Get started with a platform subscription, paired with unit cost for mail pieces. Features vary depending on the pricing Edition.

Monthly subscription

Mail piece unit pricing

On 07/14/2024, the USPS increased postage rates by an average of 7.5%. The USPS reserves the right to routinely update prices within a certain threshold, typically in January and July of each year, to adjust for inflation and increased operating expenses. You can find more details outlined in the USPS Press Release. Please note that Lob does not apply any additional charges when the USPS increases postage rates.

Postcards

Self-Mailers

Letters

* Extra postage fees for 8.5x11 letters over 6 sheets (6 pages single-sided, or 12 pages double-sided) and 8X14 letters over 3 sheets (3 pages single-sided, or 6 pages double-sided)

Snap Packs

Checks

Overview

Grow faster with a new kind of Customer Data Platform (CDP). ActionIQ’s unique composable architecture gives marketers easy and secure ways to activate data anywhere in the customer experience.

ActionIQ + Lob = Integrate Offline and Online Customer Experience

The ActionIQ CX Hub empowers everyone to be a CX champion by giving business teams the freedom to explore and action on customer data while helping technical teams extend and enhance existing technology investments to manage data governance, costs and performance. AIQ CX Hub gives all teams direct but controlled self-service access to customer data to discover audiences and orchestrate experiences at scale.

Direct mail from Lob enables you to fully realize the CX potential of the AIQ CX Hub at the mailbox, providing flexible, automated direct mail production, delivery, and analytics, fully integrated with your CX stack.

Eliminate the Last Obstacle to Omnichannel Automation

The AIQ CX Hub orchestrates customer journeys across all channels and touchpoints, automated across hundreds of out-of-the-box integrations. However, due to limitations of legacy direct mail tools and lack of automation offline, omnichannel orchestration fails to reach its full potential, resulting in time-consuming execution, static content disallowing personalization seen in digital channels.

Lob automates direct mail production, enabling AIQ users to send direct mail when they need it, without downstream hassles or delays. That means you can orchestrate campaigns across all channels, with precise timing, personalization, and visibility.

Trigger Direct Mail Customer Experience in Real Time

The ActionIQ CX Hub provides robust trigger creation and activation capabilities, enabling you to deliver real-time outbound experiences across any channel based on any signal you chose, from streaming data like abandoned carts, to historical customer profiles like total spend.

Lob brings this capability to the mailbox, with unlimited customizability, quick processing and delivery, and tracking across the entire customer journey. Giving users the ability to trigger any message, design, or form factor based on any customer signal.

Orchestrate and optimize your campaigns

The AIQ CX Hub is a powerful tool for orchestration and optimization, enabling users to rapidly design, execute, test, and iterate on marketing and sales campaigns across multiple channels. However, legacy workflows and low visibility can cut direct mail out of the loop, forcing users to silo direct mail, and limit your ability to track results, improve campaign performance, and fully integrate mail into your multichannel or omnichannel workflow.

Lob’s API solves this problem, integrating fully with the AIQ CX Hub, enabling users to treat direct mail just like your digital channels. That means you can structure the customer journey, track ROI, test new strategies, and iterate your campaigns across all channels, without the need for a siloed direct mail track.

Keep Branding, Voice and Personalization Consistent, Online and Offline

The AIQ CX Hub provides powerful tools to shape and adapt your brand voice, while personalizing down to the microsegment. This gives you the ability to make the most of each touchpoint, while maintaining a single voice across all channels. Lob is able to then utilize all of the AIQ CX Hub intelligence to programmatically send personalized, timely, and quality mail pieces to your customers.

Is ActionIQ + LOB Right for You?

The AIQ CX Hub is designed for B2B and B2C companies with large customer bases and complex data needs across a wide range of industries, including financial services, retail, consumer packaged goods, grocery, travel & hospitality, healthcare, and B2B tech.

Lob caters to a wide range of both marketing and transactional use cases, from small businesses to multinational enterprises. For Lob users, whether or not you adopt a CX Hub depends on the factors above, as well as your use case.

Use Cases:

Marketing direct mail: If you need the ability to conduct multivariate testing, featuring 1-1 personalization and quick iteration capabilities, you’re more likely to benefit from a CX Hub. Typically, acquisition-focused marketing campaigns in particular can benefit from these capabilities.

Transactional or operational mail: Industries with heavily regulated customer communications will benefit from a CX Hub. For example, if you send financial statements, policy change notices, explanations of benefits, or bills through direct mail, a CX Hub can help ensure you’re meeting the legal requirements of each state, country, and region. Companies operating in multiple industries also tend to have complex regulatory obligations, which can benefit from the AIQ CX Hub.

Overview

Blueshift has built a direct integration to Lob from within their platform. This empowers marketers to automatically send personalized behavior-triggered mail to every user, on demand.

• Read more about the integration in the Lob + Blueshift integration factsheet.

• Instructions on how to connect Blueshift and Lob can be found in Blueshift's documentation here.

Overview

Hubspot is a popular marketing automation software tool. In early 2022, Hubspot added Custom Code functionality to their Workflows, enabling a direct connection to Lob. Hubspot’s Workflows can be used to automatically trigger a mailpiece to be sent, via Lob.

(Looking for a no-code integration option? See here.)

Video walkthrough

Step-by-step walkthrough

Create accounts

A developer plan for testing with Lob is free, but you will need to create a Lob account to get your API Keys.

If you do not already have one, create a Hubspot account here. You’ll want to enable Operations Hub / Marketing Hub Professional trial (note this lasts 14 days): Automation > Workflows > Start 14 Day Trial

Create contacts

You can create manually, or import from a CSV by clicking Contacts > Import. From there, walk through the flow to import a file from your computer: Start an Import > File From Computer > One File > One Object > Contacts. Ensure your contacts have address parameters; you can use this CSV as an example.

In the Map File screen, for ‘Address2’, select ‘Create A New Property’, and name it ‘Address2’.

Create a List

Contacts > Lists > Create List > Select ‘Static’ List > Contact-based > Name your List

Create a Workflow

Select Automation > Workflows

Click Create Workflow

Click Contact Based > Blank Workflow

Set Up Trigger

For example, List Memberships > Select List you previously created > Is Member of List

Create a resulting Action

Click + button on Workflow, beneath the Trigger

Select Custom Code

Here you can select Python or NodeJS. For this example, we will select Language: Python. Then we will map Lob’s API fields to Hubspot properties, and enter our custom code. For this example, Map Properties To Include in Code as follows:

Finally, enter your Python code, with properties defined as per the prior step. See example code below to test with.

Example Python code

import requests
import json
import base64
import os
from hubspot import HubSpot
from hubspot.crm.contacts import ApiException
from requests.adapters import HTTPAdapter
from urllib3.util.retry import Retry


def retry_session(retries, session=None, backoff_factor=1):
    session = session or requests.Session()
    retry = Retry(
        total=retries,
        read=retries,
        connect=retries,
        backoff_factor=backoff_factor,
        status_forcelist=[500, 502, 503, 504, 429],
        allowed_methods=['POST']
    )
    adapter = HTTPAdapter(max_retries=retry)
    session.mount('http://', adapter)
    session.mount('https://', adapter)
    return session


def main(event):
    address = event.get('inputFields').get('address')
    address2 = event.get('inputFields').get('address2')
    city = event.get('inputFields').get('city')
    state = event.get('inputFields').get('state')
    zip_code = event.get('inputFields').get('zip_code')
    email = event.get('inputFields').get('email')
    hs_object_id = event.get('inputFields').get('hs_object_id')
    phone = event.get('inputFields').get('phone')
    firstname = event.get('inputFields').get('firstname')
    lastname = event.get('inputFields').get('lastname')

    url = "https://api.lob.com/v1/postcards"

    payload = {
        "description": "HUBSPOT DEMO POSTCARD",
        "to[name]": firstname + ' ' + lastname,
        "to[address_line1]": address,
        "to[address_line2]": address2,
        "to[address_city]": city,
        "to[address_state]": state,
        "to[address_zip]": zip_code,
        "front": "https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/public.lob.com/solutions/retail_pdfs/4x6+Retail+front.pdf",
        "back": "https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/public.lob.com/solutions/retail_pdfs/4x6+Retail+back.pdf",
        "size": "4x6",
        "metadata[customer_id]": hs_object_id,
        "metadata[campaign]": "HUBSPOT_TEST",
        "metadata[phone]": phone,
        "metadata[email]": email,
        "metadata[front_creative_name]": "demo_hubspot_front_creative",
        "metadata[back_creative_name]": "demo_hubspot_back_creative",
        "metadata[address_city]": city,
        "metadata[address_state]": state,
        "metadata[address_zip]": zip_code
    }

    session = retry_session(retries=5)
    r = session.post(url, auth=requests.auth.HTTPBasicAuth(YOUR_API_KEY, ''), data=payload)
    j = r.json()
    print(j)

Add your API Keys

Next we need API credentials from our Lob account. Retrieve these credentials from your Lob dashboard by clicking on the Settings menu on the sidebar, then clicking on the API Keys tab.

In the example Python code, replace YOUR_API_KEY with your Test API Key.

Update Creative

You should also replace the front and back "HUBSPOT_CREATIVE" with your own HTML, template IDs, or links to hosted static creatives. For example:

"front": "https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/public.lob.com/solutions/retail_pdfs/4x6+Retail+front.pdf",

"back": "https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/public.lob.com/solutions/retail_pdfs/4x6+Retail+back.pdf",

Testing

You can then log into your Lob account to verify that a mailpiece was generated.

Utilizing workflow

Once you’ve tested, you can Publish your workflow. From there, it will run whenever the trigger you set is fired. For example, if you followed the above example, you can now add some contacts to your list. This should automatically create mailpieces for each person on the list.

Now you can replace the Test API key in your Python code with your Base64 Encoded Live API Key, and your Automation is live. If you are using other test resources like address IDs or template IDs, those will also need to be transferred to your live environment.

Overview

Use the following as an addendum to the Braze integration documentation for using Lob with Braze.

This integration will allow customers to send data from Braze to Lob. A pre-designed webhook can then be used within a campaign to trigger mail to customers. After sending through Braze, the mail data can be accessed from within the Lob dashboard.

Step 1 - Add Custom Attributes

Add Custom Attributes for user mailing address information:

• address_line1

• address_line2

• address_city

• address_state

• address_zip

• address_country

Step 2 - Update user profiles

Update user profiles with mailing addresses.

