Lead Liaison is a software company that makes life easier for marketers. With automation and lead management solutions including lead scoring, lead nurturing, lead distribution and lead tracking, Lead Liaison is committed to connecting marketers with the right prospects.
So when Jen Worsham, Director of Marketing and Client Relations, and Ryan Schefke, Customer Service Specialist, seek to link Lead Liaison with third parties, they want native integrations that improve relationships, ones that enhance the connectivity Lead Liaison already offers.
One channel Lead Liaison wanted to optimize is direct mail, which makes a bigger impact when personalized. But with an array of third party vendors, it’s been tough for marketers to target direct mail. That’s why Lead Liaison has integrated with Lob: to make direct mail personal, engaging, and as easy to manage as email.
“Customers want to use a single system for the design and delivery of their creative marketing pieces. Very few marketing automation systems have native direct mail builders in their software application. For Lead Liaison, we saw this as a must have. Customers don't want to switch from one system to another, going back and forth, to send their direct mail piece. They want to design the content and integrate it with their automations in a single platform. This reduces a marketers workload by around 30 to 40% when creating/sending direct mail.
In addition, the integration elevates personalization. Other systems require "fixed text." Customers love using mail-merge with our email platform. Now they can apply the same mail merge concepts to their direct mail!” - Jen Worsham, Director of Marketing & Client Relations
When marketers want to send direct mail, such as postcards, to prospective customers, they want a seamless process that allows them to personalize their campaigns, as well as track their return on investment (ROI).
Today’s marketers often have to build the creative aspects of their direct mail campaign inside a third party’s platform. They then insert data dynamically into a direct mail piece before moving everything over to a marketing automation system. It’s a complicated process that takes a lot of time. The Lead Liaison product team was intent on making the process easier for customers.
“Our customers had to go to a third party to create direct mail,” said Schefke. “People were frustrated using these third party systems that couldn’t personalize content. Plus, we lost control of their experience.” This frustration led Lead Liaison to start exploring direct mail APIs, which is when the team landed on Lob.
“We were attracted to Lob because of it’s dynamic capabilities,” said Worsham. “We’re giving customers the ability to insert dynamic data, and Lob’s API makes it easy for us, and easy for marketers.”
Lead Liaison used to have to tell their customers to create direct mail with a third party, but now they’re able to service customers all from one dashboard. “We’re now able to maintain and control the entire experience within our software,” said Schefke. “A client can come into our application and add their images, build the front of the postcard, build the back of the postcard, and finally have the entire end-to-end experience, from design to deployment, within our app.”
“The coolest part about Lob is that it allows us to dynamically insert data inside the postcard and to automate the process,” said Worsham. “In the past, content had to be built outside of our application and customers had no access to dynamic data.”
It’s not just the results that impress the team at Lead Liaison, it’s also Lob’s flexible API. “We are using Lob’s API,” said Schefke. “It’s beautiful to us-- we just send commands to Lob, get responses back, and can offer customers an experience within our application. That flexible API was attractive to us.”
Because the integration is native, Lead Liaison has streamlined operational efficiencies, cutting marketing costs along the way. “Instead of paying a third party, customers now pay us, which has created an additional revenue line item,” said Schefke. Lob also offers an on-demand model, meaning that Lead Liaison pays only when the integration is used. “It’s great that Lob’s services are all on demand. They didn’t have some big license agreement. Instead, we can pay as we go.”
Lead Liaison wanted to help customers send out compelling direct mail, but they had to direct customers to third parties. The experience was consequently clunky, and it frustrated Lead Liaison’s team, as well as their customers.
“Our goal was to offer a native integration,” said Schefke. “We don’t want to have to tell our customers that they have to add a connector, create an account, put in credentials, or anything like that.”
Lead Liaison used Lob’s API to offer a native experience. “Customers can now come to us, create direct mailings, add everything they want, and have a completely native experience within our app. That’s the experience we’re driving for-- that’s what Lob has helped us do.”
Schefke and Worsham agree that Lob has been easy to work with and super responsive. “The team at Lob actually offered to review the proof of concepts that we built,” said Schefke. “We’ve been on a couple of calls with them where we shared our requirements. They made recommendations for improvements and suggestions to make things a little more flexible and customizable.”
The team at Lead Liaison is excited for what’s to come. “The Lob integration is a really great way to have everything in one system,” said Worsham. “It’s exciting for me, not only as a part of the Lead Liaison team, but as a marketer in general.”
This integration launches in October 2016. If you’d like to learn more about the integration, request a demo here. Stay tuned for updates: sign up here, and we’ll ping you when the integration launches.
