by raw volume. Weight an economic buyer's engagement above a practitioner's, and require signals from several people rather than one — breadth is the thing the account-level unit exists to capture. Without weighting, the threshold simply favours whichever accounts have the most employees.
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