Navigating the Signalverse™: A B2B Marketer’s Guide to Moving Beyond MQLs

Executive Summary

Making a big change in your marketing strategy can be overwhelming. You’ve relied on Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) for years, and shifting away might seem like a huge leap. But here’s the truth: sticking with MQLs doesn’t just keep you in your comfort zone — it holds you back from real growth.

This report shows you how to get better results with the resources you already have. We’ve gathered insights from…

• Top market leaders,
• Data from 6sense’s Global Buyer Experience Report, and
• Findings from our independent poll and survey of marketing and demand generation leaders

… to help you understand why moving beyond MQLs isn’t just necessary — it’s an opportunity to do more with less stress.

By shifting your focus away from MQLs towards Marketing Qualified Accounts (MQAs), you can achieve real impact without burning out. AI Can help you:

• Simplify personalization at scale
• Understand how accounts are being influenced
• Align your sales and marketing teams around a common set of easily understandable data

This report will guide you through the process, providing actionable insights and strategies to help you navigate the Signalverse™ and drive meaningful results for your business.

6sense’s AI-powered platform leads this shift, enabling marketers to navigate the Signalverse effectively.

Introduction

The Changing Landscape of B2B Marketing

If you’ve relied on MQLs, you’ve likely felt the frustration of watching leads that look great on paper fail to translate into actual sales. It’s not your fault. B2B sales have changed dramatically, and MQLs no longer cut it.

Our recent poll reveals a stark reality: only 2.7% of Marketing and Demand Gen leaders feel MQLs are the most important metric for their business. If you feel stuck, you’re not alone-and this report will show you a less stressful, more effective way forward.

The B2B Marketing landscape has undergone a seismic shift. Buyers now conduct extensive research independently, involve multiple stakeholders in their organization, and often prefer digital interactions over traditional sales engagements. These changes underscore the need for a fundamental rethink of our approach to marketing and sales. It’s time to move beyond the limitations of MQLs and embrace the rich tapestry of signals that buyers send — what we call the Signalverse™.

Understanding the Signalverse

Today’s B2B buyers leave digital signals at every turn, forming a “Signalverse” — a rich blend of data points that, when harnessed, gives us a deeper look at buyer behavior.

The 6sense Signalverse™ is a powerful data engine that processes over one trillion signals every day—ranging from third-party intent and website activity to MAP and CRM engagement. It analyses the last 12 weeks of behaviour to calculate precise scores and insights for each individual day, giving teams a continuously updated view of buyer activity.

This includes over 20 billion daily intent signals, such as keyword research and external content consumption, combined with engagement data from marketing automation and CRM systems. All of this is processed by AI to fuel 6sense’s capabilities — web deanonymization, buying stage prediction, personalised engagement, and intelligent recommendations — so B2B marketers and sellers can identify and connect with the right buyers at exactly the right time.

But what does this mean for you?

Imagine gaining visibility into the future of your pipeline. Here’s what the Signalverse can help you achieve:

• Identify accounts actively researching your solution—even those who haven’t reached out.
• Pinpoint specific pain points and interests at an account level.
• Recognize when an account is primed for engagement based on online behavior.
• Personalize outreach at scale, with messages tailored to each account’s interests.
• Focus resources on high-probability accounts, maximizing impact and efficiency.
• Reduce customer acquisition costs and increase lifetime value by unifying revenue teams round the most winnable, best fit accounts.
• Uncover upsell and cross-sell opportunities within your customer base by identifying shifting needs and new areas of interest.

Today’s B2B buyers make most of their critical purchasing decisions independently, long before they ever fill out a form or speak to sales. The Signalverse™ lets you detect and influence these buying groups during their critical research and selection phase, then engage them meaningfully when they’re ready for direct contact. By prioritizing accounts based on intent and engagement signals, your teams can focus on the opportunities most likely to convert. This shift from reactive to proactive engagement means building preference with potential buyers when it matters most-during their independent evaluation process.

Throughout this guide, we’ll explore how the Signalverse™ helps you align with modern buying behavior by identifying and engaging accounts during their research phase, ensuring you’re the preferred vendor when they’re ready to make contact. Learn how to move beyond traditional MQLs to a predictive, account-based strategy that matches how B2B purchases really happen.

The 6sense five-step formula

Your blueprint for success

6sense has distilled the complexities of modern B2B marketing into a straightforward, five-step formula. This approach is designed to help you navigate the Signalverse™ and ensure you’re targeting the right accounts at the right time with the right message.