Import CSV:

API call:

Anything highlighted is a custom variable that will need to be updated for each customer or use case.

curl -X POST \
  https://rest.iad-01.braze.com/users/track \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{
    "api_key": "Braze_API_Key",
    "attributes": [
      {
          "external_id" : "10142019",
          "address_line1" : "185 BERRY ST STE 6100",
          "address_line2" : null,
          "address_city" : "SAN FRANCISCO",
          "address_state" : "CA",
          "address_zip" : "94107-1741",
          "address_country" : "UNITED STATES"
      }
     ]
   }'

Step 3 - Create a webhook template

Create a webhook template (Braze Documentation). Once this template is made it can be used for your future campaigns as well. In the case that you have different variations of sends, meaning you are going to perform one send with postcards and one with letters it is recommended that you create 2 separate webhook templates in Braze for this.

Additionally, if you are going to be doing small variations such as sending first-class vs standard class depending on the recipient, then you can leverage Braze's conditional logic. You can build this logic into the template and have one webhook template support multiple variations.

Example postcard

Compose tab:

Webhook URL: https://api.lob.com/v1/postcards

Request body: Raw Text

{
    "description" : "{{campaign.${name}}}",
    "metadata" : {
        "campaign" : "{{campaign.${name}}}"
    },
    "to" : {
        "name" : "{{${first_name}}} {{${last_name}}}",
        "address_line1" : "{{custom_attribute.${address_line1}}}",
        "address_line2" : "{{custom_attribute.${address_line2}}}",
        "address_city" : "{{custom_attribute.${address_city}}}",
        "address_state" : "{{custom_attribute.${address_state}}}",
        "address_zip" : "{{custom_attribute.${address_zip}}}"
    },
    "from" : "adr_2066448bdef840f1",
    "front" : "tmpl_8b3b1249ede0406",
    "back" : "tmpl_d69077c7be7bd09",
    "merge_variables" : {
        "name" : "{{${first_name}}}"
    }
}

Example letter

Compose tab:

Webhook URL: https://api.lob.com/v1/letters

Request body: Raw Text

{
    "description" : "{{campaign.${name}}}",
    "to" : {
        "name" : "{{${first_name}}} {{${last_name}}}",
        "address_line1" : "{{custom_attribute.${address_line1}}}",
        "address_line2" : "{{custom_attribute.${address_line2}}}",
        "address_city" : "{{custom_attribute.${address_city}}}",
        "address_state" : "{{custom_attribute.${address_state}}}",
        "address_zip" : "{{custom_attribute.${address_zip}}}"
    },
    "from" : "adr_2066448bdef840f1",
    "file" : "tmpl_d69077c7be7bd09",
    "color" : "true",
    "merge_variables" : {
        "name" : "{{${first_name}}}"
    },
    "metadata" :
        "campaign" : "{{campaign.${name}}}",
        "zip" : "{{custom_attribute.${address_zip}}}"
    },
    "mail_type" : "usps_first_class",
    "double_sided": false,
    "address_placement": "top_first_page",
    "mail_type": "usps_first_class",
    "return_envelope": true,
    "perforated_page": 1,
    "extra_service": "registered",
    "custom_envelope": null,
    "billing_group_id" : ""
}

Example self-mailer

Compose tab:

Webhook URL: https://api.lob.com/v1/self_mailers

Request body: Raw Text

{
    "description" : "{{campaign.${name}}}",
    "size" : "6x18_bifold",
    "to" : {
        "name" : "{{${first_name}}} {{${last_name}}}",
        "address_line1" : "{{custom_attribute.${address_line1}}}",
        "address_line2" : "{{custom_attribute.${address_line2}}}",
        "address_city" : "{{custom_attribute.${address_city}}}",
        "address_state" : "{{custom_attribute.${address_state}}}",
        "address_zip" : "{{custom_attribute.${address_zip}}}"
    },
    "from" : "adr_2066448bdef840f1",
    "inside" : "tmpl_8b3b1249ede0406",
    "outside" : "tmpl_d69077c7be7bd09",
    "merge_variables" : {
        "name" : "{{${first_name}}}"
    },
    "metadata" :
        "campaign" : "{{campaign.${name}}}",
        "zip" : "{{custom_attribute.${address_zip}}}"
    },
    "mail_type" : "usps_first_class",
    "billing_group_id" : ""
}

Settings tab

Be sure to leave the : after the Lob API key you paste in between the apostrophes.

REQUEST HEADERS:

• Authorization: Basic {{ 'YOUR_LOB_API_KEY:' | base64_encode }}

• Content-Type: application/json

• Idempotency-Key: {{${user_id}}}

  • It is recommended that you leverage idempotency keys to prevent duplication of mail being sent. It can be any value you seem fit but often it is userID or a combination of userID and campaign name.

• HTTP METHOD: POST

Step 4 - Test your new webhook

Test your new webhook template and check your Lob dashboard to ensure desired results. It is recommended to run a one-off test in Braze to see if the request format is set up appropriately and then run a full end-to-end test where you send an entire campaign through your test environment.

Running a one-off test

When running a one-off test it is useful to have test users in your system who have the correct data needed to send mail and validate your creatives. Here is an example of a test we would perform.

Common errors

1. 401 Unauthorized

   • If you receive this error message, your API key is incorrect.
2. 422 Unprocessable Entity (Invalid request payload JSON format)

   • If you receive this error, it is likely that your payload is not formatted correctly. It needs to match JSON formatting.

   • Generally speaking, the rules that are often broken are:

     1. All keys and values are enclosed in double quotes (").

     2. Commas after every key-value pair except for the last one.

     3. No newline characters in any values and no extra spaces between fields.

3. 422 Unprocessable Entity (Other)

   • Other than JSON errors, you can receive 422 errors in the payload sent to Lob does not match our requirements.

   • For example, if you are missing address_line1 in the payload you will get an error saying that is needed. For these errors, you can make the appropriate adjustments and retry your requests.

FAQs

How do I use merge variables from Braze?

To leverage merge variables, in Braze you will reference the merge variable in your HTML file as the Key and the user attribute as the value.

For example, if you had a merge variable called f_name in your HTML, then in the section of your payload called merge_variables you would have a key of f_name and a value of the user attribute in Braze. Here is an example of what that would look like in Braze

"merge_variables" : {
    "f_name" : "{{${first_name}}}"
}

What do I use for the file parameter for letters? What do I use for the front and back parameters for postcards?

See more information on file format types here

Essentially you can either host your HTML in the Lob platform where you can then reference the template ID that is created for you, or you can leverage Braze’s Media Library where you will be provided with a URL that can be used as the value for these parameters.

Here is an example of what you could see in Braze:

"file" : "tmpl_3v234vl23hj5v"

"file" : "https://braze-images.com/appboy/communication/assets/image_assets/images/25660da30cdc28a314/original.jpg?1637006884"

Capturing Lob webhook data in Braze

Braze’s Data Transformation tool enables you to capture webhook events from Lob, and use them to either update Attributes or create Events within Braze.

Steps:

1. Set up a Data Transformation in Braze. This will generate a Webhook URL you can use to pass events into Braze.

   • See Braze’s documentation on utilizing Data Transformations

2. Create Lob Webhook for the events you want to track, using the Braze-provided URL

3. Set up the Transformation Code in Braze to listen for the event. You can use this to either update an Attribute or generate an Event.

   • See Example 1 below for a 'Letter Viewed' example, in which it both updates an attribute within Braze and creates an Event.

4. Send a Test webhook and check the resulting Output to ensure the data is successfully being captured, and the subsequent attribute/event updates are occurring within Braze

Example 1: Braze Transformation Code for Letter Viewed, which updates the attribute 'external_id' and generates an Event named 'Letter Viewed' when the webhook from Lob is received:

let brazecall = {
 "attributes": [
   {
     "external_id": payload.body.metadata.external_id,
     "_update_existing_only": true
   }
 ],
 "events": [
   {
     "external_id": payload.body.metadata.external_id,
     "_update_existing_only": true,
     "name": "Letter Viewed",
     "campaign": payload.body.description,
     "time": new Date().toISOString(),
     "properties": {
       "property_1": payload.event_type
     }
   }
 ]
};

Example 2: Braze transformation output after webhook received, showing the updated attribute 'external_id' and creating the Event 'Letter Viewed'.

{
  "attributes": [
    {
      "external_id": "123456789",
      "_update_existing_only": true
    }
  ],
  "events": [
    {
      "external_id": "123456789",
      "_update_existing_only": true,
      "name": "Letter Viewed",
      "campaign": "Lob Braze Webhook Demo",
      "time": "2023-10-05T23:14:58.073Z",
      "properties": {
        "property_1": {
          "enabled_for_test": true,
          "id": "letter.viewed",
          "object": "event_type",
          "resource": "letters"
        }
      }
    }
  ]
}
Success. Output is a valid /users/track request.
Details:
{
  "attributes_validated": 1,
  "events_validated": 1,
  "message": "success"
}

Other Resources

Advanced logic

• String manipulation, date formatting, etc. See Braze’s Liquid documentation.

Idempotent requests

• See Managing mail settings > Idempotent requests

Rate limiting

• By default, all accounts and their corresponding Test and Live API Keys have a rate limit of 150 requests per 5 seconds per endpoint

• Lob API docs: Rate Limiting

• Braze user guide: Rate limiting

Lob's mission is to help the world send intelligent mail, one mail piece at a time. By making direct mail sends as easy as email through the use of modern APIs, Lob strives to modernize this often overlooked channel of direct communication.

Lob is a great fit for all users of direct mail from all walks of life:

• Are you brand new to direct mail as a channel, and looking for ideas and best practices on getting started?

• Are you looking to infuse direct mail automation into your existing business workflows and seeking for ways to modernize your enterprise solutions and tools?

• Or are you building a highly sophisticated experimentation program using this rapidly iterative and performative channel?

Start at a pace you're most comfortable with, and Lob can help meet your direct mail needs, one step at a time.

Getting started with Lob

Sending mail in an accurate, reliable, and programmatic way involves the following four steps:

Craft the best path forward

Depending on where you are in your quest for intelligent mail, or given your available budget or resources, there are multiple ways to leverage Lob's platform and accelerate your growth. Read on!

Learn about our platform

We're not your average direct mail experience. Explore Lob and see how we can meet your immediate needs for direct mail automation.

• Dive right in: Send your first campaign via our easy-to-follow dashboard UI to get a feel for intelligent direct mail.

• Explore our APIs! Check out our API quickstart quide to explore our APIs in your preferred programming language, explore our our Postman collection, and go to GitHub to access our supported SDK libraries.

Experiment with your inputs and outputs

Understand other ways in which you can up-level your direct mail program.

• Explore how to operationalize dynamic personalizations to create mail pieces that can truly resonate with your audience

• Experiment with different methods of mail sends and mail delivery strategy to see how to best increase relevance and conversion

• Ingest mail tracking data, set up notification alerts via webhooks, or add QR codes to improve attribution and reporting

• Access advanced features and more mail formats to improve audience responses as needed

• Generate a campaign hypothesis, and build split-test or multivariate test cohorts to see which creative or campaign resonates with your segment

Enrich your data, connections, and processes

Explore our integrations so you can learn how to tap into your existing tech stacks and augment your datasets to expand the possibilities of creating seamless and timely omnichannel experiences with a touch of direct mail.

