Best Strategy to import contacts and when to create leads

Best Strategy to import contacts and when to create leads

Hi,
I'm new to Bigin and looking for a "best" strategy.
I had and have the following idea for an use case:

1. Search for websites which I want to contact
2. Create a contact in Bigin with all the required information based on this website (via API if this is important)
3. Create a "deal" in a pipeline in the stage "created" with this contact
4. When I send an email to this contact I move the deal to the stage "email-sent"
5. When I get a reply from the contact I move the deal to the stage "not-interested" or "waiting-for-demo"

and so on...

Is this a good strategy?
I'm asking as I read the post [Leads in Bigin](https://help.zoho.com/portal/en/community/topic/lead-in-bigin?utm_source=chatgpt.com): Would it be better to manage the state of created contacts with a tags like "created", "contacted", "not-interested" and only if the contact shows interest create a deal based on this contact?

It's maybe also importanz that I plan to import / create > 1000 contacts based on websites.