How Lob Grows its Revenue with Polytomic

Introducing Lob

Lob automates and simplifies direct mail and address verification, giving businesses greater flexibility, visibility, and accuracy of offline communications and data. More than 8,500 companies use Lob to communicate with their customers at scale. One in two U.S. households have received mail generated through Lob’s platform.  

Amanda Garza is the Senior Revenue Operations Manager at Lob. The primary goal of the Revenue Operations team is to ensure that the company reaches its revenue goals through alignment of the Customer Success, Marketing, and Sales teams. Polytomic has served as an essential tool for Amanda to be effective at her job and help Lob achieve its revenue goals.

Using Polytomic, Amanda gains granular control over data syncs to Salesforce and Marketo. She can now quickly provide the correct internal data to teams that need it most. With this data at their fingertips, Lob’s Revenue team can perform at their best and ultimately maximize revenue and customer satisfaction.‍

Pains Before Polytomic

‍Prior to the Polytomic integration, Lob’s internal data was not synced regularly into Salesforce which forced teams to operate with outdated information that were in different systems. This caused negative customer interactions. ‍

“We’ve had a few instances where customers had exceeded the caps on their plans at the end of the month. Our team didn’t have insight into this until after it happened. And those conversations didn’t go well. The customer would ask us why we didn’t tell them that they were approaching their limit. They were often caught off guard as to why we were telling them after the fact. These miscommunications caused a lot of wasted time for the customer and our Sales team. All this time could have been better spent finding new prospects and bringing in new business.” 

Customer data from the app database was not in Salesforce. Lob tried to build their own pipeline to fix the problem, but internal teams were spread too thin to create a sustainable solution. ‍

“If there was ever a bug or an issue where data wasn't getting funneled into Salesforce, having someone internally look into it was very difficult. The data team didn't want to be bug fixing all the time. That’s why we decided to work with Polytomic. I thought it was great because the solution has given me more control to see when things are going wrong. Now I don’t have to bother an internal team that has multiple different focuses and many different teams to answer to.”

Amanda now leverages Polytomic to send internal customer and product usage data to the Customer Success, Marketing, and Sales teams. What came as a big surprise to her was the immediate value that Polytomic unlocked upon first sync. ‍

“Our internal data was out of sync for weeks at a time prior to Polytomic. If we were reporting on customer accounts in Salesforce, it was never accurate or up to date. This meant we were missing out on critical insights and not taking necessary action. Now with Polytomic, I don't need to worry about missing data. The Revenue team can easily pull reports and be confident the data is accurate.”‍

How Polytomic Provides new Insights for the Customer Success Team‍

Lob prides itself on giving its customers the best experience. The Customer Success team drives this priority by providing support, including timely responses to issues and questions. Part of the Revenue Operations team’s work with the Customer Success team is to ensure that each customer is on the appropriate user journey. In order for this to happen, Revenue Operations needs to send structured data about each client to the Customer Success team. Polytomic ensures that this happens. ‍

“Polytomic helps us understand where our customers are in the customer journey, which directly informs how we interact with them. For example, we can quickly tell how long it took each prospect to connect with our sales team or sign up for our service. Having this information at our fingertips allows us to be proactive rather than reactive when dealing with similar types of prospects. Polytomic also gives us a better understanding of our existing customers. We now know when our customers are approaching their plan limits, which prompts us to reach out to them proactively.” 

Revenue Operations leverages Polytomic’s data syncs to optimize coordination with the Customer Success team which ultimately improves the customer experience. For example, when a new customer is activating their account, the two teams can now ensure proper onboarding by monitoring when a customer has added a payment method and verified their email address.

Further, the Customer Success team is able to analyze product usage data that shows how much a given customer’s mail is reaching intended recipients. This is a crucial indicator because it provides insight into common customer concerns before they occur. By monitoring this data, the Customer Success team is best able to communicate and deliver support proactively. 

High quality data gleaned from these types of syncs give the Revenue Operations and Customer Success teams a better understanding of their customer which ultimately leads to higher levels of customer satisfaction and retention. ‍

How Polytomic Gives Lob’s Marketing Team an Edge‍

Amanda and her team routinely need to answer questions like: what drives customer communication? What types of interactions are customers most receptive to? The data synced using Polytomic's platform answers these questions. For example, the Revenue Operations team can now send customer data into Salesforce and Marketo, allowing the Marketing team to build customized pipelines and targeted nurture programs. These insights can be used to build customer profiles that Marketing can leverage for future campaigns. ‍

“It was very beneficial for our teams to be able to see how someone’s been interacting with our product, which Polytomic allows us to do. With it, we get a sense of what is a good segment of customers for marketing to target. This enables us to ask better questions on how we can both improve our marketing and better coordinate with Sales. For example, if someone is engaging with the address verification product but not our print and mail product, is there a way for marketing to use that data to cross-sell? Or is there a way for us to use that data to market more educational content to our customers? These are all questions that help drive our revenue that we wouldn’t have the answers to if we didn’t have Polytomic.”

Polytomic quickly informs the marketing team of new sign ups, giving them the ability to capitalize on the window of opportunity for deploying new content to those actively interested. The Revenue Operations and Marketing teams can identify soon to expire accounts, prompting outreach to those customers before their subscriptions end. 

Syncs centered around customer subscriptions also enable Revenue Operations and Marketing to identify the status of users in their ecosystem, preventing communication errors. ‍

“Before Polytomic, we had issues around subscriptions syncing over correctly. It caused a lot of headaches to figure out who was a customer and who was not. Using Polytomic allows us to get the full view of our customers in Salesforce and Marketo.” ‍

How Polytomic Enhances the Sales Team’s Performance‍

Lob’s Revenue Operations and Sales teams use Polytomic to fully understand their existing users and prospects. They use these insights to seize the window of opportunity for closing new leads or retaining customers with expiring subscriptions. 

Amanda can now work with the Sales team to quickly identify where a customer is in the sales lifecycle. This enables Sales to tailor their approach to each customer or prospect. The Sales team now has a holistic and up-to-date view of customer details which enables them to proactively upsell and handle new leads with the correct level of attention. 

These syncs also give the Sales team the ability to identify patterns in customer spending activity. This is particularly helpful for Sales because it signals the level of engagement a customer has with their platform. If a customer has been spending less recently, the Sales team can redouble efforts to work with said customer. Conversely, if a customer has been spending more on the platform, it indicates to the Sales team that there may be an opportunity to upsell that customer to a higher tiered plan.‍

Powering Lob’s Continued Growth ‍

Lob’s customer-centric ethos has helped power its growth to date. 

As it expands its customer base, it will continue to use its internal data to build personalized relationships with its customers. Polytomic directly powers those relationships by making that data visible and actionable, allowing Lob to best serve its customers now and in the future.