CRM/CDP/MAP integrations

Customer data platforms (CDPs) serve as a source of truth for customer data, while customer relationship management systems (CRMs) manage customer relationships for sales. By using data piped from these systems, marketing automation tools can orchestrate multichannel campaigns based on the customer journey, or sequence business workflows, triggered by user actions, events, milestones, or other logic.

Lob integrations enable automated trigger-based campaigns, so you can incorporate direct mail into your omnichannel marketing campaigns and make operational workflows more efficient.

We offer two types of customer data integrations optimized for your direct mail strategy, technology stack, and available resources.

Data enrichment integrations

We collaborate with third-party data providers to offer data enrichment options for sending direct mail, enabling you to reach a broader audience.

Design tool integrations

We are continually enhancing our capability to convert creative from popular design tools into HTML, to empower more users to benefit from the personalization that HTML provides.

Overview

• Allows you to create your own custom app through the Developer Platform

• Supports functions in the same manner as Excel

• Choose whether to retrieve data from the past or dynamically after activation to inform your Scenarios

• Best fit for teams that are sending small - medium sized mail campaigns (<1,500 per run)

Integration directions

Make's platform allows users to build Scenarios by connecting Modules. By linking together multiples Modules of your favorite apps/services, you can easily create a Scenario that will automate data transfers between apps and subsequent workflows.

Integration occurs in three easy steps:

2. Connect Lob to Make

Sign up for Make

2. Create an account by clicking on the Sign Up button on the top right of the screen

Connecting Lob to Make

2. In the Make dashboard, click on "+ Create a new Scenario" button at the top right corner of the home screen

3. Search for "Lob" in the app directory and hit "Continue"

4. In the visual Scenario builder, click on the Lob icon and select the action you’d like to take from the drop down menu

   • Example actions: Send a letter or postcard, verify an address, make an API call

5. • Use your Test Lob API Key initially to ensure that everything is working as expected, then switch to your Live API Key later to send live mail

7. Once you've tested your first Scenario, switch the API key to the Live key and begin sending physical mail!

Use pre-built Lob modules

• Create a Letter: Takes your API key, to/from address data, creative data (HTML or PDF), and Mail Class

• Create a Postcard: Takes your API key, to/from address data, creative data (HTML or PDF), and Mail Class

• Create a Self-mailer: Takes your API key, to/from address data, creative data (HTML or PDF), and Mail Class

• Verify a US Address: Takes your API key and address data

• Verify an International Address: Takes your API key and address data

• Send a Generic API Request to Lob: Takes your API request payload

Connecting Lob with other services

For example, to connect Google Drive to Make:

3. Create credentials for the new project, adding Make to the project’s Scope and allowing external users

4. Create the application

5. Retrieve Client ID and Secret

6. Use ID and Secret to establish Make connection

Creating Scenarios

Building Scenarios

Watch how you can easily connect addresses stored in Google Sheets to Lob with Make to send a simple postcard in three steps:

Sharing Scenarios

Blueprints are detailed plans for how a Scenario (low-code workflow) is set up and how it will work. This allows other stakeholders to understand the composition of your automation in detail, share it with other teammates, and troubleshoot when necessary.

Export a Make blueprint

2. The ‘blueprint.json’ file will then be downloaded to your device’s folder.

Download/Import a Make blueprint

1. In the scenario builder screen, click on the “More” button (same box as above). Click “Import Blueprint.”

3. Once the file has been submitted to your Import Blueprint builder click on the “Save” button.

4. Once complete, you will receive a confirmation banner along the bottom right side of your scenario builder screen.

Troubleshooting

Support information

Overview

Whether you’re an individual or part of a business, JotForm offers flexibility and features that make form-building easy.

Getting Started

Overview

Listrak provides best-in-class email, SMS, behavioral marketing, cross-channel orchestration, predictive analytics, and customer insight solutions. Leverage all your channels – Email, SMS/MMS, social – including direct mail with Lob.

Overview

Getting Started

Create a Campaign in Customer.io

Setting up your Workflow

1. Once you reach the workflow screen, you can begin crafting your customer journey by creating the event path your users will follow. Below is a standard example of an event trigger (User Purchase) followed by a standard Welcome Email.

1. We can incorporate Intelligent Mail into this Workflow in a similar manner to email by adding a Webhook node. We can do this by dragging in a Send And Receive Data tile from the left-side menu.

Configuring Your Webhook

1. You can configure it as follows:

• Webhook Name: The Description of your Mail Event

• Sending Behavior: Send automatically

Configuring Your Webhook Request

1. Click on Add Request to begin the setup process.

1. Next to POST, you will construct the Lob endpoint URL for the type of resource you are trying to create.

• The format is as follows: https://+[YOUR LOB API KEY]+@api.lob.com/v1/[RESOURCE TYPE]

Sample JSON

Below is sample JSON you can test within your Customer.io webhook.

Testing

Once your webhook has been configured, you will want to test it.

1. You can send a test by opening up the Request and clicking on Send Test in the top right corner.

1. Once you confirm and send, you will want to see a 200 OK response in your Test Results. This will indicate that the request has successfully reached Lob.

1. You can also check the Test Results to ensure the request fields were correctly populated by the Liquid Statements.

2. You can then log into your Lob account to verify that the mailipiece was successfully generated. Preview it to make sure all of the details are correct. If so, then you have successfully set up your Customer.io to Lob integration, and are ready to send Live Intelligent Mail.

Ingesting Mail Tracking Events from Lob into Customer.io

1. Start by creating a new Campaign within Customer.io and select: Create Your Own Trigger From A Webhook as the trigger.

1. This will generate a URL to catch the webhook. Copy that to use within Lob in the next step.

2. Under Create A New Webhook, enter a webhook description and paste in the URL generated by Customer.io.

3. Finally, select the event you want to capture in Customer.io.

1. From here you can use the data on the incoming webhook to track as events or update attributes for users within Customer.io. This also enables you to trigger subsequent events—for example, you can imagine an omnichannel customer journey in which a customer receives a Lob postcard, and that automatically triggers an email to that same customer telling them to check their mailbox for a great offer.

Once you have incorporated both sending Lob mail and capturing Lob events within Customer.io, you will have truly automated direct mail, and integrated within your broader digital customer journeys.

Overview

In heavily data-driven industries, the customer journey is the destination. It’s not enough to be able to nurture leads, win conversions, and retain customers — you need to continuously engineer and optimize your customer relationships to keep customers engaged over many, many touchpoints.

It’s these industries where Optimove really shines. Optimove is more than just a CRM — it’s a Cross-Channel Campaign Management platform built to drive your entire marketing process. Combined with Lob, Optimove can drive strong customer relationships online and offline, integrating direct mail and digital marketing into a seamless whole.

Drive sustained engagement across every channel

Sustaining high customer engagement depends on centralized orchestration, backed by data-driven insights. Optimove provides a hub for all of your relationship marketing channels, orchestrating campaigns across all owned channels. Powerful analytics and a cutting edge decisioning engine enable you to react to customer signals in real time, making the most of every interaction.

Lob adds next generation direct mail automation, with the power, convenience, and speed of a digital channel. You can dynamically personalize and trigger mailpieces to drive conversions, nurture relationships, and capitalize on every customer action and interaction.

Optimize effortlessly

Customer demand is always changing. To keep up, high-frequency businesses need to treat each interaction as a chance to collect data, test strategies, and analyze outcomes.

Optimove uses test and control groups to turn every interaction into a learning opportunity. Built-in AI and machine learning constantly crunch the data, providing an endless flow of data-driven optimization insights.

Lob completes the picture, bringing total visibility to your direct mail campaigns. You can track receipts, conversions, and delivery times for every mailpiece just like with digital channels.

Empower non-technical marketers with data-driven insights

You don’t need to be a mechanic to drive a high-performance car, and you shouldn’t need to be a technical savant to use a high-performance CCCM. Optimove consolidates customer data into a custom data model, built for your business, industry, and priorities, driving deep insights for even non-technical users.

Lob replaces complex legacy direct mail workflows with an automated system, using our nationwide network of print partners. That means you don’t need to build your direct mail strategy around the limits of your print partner, or the peculiarities and cadence of your internal workflow.

Together, Lob and Optimove enable non-technical users to see, interact with, and serve customers like never before — without having to dive under the hood or work around archaic workflows. That means less time working around the limits of your tools (and your help desk), and more time growing your business.

Are Optimove + Lob right for you?

Optimove is ideal for data-driven companies, including:

• High-bandwidth communication: Organizations that need to be able to automate and orchestrate simultaneous messages across many channels, or scale up their communication strategy

• High Frequency interactions: Companies that have many interactions with customers, such as frequent purchases, media streaming, and gaming

• Promotion-heavy brands: Organizations that need help gauging the impact of promotions, and optimizing their promotion strategy

• Replenishable products: Pet food, gaming deposits, subscriptions, and telecommunication services where customers need to frequently replenish the product

Lob is designed for any organization looking to automate direct mail, improve personalization capabilities, or better integrate direct mail with their technology stack. Lob provides unlimited scalability, so you can send as many or as few mailpieces as you need to without having to plan and purchase printing capacity ahead of time. This makes Lob a perfect fit for small startups and nonprofits, massive multinationals, and anything in between.

Additional resources

Overview

Klaviyo is a popular marketing automation software tool. It frequently uses integrations like Shopify to external systems like Lob. In early 2022, Klaviyo added webhook functionality, enabling a direct connection to Lob (prior to this, data had to be extracted from Klaviyo and passed to Lob via a separate system). Klaviyo’s webhooks can be used to automatically trigger a mailpiece to be sent, via Lob, within a user Flow.

Getting started

Getting your data ready

Klaviyo’s webhook functionality within their flows interface provides an easy connection point to trigger automated, personalized Direct Mail.

In order to send mail from Klaviyo, Lob requires a mailing address to be stored for each profile. Klaviyo does not require mailing addresses by default, so before attempting to send mail, ensure that your recipient profiles contain properties for:

• Address

• City

• State

• Zip Code

Creating a Flow

In the Klaviyo dashboard’s left-hand panel, click on Flows. Then click to Create Flow, then select a predefined goal, or click Create From Scratch and give your flow a name. Then choose a Trigger Setup option in the left panel.

For this example, we will be selecting List, and choosing a list from the resulting drop-down to trigger the flow.

Creating a Webhook

Once you have configured your trigger, an actions menu will appear on the left panel. Select Webhook, and drag it into your flow beneath the trigger.

Select the Webhook in your Flow, and the configuration panel will appear on the left side. You can configure it as follows:

Destination URL

This is where you will enter the Lob API URL for the mail format you would like to trigger.

Example: https://api.lob.com/v1/postcards. Note that Lob has separate endpoints for various mail formats.

