How do contacts typically move through Lifecycle Stages in HubSpot and what does each stage mean?

In marketing, we track our leads at a contact level and as such use a contact-level property in HubSpot called Lifecycle Stage to understand where contacts sit within this flow. 

The typical journey is this: 

• Subscriber (the default first stage for anyone who enters HubSpot)
• Lead (updated when the contact is associated to a company that has a known Ideal Customer Profile Tier (Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3, ROM, or follow-on)) 
• Marketing Qualified Lead (updated when the contact is both associated to a company that has an Ideal Customer Profile Tier of Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3, or follow-on (not ROM) and has engaged in a certain level of marketing activity)
• SAL (Sales Accepted Lead) (updated when the Sales team have reviewed the MQLs and decided that any are valid sales opportunities right now) 
• Opportunity (updated when the Sales team have created a deal in HubSpot and at which point the Sales team start to review opportunities at a deal level using Deal Stages) 
• Customer (updated either when a deal is won or if an existing customer then it's based on the contact's associated company's Account Stage = Customer) 
  
  

However, there are instances where contacts enter HubSpot but we know they won't ever be a valid lead. In these cases, we set them with a Lifecycle Stage of either: 

• Spam (updated typically when a contact is trying to sell us something)
• Other (updated when a supplier of ours enters HubSpot or when a candidate contacts us about a job/opportunities at Dayshape) 
• Internal (updated when the email domain includes dayshape or if an internal employee uses a personal email address to enter HubSpot)