Step 1: Select the best accounts

Identify the accounts that are most likely to benefit from your solution. Use 6sense’s AI-driven insights to narrow down your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) to the accounts that are actively looking for a solution and focus your efforts where they’ll have the most impact.

Step 2: Know about them

Gain deep insights into your target accounts. Understand their pain points, challenges, and buying signals. This includes monitoring intent data, technographic data, and behavioral signals across multiple channels. 

Step 3: Engage the right way

Personalize your outreach based on what you know. Use Intelligent Workflows to map out your strategy and automatically enable omnichannel campaigns based on all the intelligence you have about accounts and specific contacts. Craft messages that resonate with each stakeholder within the account. Engage them on the channels they prefer, with content that speaks directly to their needs.

Step 4: Collaborate with sales

Ensure that your marketing and sales teams are working from the same playbook. Share data, insights, and goals to create a seamless experience for the buyer. When both teams are aligned, you’re more likely to close deals and retain customers.

Step 5: Track real stuff

Focus on metrics that matter. Instead of relying on vanity metrics like MQLs, track pipeline impact, revenue growth, and account engagement. Use these metrics to continuously refine your strategy to drive better results

The 70/30 split: the new paradigm

6sense research reveals a crucial insight: B2B buyers spend approximately 70% of their journey researching independently before engaging with vendors. This period is where preferences and shortlists emerge – and where the Signalverse™ is essential.

Global Buyer Experience Insights

The 2024 Buyer Experience Report reveals key trends across NA, EMEA and APAC:

Buying group dynamics

Globally, B2B purchases typically involve nine to 12 stakeholders, collaborating to and select solutions.

Extended decision process

The average B2B buying journey spans 11.5 moths, with regional variations – 10.2 months in EMEA, 11.2 months in North America, and 13.2 months in APAC. This underscores the importance of sustained engagement.

Multiple vendor evaluations

B2B buying team consider four to five vendors before deciding, reinforcing the need to differentiate early in the process.

Late-stage engagement

Buyers don’t reach out to vendors until they are 69% through their decision process, making early-stage marketing and digital visibility essential.

Buyer-driven contact

Globally, 81% of buyers initiate the first contact with vendors, emphasizing the need for strong inbound strategies to attract and engage prospects.

Pre-set requirements

Before engaging with vendors, 85% of buyers have already established their purchase requirements, highlighting the importance of early stage thought leadership and content to influence purchases.

Early favorites win

At the time of first contact, over 80% of buyers already have a preferred vendor in mind. Once engagement begins, the vendor at the top of the shortlist wins the business 84% of the time, reinforcing the importance of brand presence and credibility during independent research.

It’s a team effort

6sense data shows that the average Global B2B buying group involves between nine to 12 people, emphasizing the need for a comprehensive account-based approach rather than focusing on individual leads.

Influencing a single lead isn’t good enough. You need to influence the entire buying team.

They want value, not just a good deal

Buyers care about what your product can actually do for them, not just its cost. They’re also more comfortable doing everything digitally.

Alex Venus from Personio notes, “We now focus on measuring influence and engagement at both the account and individual contact levels. We aggregate data to see the bigger picture at the account level.”

6sense’s platform helps you understand and respond to these evolving buyer preferences ensuring your message resonates with what truly matters to your prospects.

The biggest pain point

Low conversion rates

The biggest challenge with MQLs isn’t just inefficiency—it’s the ripple effect of low conversion rates. Our research shows that, on average, only 2.7% of MQLs convert into closed-won deals. That means 97% of the effort spent generating and nurturing MQLs results in little to no revenue impact.

This misalignment creates a domino effect:

• Sales team lose confidence in marketing-generated leads.
• Marketing goals become disconnected from sales priorities.
• Credibility suffers when pipeline projections don’t translate into real revenue.

Many leaders we interviewed echoed this frustration. When MQLs don’t lead to real opportunities, they stop being a reliable metric for success. Instead, businesses need a model that reflects true buying intent across the entire account, not just an individual lead.

The need for a holistic approach

By focusing solely on MQLs, you miss out on the rich tapestry of signals that buyers send throughout their journey. You also fail to account for the complexity of modern B2B buying, where multiple stakeholders influence the decision-making process.

6sense research shows that B2B buyers have hundreds of interactions before making a purchase decision. These interactions span various channels and involve multiple stakeholders, further highlighting the limitations of the MQL approach.

Embracing the Signalverse

Shifting to account-based marketing (ABM)

Moving away from MQLs might feel like a leap into the unknown, but shifting to Marketing Qualified Accounts (MQAs) isn’t just smarter – it’s more effective.