Headers

This is where you will enter the headers Lob requires in order to correctly process and authenticate the incoming requests.

You will be required to enter at least two headers: Content-Type and Authorization. Click Add Header.

For the Content-Type header, enter the following:

• Key: Content-Type

• Value: application/json

For the Authorization header, you will need your API keys.

Add Your API Keys

For example, if your API key was test_0dc8d51e0acffcb1880e0f19c79b2f5b0cc, you would enter test_0dc8d51e0acffcb1880e0f19c79b2f5b0cc: into a Base64 Encoder tool, the result of which would be something like dGVzdF8wZGM4ZDUxZTBhY2ZmY2IxODgwZTBmMTljNzliMmY1YjBjYzo=.

Note that we added a colon (:) to the end of the API key before encoding it, you are recommended to do the same.

Once you’ve encoded your API key, add the Authorization Header and use the encoded key as the value. For example:

• Key: Authorization

• Value: Basic dGVzdF8wZGM4ZDUxZTBhY2ZmY2IxODgwZTBmMTljNzliMmY1YjBjYzo=

JSON body

This is where you will pass Lob the information that informs the mailpiece. The field names (name, address_line1, etc) represent the information that Lob’s API will require. The values on the right represent what you will pass to Lob to populate the given field.

The values can be mapped to attributes from Klaviyo profiles by using Klaviyo’s Profile Variables. You can find the Profile variables for each attribute by taking the following steps:

Update Creative

You will want to replace the values being passed for ‘front’ and ‘back’ with your own Lob template IDs or linked creative. For example:

Testing

You can test that your webhook is configured correctly by clicking on ‘Preview Webhook’.

The resulting panel will show an example of the data being passed to Lob for a specific Profile. You can look at the JSON to verify that the Klaviyo Profile Variables are being correctly replaced. For example, instead of {{ person|lookup:'$address1'|default:'' }} you will see an address, such as ‘185 Berry St.’

If this all looks correct, double-check that you used your Test API Key (rather than your Live API Key), then click on Send Test Request. If it was configured correctly, you will see the message: "Successfully sent webhook."

You can then log into your Lob account to verify that your postcard was generated. (The below is the result of the example creative.)

Go time!

You will need to add payment information to your Lob account should you actually wish to print and send mailpieces. When you are ready, you can replace your Test API key with your Live API key. If you are using other test resources like address IDs or template IDs, those will also need to be transferred to your live environment.

Common errors

1. 401 Unauthorized

   • If you receive this error message, your API key is incorrect.

   • Make sure you have the header Authorization and that you are encoding your secret API key as explained above

2. 422 Unprocessable Entity (Invalid request payload JSON format)

   • If you receive this error, it is likely that your payload is not formatted correctly. It needs to match JSON formatting.

   • Generally speaking, the rules that are often broken are:

     1. All keys and values are enclosed in double quotes (").

     2. Commas after every key-value pair except for the last one.

     3. No newline characters in any values and no extra spaces between fields.

3. 422 Unprocessable Entity (Other)

   • Other than JSON errors, you can receive 422 errors in the payload sent to Lob does not match our requirements.

   • For example, if you are missing address_line1 in the payload you will get an error saying that is needed. For these errors, you can make the appropriate adjustments and retry your requests.

Overview

Each Webhook you create will connect to an HTML template that you have stored in your Lob account. You will map your Iterable data fields to the dynamic Lob merge variables in the HTML template, and trigger mail sends via either an individual user action (such as email unsubscribe, for example) or to a group of users via a batch send.

Getting started with Iterable

Getting started with Lob

Connecting Iterable to Lob

2. Navigate to "Integrations" -> “Journey Webhooks”
3. Now click on "New Webhook" near the top of the page.

4. Configure as follows:

b. Authentication: None

• We recommend using your Test Lob API Key in order to test and validate your integration. Then switch to your Live API key when you are ready to send mail.

• Use the encoded key as the value for the Authorization header and that you are encoding your secret API key with a colon after the key like this Basic {{ 'YOUR_LOB_API_KEY:' | base64_encode

• The fields on the left are the required Lob request parameters, and your corresponding data fields are on the right.

• The right column is where you can dynamically map to Iterable attributes, by using the corresponding Iterable variable for a given attribute.

• Iterable variables will need to be enclosed like so: {{your_variable}}. For example, if you have a field that maps to “to{name}” in your data and you want the variable first_name to be used as that mapping, you would put {{first_name}} next to the “to{name}” field on this page.

• Be sure to map to all of the necessary merge variables. For example, if you have a merge variable “name” in your template you need to add a form field of “merge_variables[name]” and set the desired value on the right.

5. Click 'Create Webhook.'

6. Ensure you are mapping all the required templates.

• Postcards and Self-Mailers will utilize two templates, one each for the front and back of the postcards.

• Letters have just one template, mapped to the parameter ‘file’ on the left side.

7. Click 'Save' on the right when you are finished.

8. Navigate "Messenging" -> "Journeys" (previously called “Workflows”)

9. Click on the Journey you want to incorporate this webhook into, or create a new Journey.

10. Find the event that will trigger your Lob webhook (for example, a customer is Added to a List, or opened an email), then drag in the “Call Webhook” tile and place it after that event in the Journey.

11. Open up that Webhook, and toggle on ‘Use Preset Journey Webhook’, then select the webhook you have created.

12. After you have successfully set up your Journey, send a test trigger by clicking on ‘Test Journey’. Check to see whether Iterable notes any errors.

Best practices

API Keys

We strongly recommend testing any planned mail sends and webhooks by first using your Test Lob API Keys, and ensuring that the resulting records created in Lob match your expectations. Only then should you proceed to use your Live Lob API Key to actually generate mail.

HTML creatives

To leverage HTML creatives in Lob, you will want to save your HTML as a template within Lob, or host your HTML and generate a corresponding hosting URL. These can be passed to Lob from Iterable, but you are not able to pass a full HTML string directly to Lob from Iterable.

Iterable Journeys

There are 3 common scenarios in which Iterable Journeys trigger Lob mail sends:

1. Single, triggered mailpieces from individual user actions. For example, someone unsubscribes to an email list, then a message is sent to Lob to trigger a single mailpiece.

2. A regular job is run, resulting in mail being sent to all users who meet specific criteria.

3. An audience list is exported from Iterable and uploaded to Lob, and mail is generated for each user in the list.

These scenarios all result in different volumes of mail requests being sent to Lob in a single batch, and there are some best practices for ensuring your integration is seamless for each batch size.

For any send types that will trigger fewer than 500 mailpieces in a single batch, as is typically the case with the first scenario above, you won’t need to take any additional steps to those listed above in this doc. However, for the second and third scenarios, in which single sends will contain more than 500 mailpieces, it is recommended that you connect with your Lob representative to discuss leveraging a Lob solution to manage non-rate-limited requests from Iterable.

Additionally, for the second and third scenarios above, you can take some additional steps to ensure that all requests reach Lob within the rate limit. For example, one possible workflow enhancement for batches typically between 500-3000 mailpieces is to include audience splits in the customer journey, with delays included to stagger the sends to Lob, thus reducing rate limiting errors. For large batches, it is also an option to export the audience list from Iterable and send it via Lob’s Campaign Dashboard, as it is purpose-built to handle batch sizes into the millions, and will ensure that all expected mail is generated.

Either way, if you expect to send batches above 500 mailpieces at a time, it’s beneficial to connect with your Lob representative so that we can walk through the best solution for sending at scale while preserving the automation benefits of connecting through Iterable.

Overview

Simon Data is a customer data platform (CDP) that enables businesses to leverage their data to create personalized marketing campaigns and drive customer engagement.

Lob + Simon Data: Drive growth everywhere

Simon Data brings a simple, highly effective workflow to multi-channel marketing. Through its powerful CDP, Simon allows marketers to integrate data from any source, unify customer profiles, segment in real time, and orchestrate customer journeys across all marketing touchpoints. Lob empowers Simon users to coordinate direct mail with their online channels, using consistent and personalized messaging to drive customer loyalty and engagement across email, SMS, push, and other digital channels.

Turn first-time customers into life-long brand advocates

Simon Data’s powerful B2C marketing orchestration capabilities empower your marketing team to provide consistent, relevant messaging throughout the customer lifecycle. Simon combines powerful, predictive modeling with sophisticated testing and experimentation. The result is a system that enables you to maximize engagement, fine-tuning each customer journey with the right messaging, touchpoints, and product recommendations. Lob enables you to fully harness Simon’s capabilities offline, bringing automated direct mail production, personalization, and analytics to your multi-channel stack. That means you can truly engage with customers, build loyalty, and drive CLTV across all channels, all from a single hub.

Do away with silos, disconnects, and workarounds

40% of marketers rate their “inability to link different technologies” as a top technological challenge. Siloed data, disconnected channels, incompatible schemas, and the sheer complexity of your marketing stack can hamstring your marketing team. You can’t engage customers in real-time if you’re forced to wait on manual data pulls, or slog through elaborate workarounds. Legacy direct mail in particular is a major pain point, because it is almost completely siloed. The slow cadence and separate, manual workflow of legacy DM prevent marketers from fully integrating it with digital channels into a coherent customer journey.

Simon’s CDP provides a unified customer view to your marketing workflows, coordinating all your tools and data sources into a seamless whole. Targeted communications are infused with historical and real-time data, supported by robust segmentation and personalization capabilities. Lob integrates fully automated direct mail into Simon, enabling you to plan, execute, and track your omnichannel campaigns with a single workflow. That means you can focus on getting the right content to the right audience across the right touchpoints.

Turn marketing optimization into a science

Traditionally, direct mail optimization is limited compared to digital channels. Most companies using legacy direct mail have little ability to personalize letters or track results, forcing them to rely on less effective techniques like mass mailers. Lob provides 100% personalization for every mailpiece, and enables you to track deliveries and conversions just like you would with email. Combining Lob’s direct mail automation with Simon’s powerful optimization and orchestration capabilities lets you truly optimize your multi-channel campaign.

Simon’s native integration with Lob supports triggered campaigns for a variety of loyalty and retention use cases. and streamlines workflow for both technical and non-technical stakeholders. Marketers can get hands-on with customer data, experiment and execute campaigns, and analyze results all within the same UI. And your team can conduct the same experiments, tests, and analyses on DM campaigns as they would for any digital channel.

Identify and engage customers on their own terms

Consumers are harder to track than ever before. They research products and engage with brands across multiple channels, devices, and accounts, making it difficult to identify individuals and tie together interactions. At the same time, they expect a highly personalized experience from the brands they interact with. Simon Data solves your identity resolution challenges with Simon Identity. This enables you to merge multiple customer interactions into a single profile, without depending on a single identifier like email address. Lob augments this capability with automated address verification, so you can engage with your customers online and offline.

Are Simon Data + Lob right for you?

