Lead Generation Checklist

Pull the current ICP doc — firmographics (industry, revenue band, headcount), technographics, and the buying-committee personas. If the ICP hasn't been touched in two quarters, flag it; ICP drift is the most common reason MQL-to-SQL conversion craters.

1:few ABM, broad inbound, and event follow-up have very different downstream steps — list size, scoring thresholds, and SDR cadence all change. Pick one before sourcing.

Source from ZoomInfo, Apollo, or LinkedIn Sales Navigator using the ICP filters. Suppress existing customers, open opportunities, and disqualified accounts from CRM before export.

Run the list through NeverBounce, ZeroBounce, or BriteVerify. Drop catch-alls and known bounces — sending to a stale list trashes sender reputation and pulls inbox placement down across all sends.

EU and UK contacts need a documented GDPR lawful basis (typically legitimate interest for B2B prospecting, with opt-out honored). Canadian contacts need CASL express or implied consent. US contacts need a CAN-SPAM-compliant footer. Tag each contact with its consent basis in the CRM before any send.

For EU and UK: log the legitimate-interest assessment (LIA) in OneTrust or your privacy log. For Canada: capture the consent type (express vs. implied) and source. Suppression list applies across HubSpot, Marketo, and any rep-sent sequences.

Confirm MQL threshold in HubSpot or Marketo, the routing rule to SDRs in Salesforce, and the SLA for first-touch (typically 5 business minutes for tier-1, 24 hours for inbound). Misrouted leads sit in queues for days.

Brief covers the offer (gated asset, demo, webinar), persona, primary CTA, secondary CTA, and the success metric (form fills, demo bookings, attribution). Without a written brief, downstream copy and design diverge.

Stage in HubSpot, Unbounce, or Webflow. Form fields match the lead-scoring model (don't ask for fields you don't score on). GA4 event for form_submit, GTM tag firing only after consent state is granted, hidden UTM fields populated.

Use the team's UTM convention doc — source / medium / campaign / content / term — exactly. Drift between campaigns is what makes attribution reports uncomparable. Build links with a shared link-builder, not by hand.

Litmus or Email on Acid against Outlook (still the breakage king), Gmail web and app, Apple Mail, and dark mode. Confirm the unsubscribe link, physical address footer, and preference center URL all resolve.

Use EasyDMARC or GlockApps to send a seed test and confirm authentication. Misaligned DMARC after a sending-domain change is a classic deliverability incident — symptoms show up as Gmail bulk-folder placement.

Sequence cadence (touches across email, phone, LinkedIn), throttle to protect sender reputation (cap sends per rep per day), and reply-handling rules. Tag each task with the campaign ID so attribution rolls up cleanly.

Confirm form_submit fires on actual submission, not on field-blur or page-load — mis-mapped events report 5x reality and distort budget allocation. Cross-check GA4 conversion count against the MAP submission count for the first day.

Open rate, CTR, reply rate, MQL volume, MQL-to-SQL conversion, CPL, and pipeline sourced. Compare against the campaign benchmark in the dashboard. Flag underperforming segments for cohort analysis.

Triggered when MQL target missed. A/B the subject line on a 10% holdout, refresh creative for the lowest-performing persona segment, or re-tier the account list. Document the change and the next measurement window.