Case study | Lead routing · Inbound lead management · Pipeline optimization
Inbound lead flows
Spam was reaching Sales as if it were real pipeline. I changed the rules that decide what counts as spam and who gets each lead, and moved all inbound routing into one place.
- Tools
- HubSpot, Chili Piper, Notion
- My role
- Analysis, design and implementation
- Worked with
- Sales and Marketing
fewer spam leads
less maintenance work on routing logic
router for all inbound traffic, down from two
The problem
A high volume of spam leads was being routed to Sales, creating noise in the pipeline.
Sales was also dealing with a second issue: some leads were being routed to the wrong reps.
What I found
I started by investigating our inbound traffic, looking for a way to stop spam from being routed to Sales as real leads. The data pointed to two things.
One spam score, different thresholds
Every form submission on our website gets a built-in spam score. Combined with our segments (SMB and Micro, Mid-Market and Enterprise, based on company size), I found we could set a different threshold for each segment and block spam traffic.
Enriched data beat declared data
Routing relied on the segment each lead declared on the form, and that was not very accurate. The segment we enriched on the backend was more reliable.
Getting everyone on board
Before changing anything, I took the proposal and the evidence to both Sales and Marketing. I showed how the changes would improve lead quality, clean up their pipelines and help MQL to SQL conversion rates.
With both teams on board, I moved on to the build.
What I built
- Two separate routers for inbound traffic
- Logic scattered across systems
- Routing based on the segment declared on the form
- One main router for all inbound traffic
- Logic centralized in a few assets
- Routing based on enriched segment data, with declared data as the fallback when enrichment isn't available
- A spam score threshold for each segment
I implemented the new logic in Chili Piper and cleaned up the related HubSpot forms. I used the project to unify the scattered logic too: instead of two routers, there is now one main router for the whole inbound flow.
Every process and asset involved is documented in Notion.
Results
Spam leads dropped by 60%, and routing logic now takes 50% less maintenance work.
The new routing logic also fixed Sales' other issue, incorrectly routed leads. Both Marketing and Sales reported cleaner pipelines.