Simon Data is a powerful CDP designed around the unique needs of B2C marketing. With powerful native tools and extensive integration, it can serve a range of use cases, including:

• A centralized hub to unify and consolidate your customer data sources

• A self-service automation and segmentation tool, enabling marketers to fully utilize their data without depending on the help desk

• A rapid testing and optimization toolset to fine-tune and personalize customer experience

• A sophisticated data integration and governance platform, managing your entire customer data ecosystem

Because Simon Data serves so many roles, Lob users in B2C industries should weigh Simon Data’s capabilities against their current pain points and tech stack functionality to identify use cases.

For more support related to our SFMC API integration, please contact your Account Manager or support@lob.com to discuss your requirements and use case.

(Looking for a no-code integration option? See here.)

Overview

Salesforce is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform that helps businesses manage customer interactions, track sales, and automate various business processes.

The Salesforce integration with Lob allows you to automate direct mail campaigns within the Lob dashboard, based off any event trigger change that occurred within your Salesforce account.

How to connect Lob with Salesforce

1. Within the Lob Dashboard, navigate to the Integrations page and click on “Salesforce” to view the Salesforce connection page. When on the Salesforce page, click the “Connect” button to begin.

2. This will launch a modal to sign into your Salesforce account. Any Salesforce accounts you have previously used may be automatically detected. When prompted, enter the credentials to the Salesforce account you wish to connect.

• Your organization must be on a paid Salesforce plan/tier with API access enabled.

• The user in the account must have Admin level permissions, with access to the tables needed.

1. Once the account is authenticated, Lob will start the ‘Connect’ phase, and will read the schema of your Salesforce instance. (This is so you can use the objects and columns later when setting up a campaign.) Depending on your Salesforce instance’s size, this may take a few minutes but runs asynchronously, requiring no active monitoring.You will receive an email when this is complete.

2. Once you have successfully connected your Salesforce account to Lob, the label will show “Connected”.

Once you’ve successfully connected Lob to your Salesforce account, you can set up an Automated campaign from within the Campaigns flow.

Pipedrive is a user-friendly CRM designed to help businesses manage and streamline their sales processes. By integrating direct mail into your customer journey with Pipedrive, you can add a personal touch that complements your digital efforts, making your outreach more engaging and effective. This combination ensures you’re reaching your customers in multiple ways, helping to close deals and strengthen relationships.

Agile CRM is an all-in-one customer relationship management platform that helps businesses streamline their sales, marketing, and service processes.

By integrating direct mail into Agile CRM, you can enhance your multi-channel marketing strategy, reaching customers in a more personalized and impactful way. This combination allows you to engage with your audience both online and offline, driving higher response rates and improving overall campaign effectiveness.

Overview

Lob is pleased to offer an API integration within Salesforce, the world’s #1 CRM. Integrating Lob with Salesforce streamlines your direct mail campaigns by automating personalized outreach, enhancing customer engagement, and driving measurable results directly within your CRM.

With an integration via External Services, any Salesforce user can send automated direct mail, easily and at scale. External Services in Salesforce allow you to connect your Salesforce org to an external API. Using declarative tools and OpenAPI specifications to describe the external API functionality, External Services automatically creates invocable actions within Salesforce.

(Looking for a no-code integration option? See here.)

Set up the integration

First things first!

1. Download this JSON file (Lob OpenAPI specs) to use in Step 2.

Step 1: Set up a Named Credential

1. First, create a new legacy credential for Lob.com in Salesforce.

2. Give it a label, a name, and set the URL field to https://api.lob.com/

3. Under Authentication, set the identity type to Named Principle, and set the authentication protocol to Password Authentication. In the username field, enter your test or live Lob API key. For the password field, copy and paste an empty character from a website like https://emptycharacter.com/.

4. Under Callout Options, there are no changes needed to the default selections.

5. Save the Named Credential.

Step 2: Create an External Service

1. Next, go to the External Services page and create a new External Service from API specification.

2. Fill in an External Service Name, an optional Description, then select "Complete JSON" for Service Schema, and select the Named Credential you just created.

3. In the JSON field, paste the entirety of the Lob OpenAPI specs you downloaded.

4. Click Save and Next. This will bring up a list of operations that you can do that were imported from those Lob OpenAPI specs.

Step 3: Use External Services in a Flow

In this step, we will set up the trigger and corresponding flow; in this example, when a lead is updated in SF, send a postcard from Lob.

Although this documentation uses a postcard flow as an example, you can still follow along for letter and self-mailer creation. (Swap in "letter" or "self-mailer" where you see "postcard" if using those form factors.)

1. Create a new Flow Trigger explorer and set it as an Actions and Related Records type.

2. Choose the object field and configure it for when the record is created or updated. (Ensure that Actions and Related Records is selected.)

3. Add a Scheduled Path called "zero hour delay" and set it to 0 hours after the record is created.

1. Next, create a new resource called "postcard_payload" with the data type as Apex defined and set it to postcard editable.

2. Use the Assignment node to map the required fields for creating a mail piece in Lob.

1. Map merge variables (optional)

If you plan to send creatives as HTML templates, you'll need to map out merge variables. One of the limitations of this integration within Salesforce is in how merge_variables are named. You'll notice that within the <mailpiece>_payload.merge_variables field that there are parameters variable1 - variable10 listed. This is because there is no way to name merge variables dynamically within External Services for Salesforce. So to work around it, any HTML templates used with Salesforce can only have merge variables named the same way, variable1 - variable10. The values of these can then be set accordingly within the Assignment action.

1. Back in the Flow, add an Action node to send a mailpiece creation request to Lob's API using the External Service you created earlier.

1. Map the "postcard_payload" resource to the "body" field in the Action.

1. Save and activate the flow. (You can debug it by selecting a test record and pressing the Debug button.)

Retrieving data back from Lob

From the mail execution action, there was a resource created called Outputs from send_<mailpiece>. There are three subfields; this data can be used within the flow to map information back into records.

• 200: the body of the successful request - this includes all data returned in the Lob API response, including "id," recipient information, "URL," "send_date" and so forth

• default Exception: if the mailpiece was unsuccessful, including the error message and code

• responseCode: the status code of the API request made to Lob, which is useful for making decision trees

Evaluating the response

Although you have successfully integrated and know where to retrieve output data, it's important to evaluate your responses. It's the difference between knowing whether your request to create a mailpiece was successful or not!

We can see this detail above in the image of a sample Salesforce flow, where we use the "Decision" action to evaluate if the mailpiece was sent.

1. You can edit the Decision:

1. Now, you have two forked paths:

• success - your mailpiece request was successfully processed

• Default Outcome - your mailpiece request failed (for example, because the address passed was undeliverable)

1. Now, you can add actions to the success path to act on the data you received back from the successful send (Outputs from send_postcard -> 200), or you can add actions to the Default Outcome path and perhaps notify an admin of the reason why the mailpiece request was denied (Outputs from send_postcard -> defaultExc -> error -> message )

Congratulations! You've successfully integrated Lob.com's API with Salesforce using External Services.

Monitoring computing resources

These computing resources include:

1. CPU Time: There is a limit on how much CPU time can be consumed during a single transaction (e.g., 10 seconds). When your flow or other processes exceed this limit, you'll get a CPU time limit exceeded error.

2. SOQL Queries: Salesforce imposes a limit on the number of SOQL (Salesforce Object Query Language) queries that can be executed per transaction.

3. DML Operations: There's also a limit on the number of DML (Data Manipulation Language) operations like INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE etc. that can be performed per transaction.

4. Heap Size: This is essentially the limit on the memory storage space used by variables, objects, etc., during a single transaction.

5. Callouts: These are HTTP requests to external services. There are limits on the number of callouts that can be made.

6. Elements: For flows specifically, there are limits on how many elements (like assignments, decisions, loops, etc.) you can have in a single flow.

If a flow exceeds a hard limit (like CPU time), it will be terminated immediately, and an error will be thrown. This can disrupt the business process that the flow was designed to manage. To manage these limitations, Salesforce administrators and developers have to keep a close eye on resource consumption and optimize flows and other customizations accordingly. Using tools like Salesforce Health Check can help you monitor your organization’s performance and stay within limits.

Easily set up and manage trigger-based campaigns to integrate direct mail into your customer journeys. These solutions are best-fit options for teams that don't have easy access to engineering resources to build a full API integration and would like to connect to their customer data right from the Lob dashboard.

From the Integrations dashboard, users can connect and authenticate their CRM account, then from within the Campaigns tool, manage what changes or events trigger mail and automate the dispatch of individual mailpieces using these triggers.

Available no-code integrations

• Agile CRM*

• Freshsales Suite*

• HubSpot

• Microsoft Dynamics 365*

• Pipedrive*

• Salesforce

• Salesforce Marketing Cloud

• Zoho*

• More to come! Don't see your tech stack on the list? Please note your interest here.

How to send Automated campaigns from the Lob dashboard

Once functionality has been enabled in your account, you will be able to execute the following.

First, connect to CRM

From the Integrations tab on the Lob dashboard, you can add or manage available connections. Detailed instructions for each available platform are linked above.

Then, you can set up an automated campaign

Users can directly create an automated campaign from the Integration section or click the “Create Campaign” button at the top of any dashboard page to launch the campaign creation flow.

1. When you enter the Campaigns workflow, select the Automated option. This setting means that the mailpiece you create will be automatically sent out when the designated trigger, i.e., the change in the database, occurs. (You will set up the trigger in Step 2.)

1. In Step 1: Configure campaign, select Postcard, (8.5x11) Letter, or Self-Mailer (other mail types or inventory not available).

1. In Step 2: Add Audience, you will set up a Campaign Trigger. A trigger is the criteria in your database that signals Lob to create mail

First, you will select the Integration Type, or CRM you have connected to, then indicate the Table where the data resides. Next, specify the Function, or what change Lob will be looking for: A new row is added, A row is updated, or Date-based triggers. You will then have the option to Add Filters from there.

Trigger details

1. Apply Advanced Settings.

• Delay to Print: Timing when the mailpiece gets sent to the recipient

• Frequency: If the same household meets the trigger logic, the user can control how many times they want to send this out

• Suppression: Do not send mailpiece if the recipient has converted (coming soon)

1. Next, you will map the required address variables from columns in the CRM. The data for these variables must be in the same table as the trigger.

1. Then continue your campaign setup: Step 3: Choose Creative, and Step 4: Review campaign.

1. After you "Place Order" the automated campaign will remain in an "Active" state and Lob will send out the designated mailpiece when the trigger occurs (whenever a selected change in the CRM/CDP happens).

Managing Automated campaigns

An automated campaign can be managed as you would any other in the Lob dashboard: select Campaigns from the left navigation. Filtering is available and you can click into any single campaign for more detail.

Summary-level and detailed information about your campaign will be displayed on the details page.

