Real Signal or Vanity Metric? A PQL Definition Teardown

Marketing Academy · Field Work●Marketing Fundamentals

All projects·From: Product-Led Growth (PLG) Fundamentals

MiniTeardown· 25 minutes

Klaviyo

Objective: Given three candidate definitions of a Product-Qualified Lead for an email marketing platform, identify which definitions actually indicate buying intent and which are vanity activity that doesn't predict a sale.

You're on the growth team at Klaviyo. Sales wants a list of PQLs to prioritize outreach, and three different definitions have been proposed by three different people in the same meeting.

Score each candidate PQL definition against whether it reflects experienced value and buying intent, or just login activity that doesn't predict expansion.

Before you start

What you'll need

Free path (everything below is enough to finish)

Google Sheets

FreeScore each candidate PQL definition against a value-signal checklist

Free, and easy to share with sales for a fast sign-off

The process

Specimens to review

Does this definition indicate buying intent, or is it a vanity activity metric?

Sample output

PQL definition A: "Any account that has logged in at least once in the past 30 days."

Specimen: synthetic, realistic

Does this definition indicate buying intent, or is it a vanity activity metric?

Sample output

PQL definition B: "Any account that has sent at least 3 campaigns AND hit the free-tier contact limit in the same billing cycle."

Specimen: synthetic, realistic

Does this definition indicate buying intent, or is it a vanity activity metric?

Sample output

PQL definition C: "Any account whose company name matches a target list of enterprise brands."

Specimen: synthetic, realistic

Final deliverable

A one-page scorecard ranking the three candidate PQL definitions with the recommended one for sales to use.

See a reference example

Sample output

Notion PQL Definition Scorecard (excerpt)

DEFINITION A: "Created a workspace."
VERDICT: Vanity signal. No value experienced yet.

DEFINITION B: "Invited 3+ teammates AND created 10+ pages within 14 days."
VERDICT: Real signal. Combines collaboration habit formation with a concrete usage milestone.

RECOMMENDATION: Route sales outreach off Definition B only; Definition A produces too many false positives to be actionable.

Success criteria

You're done when you can:

Correctly flags the login-only definition as a vanity metric
Correctly identifies the usage-threshold-plus-value definition as the strongest signal