Our research shows that 71% of leaders who’ve started focusing on accounts instead of leads have seen better engagement and conversion rates. This isn’t just a new approach – it’s a better one.

Harnessing AI and intent data

We understand the challenges of balancing personalization with scale. With 6sense’s AI capabilities, you don’t have to choose between the two.

At the core of our platform lies the 6sense Signalverse™ – a proprietary ecosystem that captures and processes signals from a vast array of sources, including account identification, web activity, intent data, technographics, company and contact data, news, and psychographics. This data is uniquely curated and enriched through our patented AI, transforming the Signalverse™ into a powerful engine for insights.

Unlike traditional platforms, 6sense’s AI doesn’t just collect data – it interprets and applies it. Our technology predicts which accounts are most likely to buy, when they’re ready to make a decision, and which messages will resonate most. This precision allows you to focus your efforts where they’ll have the greatest impact, driving ROI like never before. 6sense data shows that companies leveraging our AI-powered ABM platform see significant improvements in deal velocity and close rates compared to traditional methods.

The power of AI Agents: Scalable, personalized prospecting

Engaging accounts at scale while retaining a personal touch can feel like a balancing act. With 6sense Email Agents, it’s no longer an either/or scenario. Powered by the Signalverse™, AI-driven Email Agents automate engagement across every stage of the buying journey, ensuring highly personalized outreach that aligns with each account’s behavior and intent.

Email Agents leverage Signalverse™ data to:

• Prioritize high-intent accounts: Email Agents surface and prioritize accounts actively in-market, ensuring your team engages the right buyers at the right time.
• Enhance customer management: By tracking engagement signals from existing customers or open deal cycles, AI Agents improve win rates, upsells, and retention.
• Drive hyper-specific engagement: Accessing intent signals, AI Agents tailor advertising and messaging to meet each account’s needs at the perfect moment.

Grow your pipeline without growing headcount

Email Agents integrate with your brand’s content library and 6sense’s intent data to power outreach that’s automated yet personal. From crafting responses to booking meetings, these AI-powered assistants handle high volumes while tailoring each interaction to individual needs.

What’s the difference? Email Agent vs AI

AI writer

A tool that drafts emails based on predefined templates and basic personalization (e.g., name, company). While useful, it lacks the intelligence to react dynamically to buying signals and account behavior.

Email agent

Goes beyond static content generation. It analyzes real-time buying signals, crafts dynamic responses, and personalizes outreach at scale. Email Agents adjust messaging as account interest surges, ensuring the right engagement at the right time.

How to avoid generic outreach (when everyone else is being generic)

The biggest pitfall when using AI-driven email outreach? Generic messaging. Buyers can spot automation from a mile away. Here’s how to stand out:

Train AI to match your brand’s voice

Avoid robotic-sounding emails by using past high-performing messages as training data.

Use real buyer signals

The more intent data, website engagement, and past interactions you integrate, the smarter and more relevant your Email Agents become.

Ensure context-aware responses AI should adapt messaging based on where the prospect is in the buying cycle — tailoring content differently for early research vs. active evaluation.

Supercharge your Email Agents with the Signalverse™

The true power of Email Agents comes when they are enriched with multiple layers of buying signals. The more data they process, the more precise and effective their outreach becomes. Here’s how:

Layer intent data

Combine first-party site visits, content engagement, and third-party intent signals to determine true buying readiness.

Personalize beyond the basics

Go beyond first-name personalization — reference specific content viewed, competitive comparisons, or pain points to make emails feel relevant.

Automate at scale without losing the human touch

Email Agents should support sales teams, not replace them. Ensure seamless handoffs between AI-driven outreach and human-led follow-ups for high-priority accounts.

Aligning marketing and sales for greater impact

If your marketing and sales teams aren’t working together closely, you’re likely feeling the frustration of missed opportunities.

Getting everyone on the same page can make a huge difference.

Our survey revealed that the biggest challenge in aligning marketing and sales is sharing and analysing data (35.1% of respondents). This highlights the unified data strategies and platforms that can bridge the gap between these two crucial departments.

6sense’s solutions facilitate better alignment by providing a single source of truth for both marketing and sales teams. By sharing the same data and insights, both teams can work together more effectively to engage accounts and drive revenue.

Measuring what truly matters

In today’s B2B landscape, it’s crucial to measure what truly matters. Our survey shows that 78.4% of marketers prioritise revenue impact as the most important metric for measuring marketing’s impact.