Pause Campaign or Resume Campaign at any time by clicking the button on the Campaign detail page. When a campaign is paused, Lob will not produce mail in response to any new trigger matches. Any already triggered/queued mailpieces will still go out.

Mailpieces can be canceled individually or in bulk from the View All Mailpieces tab on the campaign's detail page.

Troubleshooting Automated campaigns

Why don’t I see mailpieces for my Automated campaign?

Lob looks for trigger matches and generates mailpieces in response at the following times:

1. When then the campaign is first ordered

2. A scheduled job every 30 minutes specifically looking for trigger matches

If you do not see mailpieces, it is possible that the sync job has not occurred yet to look for trigger matches.

Mailpieces that do not match your campaign’s trigger criteria will not generate any mailpiece records. The trigger logic and settings are always available on the Campaign Details page to verify setup.

My campaign is paused because of data changes in my integration instance. What do I do?

Lob performs daily checks to ensure that the tables and columns used in your Automated Campaigns are still available. If a table or column used in an Automated Campaign is modified in your integration instance, we automatically pause the campaign and notify you via email.

To resolve this issue, you can either restore the deleted table or column, or rename another table or column to match the original naming convention.

Overview

Segment is a platform that captures and stores all first-party customer data regarding your product or service in a centralized place. More specifically, Segment collects events from your interfaces (websites, web apps, etc.), and from that information, helps you create more personalized customer experiences across various channels.

We will plug Lob into our Segment flow by making a custom destination function. Destinations are business tools or apps to which you can send the data you collect in Segment. Depending on which mailpiece form factor you want to send (postcard, letter, etc.), building a destination function that sends it merely involves reading the data and calling Lob’s API. These steps are outlined below.

Getting Started

• Make sure you have a Lob account and your API keys. It is highly recommended that you use your (secret) test API key first

• Have a creative file ready to use (hosted PDF file or HTML template)

• Have your Segment account ready

Connect Segment to Lob using Destination Functions:

1. In the sidebar, navigate to “Connections” -> “Catalog,” and then click the Functions tab:

1. Click the “New Function” button:

1. Under “Select Function Type,” click “Destination,” and then click “Build”:

1. Enter your Javascript code in the editor on the left, and test your function on the right; refer to the following section on form factors for details. Click “Configure” when done:

1. Give the function a name (required), description, and logo, and click “Create Function” to save:

Segment Events by Mail Form Factor

The following are sample functions to send a Lob mailpiece from a given Segment event, organized by mailpiece. Segment provides six different event types that destination functions can operate on:

• Identify: who is the customer?

• Track: what are they doing?

• Page: what web page are they on?

• Screen: what app screen are they on?

• Group: what account or organization are they part of?

• Alias: what was their past identity?

The following sample code translates Track events into Lob mailpieces by defining an onTrack function. (For other functionalities, just define a similarly named function, e.g., onPage for Page events.)

/**
* @param {SpecTrack} event The track event
* @param {Object.<string, any>} settings Custom settings
* @return any
*/
async function onTrack(event, settings) {
 const body = {
   description: 'Description of the card,'
   to: {
     name: event.properties.name,
     address_line1: event.properties.address.line1,
     address_line2: event.properties.address.line2,
     address_city: event.properties.address.city,
     address_state: event.properties.address.state,
     address_zip: event.properties.address.zip
   },
   front:
     "<html style='padding: 1in; font-size: 50;'>Front side for {{name}}</html>",
   back: "<html style='padding: 1in; font-size: 20;'>Back side for {{name}}</html>",
   merge_variables: {
     name: event.properties.name
   }
 };


 const response = await fetch('https://api.lob.com/v1/postcards', {
   method: 'POST',
   headers: {
     Authorization: `Basic ${btoa(settings.apiKey + ':')}`,
     'Content-Type': 'application/json'
   },
   body: JSON.stringify(body)
 });


 return response.json();
}

/**
* Handle track event
* @param  {SegmentTrackEvent} event
* @param  {FunctionSettings} settings
*/
async function onTrack(event, settings) {
 const body = {
   description: 'Description of the letter',
   to: {
     name: event.properties.name,
     address_line1: event.properties.address.line1,
     address_line2: event.properties.address.line2,
     address_city: event.properties.address.city,
     address_state: event.properties.address.state,
     address_zip: event.properties.address.zip
   },
   from: {
     name: event.properties.return_addr.name,
     address_line1: event.properties.return_addr.line1,
     address_line2: event.properties.return_addr.line2,
     address_city: event.properties.return_addr.city,
     address_state: event.properties.return_addr.state,
     address_zip: event.properties.return_addr.zip
   },
   file: "<html style='padding: 1in; font-size: 50;'>Front side for {{name}}</html>",
   color: 'false',
   use_type: 'marketing',
   merge_variables: {
     name: event.properties.name
   }
 };


 const response = await fetch('https://api.lob.com/v1/letters', {
   method: 'POST',
   headers: {
     Authorization: `Basic ${btoa(settings.apiKey + ':')}`,
     'Content-Type': 'application/json'
   },
   body: JSON.stringify(body)
 });


 return response.json();
}

/**
* Handle track event
* @param  {SegmentTrackEvent} event
* @param  {FunctionSettings} settings
*/
async function onTrack(event, settings) {
 const body = {
   description: 'Description of the self-mailer',
   to: {
     name: event.properties.name,
     address_line1: event.properties.address.line1,
     address_line2: event.properties.address.line2,
     address_city: event.properties.address.city,
     address_state: event.properties.address.state,
     address_zip: event.properties.address.zip
   },
   inside:
     "<html style='padding: 1in; font-size: 50;'>Inside side for {{name}}</html>",
   outside:
     "<html style='padding: 1in; font-size: 20;'>Outside side for {{name}}</html>",
   use_type: 'marketing',
   merge_variables: {
     name: event.properties.name
   }
 };


 const response = await fetch('https://api.lob.com/v1/self_mailers', {
   method: 'POST',
   headers: {
     Authorization: `Basic ${btoa(settings.apiKey + ':')}`,
     'Content-Type': 'application/json'
   },
   body: JSON.stringify(body)
 });


 return response.json();
}

/**
* Handle track event
* @param  {SegmentTrackEvent} event
* @param  {FunctionSettings} settings
*/
async function onTrack(event, settings) {
 const body = {
   description: 'Description of the check',
   to: {
     name: event.properties.name,
     address_line1: event.properties.address.line1,
     address_line2: event.properties.address.line2,
     address_city: event.properties.address.city,
     address_state: event.properties.address.state,
     address_zip: event.properties.address.zip
   },
   from: {
     name: event.properties.return_addr.name,
     address_line1: event.properties.return_addr.line1,
     address_line2: event.properties.return_addr.line2,
     address_city: event.properties.return_addr.city,
     address_state: event.properties.return_addr.state,
     address_zip: event.properties.return_addr.zip
   },
   bank_account: 'bank_a4fc08e61e12c6c',
   message: 'INSERT MESSAGE HERE',
   amount: 0, //Insert an amount here
   use_type: 'marketing',
   merge_variables: {
     name: event.properties.name
   }
 };


 const response = await fetch('https://api.lob.com/v1/checks', {
   method: 'POST',
   headers: {
     Authorization: `Basic ${btoa(settings.apiKey + ':')}`,
     'Content-Type': 'application/json'
   },
   body: JSON.stringify(body)
 });


 return response.json();
}

Conclusion

Given how useful Segment is for integrating multiple different interfaces for collecting and operating on customer data, this tutorial gives us the ability to add Lob as one of many possible powerful tools for accomplishing data-driven, instantaneous operations on that data. Luckily, plugging Lob into Segment is as easy as making a destination function and using it in your workflows.

Resources

Here are two other resources that might help with crafting your workflow:

• Segment's docs on connections, the meat and potatoes of making workflows

Overview

Zapier gives you the ability to connect Lob to thousands of other business tools - like Slack, MailChimp, Gmail, and Trello - to automate your tedious workflows. In just minutes, you can set up automated Zaps to correct, standardize, and enrich addresses, as well as send automated letters or postcards using Triggers from pre-built integrations.

• Zapier integrates Lob with thousands of other business applications

• Set up automations, called 'Zaps', to automate repetitive tasks

• No coding required

• Sign up for a free Zapier account to create automated workflows

• Zapier integrations are great for sending mail at small scale, instead of manually, but are not a replacement for a proper integration when sending mail in large batches (hundreds/thousands).

• If you are passing in links to image files for your content, use a high availability service like S3 to avoid issues with timeouts. If we are unable to access your content it will not render properly.

Integrate with Zapier in 4 simple steps:

1. Sign up for Lob and Zapier accounts

2. Connect Lob to Zapier, within the Zapier interface

3. Connect any other apps/services (for example, where you store customer data) to Zapier, in order to then connect them with Lob

4. Create custom workflows or leverage popular automations with pre-existing Zaps

Every Zap requires one connected app to be used as the Trigger, which is where your information comes from, and this causes one or more Action steps to occur in other apps, which is where your data gets sent to.

Getting started with Lob & Zapier

Sign up for a free Lob account. You can send Test API requests for free to start, or instantly begin sending real mail by simply adding a payment method to your account.

Sign up for a free Zapier account, where you will begin building the automation.

Connecting Lob to Zapier

• Log in to your Lob Account

• Log in to your Zapier account

• Navigate to "Connected Accounts" from the top menu bar in Zapier

• Now click on "Connect new account" and search for "Lob"

• Use your Test Lob API Key to connect your Lob account to Zapier

  • Start with your Test API Key so that you can set up and test your Zap without sending live mail initially.

• Once connected, you can start creating an Automation! Use a pre-made Zap, or create your own with the Zap Editor.

• Need inspiration? See everything that's possible with Lob and Zapier

• Once you've tested your first Zap, all that is needed is switch your Lob API key to the Live Key to begin sending actual mail!

Getting started with Zapier

To help you hit the ground running, you can choose from one of many popular pre-made Zaps:

Other popular workflows

Sending postcards with Google Sheets & Zapier

Use Lob’s Zapier integration to automatically send postcards whenever new users are added to your mailing list.

Before starting, make sure to open accounts with Lob + Google + Zapier before starting to create this automation. Here, we will be using a Google Sheets file as our existing mailing list. This kind of setup significantly reduces the amount of manual work needed to send out mail and can be generalized for a number of different situations.

Stage 1: Setting up Google Sheets as your Trigger event in Zapier

1. From the Zapier home screen, click on a “Make a Zap!” button to get started

2. Select Google Sheets in the dropdown of available Trigger Apps, then Choose Trigger: “New Spreadsheet Row”

   • This means whenever a new row is created in our Google Sheet, Zapier will take an action on your behalf

3. Connect your Google account to Zapier and give Zapier access to the account

4. Once your account is connected, test out the connection using the “Test” option. If the connection works you will see the grey “Test” box turn into a green “Success!” box.

