How to Set Effective Inquiry Acceptance Criteria for B2B International Marketing Campaigns

For acceptance of qualified inquiries under a B2B overseas promotion plan, four points should be clearly defined before campaigns begin: what qualifies as a valid inquiry, what evidence will be used to assess it, how duplicate leads will be handled, and who will review disputes. Agreeing only on “how many inquiries will be delivered each month” can result in spam messages being counted as achievements. It can also lead to all valuable purchase inquiries being rejected simply because the customer has not yet made a purchase.

A qualified inquiry should include contact details that allow further communication, a requirement relevant to the company’s core business, and a target market within the agreed scope. Whether the inquiry proceeds to a quotation or results in an order should be recorded separately as a metric for a later sales stage. This prevents the acceptance criteria for promotion from changing based on sales outcomes.

Define “valid” as conditions that can be assessed one inquiry at a time

Acceptance criteria should not simply say “genuine customer” or “high-quality buyer.” These descriptions lack clear assessment criteria. The conditions can be organized into the following acceptance checklist and confirmed by both parties before launch.

For businesses such as engineering equipment and custom manufacturing, buyers may first ask about product selection and compatibility requirements, and provide quantities, drawings, or budgets later. The absence of this information should not result in an inquiry being immediately classified as invalid. However, a message that only says “Hello” and contains no business-related information should be placed in a pending confirmation pool and assessed only after the requirements have been clarified.

If the company clearly does not accept small-batch orders, the minimum purchase requirements should be included in the criteria in advance and communicated appropriately on the website and advertising landing pages. Adding requirements during acceptance creates a disconnect between promotion and the company’s actual ability to handle orders.

Record qualified inquiries separately from sales opportunities

We recommend setting three statuses: pending confirmation, qualified inquiry, and sales opportunity. “Pending confirmation” means the information is insufficient; “qualified inquiry” means the basic criteria are met; and a “sales opportunity” requires further confirmation of project requirements, the buyer’s role in purchasing, or the next steps in the business process.

This distinction is useful for businesses with long purchasing cycles. A buyer still in the technical evaluation stage may still be a qualified inquiry. Likewise, if an inquiry does not convert after reaching the quotation stage due to price, lead time, or solution fit, that does not mean the lead was invalid.

“No response” also requires distinguishing between different reasons. Contact details that are clearly invalid may be excluded as agreed. If only one email has been sent and no reply received, there is usually insufficient evidence. The plan should specify the initial response time, follow-up arrangements, and when a lead should be marked as temporarily unreachable. Records without the agreed follow-up should remain in the pending confirmation status.

Use consistent evidence across the website, promotion channels, and sales records

Acceptance should be based on an inquiry register. Each record should include at least a unique ID, submission time, original requirements, contact details, source channel, review status, and reason for the assessment. Inquiries received by phone, instant messaging, and social media direct messages should also be added to the same register; do not count only website form submissions.

When website development and marketing are handled by different teams, a common issue is that the backend shows a successful submission, but the sales team has not received it. Before launch, test that form submissions, notifications, and lead records are all working correctly. Without reliable receipt records, it is difficult to determine later whether the problem occurred during lead generation or handoff.

When using an integrated service covering website development, SEO, and advertising, such as Yiyingbao, inquiry records, source attribution, and handoff requirements should also be included in the delivery checklist. A consolidated scope of services can facilitate coordination, but whether an inquiry is qualified still needs to be assessed in light of the company’s products and capacity to handle it.

Cross-channel deduplication can take contact details, company name, and inquiry content into account. If the same buyer submits the same requirement more than once, the submissions should generally be consolidated into one inquiry. For a new, independent project from the same company, the decision should follow the criteria agreed in advance. New inquiries from existing customers should be counted separately from those from new customers.

Source attribution also requires a clearly defined counting methodology: a customer may first visit through SEO, then click an ad and submit an inquiry. Channel contributions can be analyzed separately, but the final inquiry count must be deduplicated. Leads whose source cannot be confirmed should be listed separately rather than forcibly assigned to a channel.

Include acceptance metrics, review procedures, and corrective actions in the plan

The number of qualified inquiries should be assessed alongside quality and cost. The qualified inquiry rate can be calculated as “number of deduplicated qualified inquiries ÷ number of all deduplicated business inquiries.” Test submissions should be excluded as agreed in advance. Spam and submissions unrelated to the business should remain in the quality analysis to avoid making results look better by deleting records.

The cost per qualified inquiry should clearly specify which expenses are included. A figure that counts advertising spend alone cannot be directly compared with one that also includes service fees. SEO, advertising, and social media should also be assessed separately: each channel has a different ramp-up period, user intent, and contribution method, so the same short-term volume commitment should not be applied to all of them.

Targets should be set based on budget, product demand, target markets, and existing data. If historical data is unavailable, a trial period can be set first, with targets adjusted based on the actual quality of leads. If low-cost inquiries are concentrated in markets the company cannot serve, the campaigns still need to be adjusted.

The implementation plan should also specify deadlines for submitting inquiry details and raising objections, the person responsible for review, the evidence required, and the settlement method. Disputed leads should be added to a review list, with a specific reason provided when an inquiry is deemed invalid. Any corrective actions, make-up delivery, or fee adjustments in the event of underperformance should also be clearly defined in advance.

Before launch, both parties can jointly assess a few typical cases: a clear inquiry from a free email address, a duplicate submission from the same customer, a referral from outside the target market, and a new project from an existing customer. If the parties reach different conclusions, the rules should be refined further. The criteria have practical value for acceptance only when different personnel can reach consistent conclusions based on the same records.