6sense provides comprehensive analytics that allow you to track the metrics that matter most to your business. From pipeline influence to revenue impact, you can demonstrate marketing’s true contribution to the bottom line.

6sense’s comprehensive analytics don’t just track metrics – they provide actionable insights. Our platform shows you which activities drive the most pipeline revenue, allowing you to continuously optimize your marketing strategy.

Balancing short-term results and long-term value

While immediate results are important, successful B2B marketers also invest in long-term brand building. Alex Venus from Cloud Direct captures this balance well: “From a reputational standpoint, you might look at current brand sentiment regarding your products and solutions within a target organisation or assess performance sentiment. What do recent NPS scores indicate? Have you conducted surveys that reveal whether you’re meeting KPIs or need improvement?”

6sense’s AI-driven insights help you balance short-term engagement with long-term brand building. By understanding which accounts are in-market now and which are likely to be in the future, you can allocate your resources more effectively.

The future of B2B marketing: Predictive engagement

The future of B2B Marketing lies in predictive engagement – a strategy that not only anticipates buyer needs but also proactively engages them at precisely the right moment. Using AI and the wealth of signals in the Signalverse™, you can tailor your outreach to meet buyers where they are, before they even realize they need your solution.

6sense is at the forefront of this revolution, providing the tools and insights you need to predict buyer behaviour. Our predictive engagement capabilities go beyond simply identifying in-market accounts. Our AI forecasts which accounts are likely to enter the market soon, letting you warm up these relationships before your competitors know there’s an opportunity.

Playing the advanced game

Once you’ve laid the foundation by embracing ABM, harnessing AI, and aligning your sales and marketing teams, it’s time to elevate your strategy with advanced techniques that can set you apart from the competition. These strategies are designed for those ready to push the boundaries of B2B marketing and achieve exponential growth.

Refine your ICP messaging

By focusing on one ICP at a time and using data from the Signalverse™, you can craft hyper-targeted campaigns that deeply resonate with your audience. As you perfect your approach, gradually expand to other ICPs, creating a scalable, data-driven strategy that maximized impact while keeping your efforts focused and strategic.

Clear messaging: cut the corporate speak

In the crowded B2B space, clear and authentic messaging is key. Avoid jargon and buzzwords like “ROI” that can feel empty to your audience. Instead, speak directly ot the pain points and needs of your customers with straightforward language that connects on a personal level.

Employee advocacy: Turn your SMEs into advocates

Your subject matter experts (SMEs) are some of your greatest assets. Encourage them to share their knowledge publicly, positioning them as thought leaders. This builds trust with your audience and amplifies your brand’s credibility.

Building an academy: Help your customers achieve their goals

Create an educational platform or academy tailored to your customers’ and prospects’ job-to-be-done. Offering valuable content that helps them succeed positions your brand as an essential partner in their growth, fostering long-term relationships and loyalty.

Create a community: establish a feedback look

Building a community around your brand enables continuous engagement with your audience. This creates a powerful feedback loop where your customers feel valued, and you gain insights to refine your offerings and messaging further. At 6sense this is embodied by RevCity – where 6sense customers and external community members alike actively discuss key problems and solutions from marketing mastery to sales strategy.

Very narrow-focused ABM: All B2B GTM should be ABM

Narrow your ABM efforts even further by focusing on the accounts that truly matter. This ensures that your resources are spent where they’ll have the most significant impact.

Develop a growth loop: Find a lever for exponential growth

Identify a growth lever within your business that can create a self-sustaining cycle of expansion, such as referral program or a product feature that encourages repeat use. This drives continuous growth and maximizes your resources.

Launch wild creative brand campaigns (once you can afford it)

Once your foundational strategies are in place and driving results, consider launching bold, creative campaigns that capture attention and solidify your brand’s presence in the market. These campaigns should be daring and memorable, pushing the envelope of what’s expected in B2B marketing.

Your roadmap to success

Making changes to your marketing strategy can feel daunting, but the benefits of moving beyond MQLs are worth it. Here’s a clear path to help you make the shift:

Remember, this isn’t about doing more – it’s about doing better. By embracing these strategies, you can unlock real growth with less stress.

Methodology

This guide is based on data from the 2024 B2B Buyer Experience Report, which features analysis of survey responses from more than 2,500 recent B2B buyers; as well as Beyond MQLs: Reframing success in B2B marketing, which draws from interviews of dozens of senior marketing executives from leading B2B organizations across the technology and professional services sectors in Europe.