5. Pick a spreadsheet + worksheet to pull information from

   • As this is the starting point for your automation, make sure that the correct information is being pulled

6. Once a spreadsheet and a worksheet are selected, Zapier will pick a sample row. If the information accurately reflects what is found on the sheet, select the “Continue” option.

7. In the next stage, you will configure the action you want Zapier to take after your trigger is initiated.

Stage 2: Setting up your Action

1. Continue to build your Zap by clicking on the blue “Your Zap currently lacks an Action step. Add one now!” text. Alternatively, you can also click on the “+ Add a Step” button on the left side of your screen.

2. Select Lob to be your Action App.

3. Select “Send Postcard” as the action Lob will take after the Zap is initiated by the Trigger.

4. Connect your Lob account to Zapier and give Zapier access to the account, so it can take action on your behalf.

5. Once connected, you may receive a pop-up instructing you to verify this request by entering your Lob API key.

   • Use your Lob Test API Key; any requests sent with your Test API key will not cause mail to be sent or charges to be incurred. Once the integration is working, you can return to this step and swap in your Live API Key.

6. Once the API key is passed, you will have the option to test the connection. If you click the “Test” button on the right and everything is valid, then you will see a green “Success!” button.

7. Fill in the appropriate information needed to complete your mail. Note that some fields are optional and others are required.

   1. The green “Setup Preview” icon allows you to see an example of what your named variable would look like in your Zap. If you do not enable it you will not see an example.

   2. Be sure to you prepare your content images correctly. For this example, we are inserting HTML of the artwork directly into Zapier for both front and back sides of the postcard.

      • For more information on how to properly set your mail content for Zapier/Lob, see here. Example HTML templates can be found in our Template Gallery.

      • Alternatively, provide a link to a hosted PDF, PNG, or JPG file

   3. Add the address that will receive this postcard.

      • We’re going to use Zapier’s named variables function here; this time on the Address.

      • By using the named variable function, Zapier will pull the corresponding information for me every time a new entry is added to the Google Sheet.

   4. Lob defaults to USPS First Class Mail (a faster option), but Standard Class mail is also an option.

Stage 3: Test the Zap to Confirm

1. Test the entire Zap (From Trigger to Action) by clicking on the "Send Test to Lob" button.

2. Zapier will run a test, and once it runs through successfully you will be notified at the top of the page. An additional alert will tell you how long it’s been since the test was successful.

3. Formally name your Zap and turn it on. If the Zap is not on, then Zapier will not execute against the workflow you set up in Stages 1 + 2).

Setting up webhooks with Zapier

With Lob you are able to track each step of a mailpiece's journey from production through to delivery. In addition to making these metrics available in the platform, Lob offers webhooks for each event, allowing you to listen to these events and pull this event data back into your own systems. With Zapier, the process is as follows:

• Lob sends out a webhook when the mailing gets created

• Zapier "catches" the webhook notification

• Zapier notifies you that the mailer was created, scanned, delivered, etc.

Webhooks by Zapier can be configured if you have a premium subscription with Zapier. There’s no native integration for outgoing webhooks to Zapier, but there’s a way to catch these events using a generic webhook configuration. You can learn more about Webhooks by Zapier integrations and all the apps that are available for use.

In this example, we will set up a Zap to automate the following: every time Lob sends a new event for your mailpieces—and Zapier receives (the Trigger), Zapier will send you an email notification via Gmail (the Action).

1. Start by clicking “Create Zap” on the homepage.

2. First you will Next, select the option “Webhooks by Zapier.”

3. Under “Choose app & event,” select “Catch Hook” from the “Event” dropdown options and hit continue. This is what starts the Zap.

On the “Set up trigger” screen that follows, hit “Continue.”

4. A URL will be generated, which you will need to configure with Lob.

When an event occurs within Lob architecture and you have a webhook subscribed to that event type in that environment (Test vs. Live), we will attempt to make a POST request with the entire event object to the URL provided.

5. Copy the Webhook URL then login to your Lob dashboard; on the Webhooks page, click “Create a new webhook.” Name your webhook, then paste the URL provided by Zapier into the “URL” field.

Then choose the EVENT TYPES you want sent. Due to the inherent limitations of Zapier, we advise selecting from one form factor (postcards, letters, etc.) per Zapier integration. See here for a full list of all available event types that you can subscribe to.

6. Now click the “Debugger” button on the top right-hand side corner.

The Debugger allows you to trigger webhook attempts to a specified URL with a generated event body. This should mainly be used to determine JSON structure, as all IDs and URLs within the event bodies sent are not real.

Select one EVENT TYPE from the dropdown options, and click “Send.” You should receive a 200 OK response.

7. Now go back to Zapier. Test the connection by clicking “Test trigger.”

8. You should see your event. Click “Continue.”

9. Now select which integration/app you want to Action on. Here we selected “Gmail” to receive event notifications for each mailpiece via email. Select “Send Email” and hit “Continue” to connect your Google account to Zap.

10. Fill in the required fields, and for the ones you would like to map the Lob webhook events to, click the field, select “Show all Options,” and select the option of your choice.

In this example, we want to receive notifications for the event_ID, date and time when this event gets created, and the sender's information on the postcard. Note this will be redacted as this contains Personal Identifiable Information (PII). You can choose any of the fields from the available options that you would like to receive notifications about based on your preferences.

Fill out the rest of the fields where you’d like to receive these webhook notifications, review the contents, and you’re almost done! Select “Publish Zap.”

You should receive an email with the webhook events that you selected.

The last thing needed is to Name your Zap (if you haven’t done so already) and to “Turn on Zap.” If the Zap is not on, then Zapier will not execute against the workflow you set up (Trigger to Action).

11. If all the steps are set up correctly, then you should receive a green checkmark on both “Trigger” and “Action.”

If Zap failed to create, then you will receive a message on where to fix the issue and an additional message regarding the error. Here’s a link to the HTTP status codes that the API would return in case of an error that may help in troubleshooting.

Adding merge fields

To integrate merge variables on Zapier, you would need to paste the full HTML string directly into the text box, then use the built-in merge functionality from Zapier to insert variable content. This is an example of what that might look like:

Watch the screencast above for more context.

Support information

Feel free to email contact@zapier.com for issues on the Zapier side, or support@lob.com for Lob-specific debugging!

Overview

HubSpot has a customer relationship management (CRM) tool that helps companies manage their contacts, deals, and tasks.

The HubSpot integration with Lob allows you to automate direct mail campaigns within the Lob dashboard, based on any change within your HubSpot instance.

How to connect Lob to HubSpot

1. Within the Lob Dashboard, navigate to the Integrations page and click on the “HubSpot” tile view the HubSpot details page. Click on the “Connect” button to begin.

2. This will open a modal to create a new HubSpot account or sign in to an existing one. If you’re already logged into HubSpot in another window or tab, it may auto-detect. Enter the credentials for the HubSpot account you want to connect.

• The account used must have permission to share Contact information to authenticate.

1. After authentication, Lob will begin the ‘Connect’ phase, reading your HubSpot schema. This async process may take a few minutes, depending on the size of your HubSpot instance. You will receive an email when it’s complete.

2. Once you have successfully connected your Hubspot account to Lob, the label will show “Connected."

• After the initial connection, Lob will update to pull the latest schema from your account. Changes to HubSpot objects or columns will be reflected once complete.

• This can also be completed manually if you need to pull in these changes prior to building a campaign: From the Integrations page, then the HubSpot Integration Details page, click “Refresh Schema."

Once you’ve successfully connected Lob to your Hubspot account, you are ready to begin the Campaigns workflow. See set up an Automated campaign for a general overview, or watch the detailed video tutorial below.

Set up an automated campaign in Hubspot

Additional notes

• After the initial connection, Lob will update to pull the latest schema from your account. Changes to HubSpot objects or columns will be reflected once complete.

• This can also be completed manually if you need to pull in these changes prior to building a campaign: From the Integrations page, then the HubSpot Integration Details page, click “Refresh Schema."

Overview

Microsoft Dynamics 365 (MD365) is an integrated suite of business applications that combines customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) capabilities. This platform helps organizations streamline their operations, improve customer engagement, and make data-driven decisions.

The integration of MD365 with Lob enables businesses to enhance their operational efficiency by triggering mailpiece creation populated by data within MD365. This ensures a cohesive and effective approach to business process management and customer interaction strategies.

How to connect Lob with Microsoft Dynamics 365

New Registration in Microsoft Azure

2. Once in the Azure Portal, navigate to the App Registration page (you can use the search bar at the top to find it.)

1. Click New Registration at the Top

2. Set the Redirect URI to

1. Click on Register to create the application.

1. Select Manifest tab, in the manifest editor, set the allowPublicClient property to true and click on Save.

1. Select the API permissions tab and then go ahead and click "Add a permission".

1. Search for and choose Dataverse under the APIs my organization uses tab. If Dataverse is not found, then search for Common Data Service.

1. Click on Delegated permissions, check the options, and click on Add permissions. This will wrap up registering your app in the Azure Active Directory!

Connect to Lob

1. Within the Lob Dashboard, navigate to the Integrations page and click on “Microsoft Dynamics 365.”

2. Click the “Connect” button to begin.

• Client ID is on the overview page

• A Client Secret can be made by navigating to the "Certificates and Secrets" tab on the left

  • Click " + New Client Secret"

  • Give it a description

  • The Value is your Client Secret (NOTE: Save this value somewhere else just in case!)

• The Organization ID and Environment URL can pulled by your admin in the "Power Platform admin center" page under "Environments."

  • Click the environment you want to integrate with.

1. Once you have connected your Salesforce account to Lob, if successful the “Not Connected” label will show “Connected."

Import creatives for easy HTML templating

Struggling with HTML templates to leverage Lob's personalization feature? Can't find dedicated designers and engineers to convert your designs to HTML with each iteration? Fear no more!

You can now easily import your creative designs from popular design programs and quickly spin up merge variables. Take advantage of our full breadth of capabilities for hyper-personalization and leverage intelligent mail.

Enriching data can help overcome limitations with your digital customer data by adding any missing information or rectifying incorrect information in your database, such as e-mail IDs, phone numbers, physical addresses, or demographic data of your target segment. For example, if you are missing postal information for anonymous site visitors, consider appending your online data to send direct mail for retargeting purposes to take advantage of their potential purchase intent.

We partner with third-party data providers to offer a wide range of data augmentation capabilities for sending direct mail:

• In-market lead lists

• Website identity resolution

• Record completion

• Demographic or specialty appends: geographic, demographic, behavioral, psychographic

• Lookalike or predictive modeling

• Conversion analysis

Our valued partners include:

By adding direct mail to your customer journey in Zoho, you can enhance your outreach strategy with a personal, tangible touch, making your customer interactions more memorable and impactful. This integration bridges the gap between online and offline communication, driving stronger engagement and deeper customer connections.

Integration overview

This document is intended to provide you with a high level overview of the Inbound Insight and Lob integration and the process for sending mail therein. If you are interested in learning more about either platform, contact the corresponding organization's support team. This information is subject to change as the partnership evolves and more functionality is released.

Setting up a campaign

API setup

1. The first thing you need to do is navigate to the “LOB API” section on Inbound Insight, where you will be able to initiate your send.
3. After you have entered your credentials, make sure you save them. Once complete, navigate to step 2 - "Set Up Lob Campaign."

Campaign setup

1. Once you arrive on the campaign setup page, it is time to insert all of the details for your campaign. What is the name you will use to identify the campaign? What metadata keys and values will you use to analyze your data inside the Lob dashboard or fetch via API?
2. Continue scrolling and you will be prompted to select the API key you want to use for the campaign, the form factor, postage type, as well as the from address in the Lob system
3. After you have entered the relevant information click save and move on to step 3 where you will select your campaign and send off your mail!

Integration support

Overview

In order to use this plugin, you will need to host your own creative images and font assets, so that the publicly-sourced URLs may be referenced within your HTML templates.

Steps to using the plugin

Step 1 - Create a template

1. Create and open a blank design template.

2. Open the plugin at the top and select the desired mail format. (We currently offer templates for Letters: 8.5x11, Postcards 4x6, 6x9, 6x11 , and Self-Mailers 6x18, 12x9, 11x9)

3. Click "Create Template"

Step 2 - Design away

Now that you have your template set up, you should go ahead and design as you normally would! There are only two things to keep in mind when you are designing.

1. Mark dynamic text with double brackets. e.g. {{first_name}}

2. Name Images that should be dynamic with double brackets.

Step 3 - Convert to HTML

Once your design is ready, it's time to convert that mail piece into HTML. To do so we want to follow these steps.

1. Hide all guides. They are elements on each page called "_guides"

2. Open the Plugin

3. Select the form factor you are using

4. Click Export

Step 4 - Upload into Lob

Once your design is exported, it's time to upload it into Lob. To do so, you will need to follow these steps.

1. Upload any image assets to a publicly hosted location

2. 1. You will be prompted that they will need to be hosted and pointed to via merge variable

   2. You can either edit the document and include them inline
   3. Or you can use the provided link merge variable to point to a hosted CSS file which contains your custom font-face stylings
   4. If this process is unfamiliar to you, you may want to consider foregoing the use of custom fonts.

3. Change local image paths to remote image paths

4. Copy HTML, and paste into the Lob dashboard, within the HTML Template section

5. Preview Template

Overview

Salesforce Marketing Cloud, not to be confused with Salesforce.com (SFDC), is a marketing automation platform used for managing and executing personalized customer journeys across marketing channels.

Our Salesforce Marketing Cloud integration allows you to create automated direct mail campaigns from within the Lob dashboard, based on any event trigger change within your SFMC account.

How to connect Lob with Salesforce Marketing Cloud

1. Within the Lob Dashboard, navigate to the Integrations page and click on “Salesforce Marketing Cloud” (SFMC) to view the SFMC connection page. When on the SFMC page, click the “Connect” button to begin.

1. You will be prompted to enter your SFMC account credentials using the client id, secret, and subdomain of the account you would like to connect with Lob.

• Your SFMC account / organization must be on a paid SFMC plan.

• Lob will read the data extensions, fields, and data types that are available within that profile. This may take some time depending on your SFMC instance. Feel free to navigate away from the Integrations page or Dashboard while it completes. You can check the status on the Integration Detail page in the Integration section.

1. When you have successfully connected your SFMC account to Lob, the label will show “Connected”.

SFMC setup

If you have a package installed

You can find your client ID, client secret, and subdomain inside one of your installed packages:

Your subdomain is a 28-character string that begins with the letters "mc." You can find it within the REST Base URI after the https:// and before the “.auth” portion of the string. In the example above, the subdomain would be mc1111111111111111111111111111.

If you don’t have a package set up yet

Follow the steps below to create one to then get your client ID, secret, and subdomain key.

1. First, open SFMC and click your profile icon in the top right of the screen.

1. Click Setup under the settings dropdown

2. Once in Setup, under Platform Tools navigation, click Apps, then Installed Packages

3. Click New to create a new package if there isn’t one currently installed.

4. In the New Package Details window, enter a Name and (optional) Description and click “Save”

1. Within the package, click “Add Component” and select API Integration as the component type; click “Next”

1. Then select Server-to-Server integration; click “Next”

1. Within the Server-to-Server integration, select the following properties to grant Lob the ability to gain access to the appropriate data sets to send automated direct mail campaigns from:

• Data

  • Data Extensions: Read, Write

• Contacts

  • Audiences: Read, Write

  • List and Subscribers: Read, Write

• Marketing Cloud Connect

  • Read, Write

• Automations

  • Automation: Read, Write, Execute

  • Journeys: Read, Write, Execute, Activate/Stop/Pause/Resume/Send/Schedule

• Channels

  • Web: Read, Write, Send

• Event Notifications

  • Callbacks: Read, Write, Update

• Webhooks

  • Read, Write

1. After selecting the checkboxes to enable the component properties, click “Save”

2. You will then see a screen confirming the package information you have just set up, which highlights your Client Id and Client Secret keys within the Components section of the page.

Additional notes:

• SFMC data will reflect the state of the table objects and fields at the time of the sync. Each night at 12am PST, Lob will run an update to pull the latest data that is available to the user’s profile to which Lob is connected.

Lob is a valued partner of Speedeon, who helps businesses with customer acquisition, lead generation, and growth through data-driven digital marketing solutions.

Reach out to your Account Manager or contact sales if you would like to learn more.

Anatomy of a mailpiece

When you send an API request to Lob, you are sending 3 pieces of information:

1. the "To" address,

2. the "From" address, and

3. the content.

Below are some best practices to follow around formatting your address data with Lob.

What's an address?

An address gives the location of a structure or land using identifiers to help with navigation to that location. They also aid in the routing of mail.

The delivery address is the most important information on your mail piece. Use the following format for your delivery addresses:

1. Name (or attention)

2. Company* (if applicable)

3. Delivery address: Line 1, and Line 2* (if applicable)

4. City, State, ZIP Code, Country*

Items marked with a * are optional.

Address book

The Address Book is a collection of a customer’s addresses uploaded and stored in our system, which can be accessed in the Lob dashboard or you can leverage the address_id to retrieve that entry's information programmatically. Rather than passing the full address + mail information in one API call, customers can also pass the address_id (provided upon creating the address in the address book) that will look for the associated address information. This makes requests faster and simpler.

Standardization & verification

We cleanse all newly created addresses in order to optimize for maximum deliverability.

• All US addresses will be automatically standardized, cleansed, and verified through our CASS-Certified Address Verification system before being returned back to you in the API response.

• All international addresses will simply be standardized by being transformed to all uppercase.

Mail requests will be run through CASS and NCOA, as these are requirements for sending with USPS. This may result in the final mailing address being different from the ones you see in your API requests and Dashboard.

Coding Accuracy Support Systems (CASS™)

The Coding Accuracy Support Systems (CASS™) certification process is designed in cooperation with the mailing industry to improve the accuracy of postal codes, i.e., Five-Digit ZIP Code, ZIP+4, delivery point codes (DPCs), and carrier route codes that appear on mail pieces.

Lob is CASS™ certified (Cycle O) to ensure your addresses are standardized before any mail is sent.

National Change of Address (NCOALink®)

National Change of Address (NCOALink) is a service offered by the USPS, which allows individuals or businesses who have recently moved to have any mail forwarded from their previous address to their new address.

Addresses will be corrected to reflect an individual's or business's new address in the case that they have moved (only if they have registered an NCOA with the USPS). The National Change of Address (NCOALink) database check only runs for US-based addresses. It does not run for non-US addresses or for non-deliverable US addresses. For more visibility of address changes, learn more about additional NCOA functionality offered here.

Adding & deleting addresses

You cannot edit any existing addresses via the dashboard or API request. You can however delete the current address and add a new one with the updated information. For more details on adding a new address to your address book, refer to the API documentation.

If you are interested in mass-deleting addresses, you will need to set up a delete address request script. See more details on deleting in our API documentation.

Note that Lob is not permitted to add or delete addresses on behalf of customers.

Autoverify

Autoverify is included in all US Print & Mail subscriptions. Lob verifies the deliverability of all addresses before sending a request to our print partners.

Strictness settings

Depending on what business logic you'd like to take, based on your verification result, you can toggle your US address strictness settings in your Lob dashboard. There are three possible strictness levels: Strict, Normal, and Relaxed.

Learn more about the importance of mail strictness settings and how to adjust them as required by your business.

Using "Current Resident" as the recipient

The purpose of including "Current Resident" as the recipient of your mailpiece is to ensure that your message reaches its intended audience. This serves well in a case in which you're uncertain that the person(s) living at that address are the intended recipients and you do not wish to risk offending the current residents by potentially sending someone else's mail. Using the phrase "Current Resident" can be a good idea if your mailpiece is time-sensitive and the recipient may be variable.

To make an informed decision on whether or not to include the phrase, consider the purpose of your mailpiece and your target audience:

• If your mailpiece is intended to be a personal communication or a marketing message that relies on building a relationship with your audience, then you may want to avoid using the phrase "Current Resident." Learn more about dynamic personalization here.

• On the other hand, if your mailpiece is informational and the message is more important than the recipient, then you may want to include the phrase, as any recipient can still respond.

To indicate your recipient as "Current Resident," simply provide that as the name value where you would normally input a recipient's full name.

Utilize Lob’s Target Audience product to build audience lists targeted to specific geographic locations and demographic traits. A name is the only required field for your audience, but we recommend utilizing our targeting capabilities for the best results.

Location and demographic targeting

You can search a location by address, city, state, zip, or landmark. The search box will return a list of locations that match your search, and you can click the result that you would like to move forward with. Once a location is selected, it will appear under the location search box, and you can edit the name of the location and radius targeting from there. You can also manually pin a location by clicking the pin icon on the map and then clicking where on the map you want to drop the pin. You can search for or pin as many locations as you need to target, and if no location is added to your audience request, the entire US population will be included. Below locations, you'll find all the demographic traits that we offer. You can target as many as you need for your audience.

Exclusion Lists

Exclusion lists allow you to avoid purchasing addresses for customers you already have access to. This feature is as simple as uploading a csv of the customers you would like us to exclude from the audience we build for you. The csv can have postal addresses, email addresses, or phone numbers. The more information that is included in the file, the higher likelihood that we can successfully find and exclude the customers.

After your exclusion list is successfully uploaded, we ask you what information is in the file, and then we ask you to tell us which columns in your uploaded file map to our required fields.

Submitting your audience request