Behind the scenes at Lead Marvels
Take a peek behind the curtains at Lead Marvels where, each month, we'll share new partner announcements so you can keep track of our always-expanding lead gen network. We'll also highlight improvements our dev team is making to our platform to meet our partner and customer needs. Plus, every month we'll introduce you to one of our employees so you can get to know our team.
New partnerships
As we continue to take on new partners in our core industries, including legal, accounting, and financial services, we’ve also been working on expanding our overall professional services network. This month, we’re excited to announce that we’ve established a footprint in the staffing and real estate industries!
In real estate, we’ve partnered with the Rhode Island Association of REALTORS®, which has been serving its members — now numbering more than 7,000 — since 1948. And our first partner in the staffing industry is the New Jersey Staffing Alliance (NJSA), which was founded in 1960 and serves direct-hire, contract, and temporary staffing firms.
We’ll be working closely with our new partners to provide their members with a steady stream of useful resources as we work to expand our presence in these important industries.
Platform improvements
We have a HUGE update we’re releasing in July, and we’re so excited that we’re going to spill at least some of the beans early. Coming next month, our association and publisher partner dashboards will include some exciting new features, including . . .
- A jazzed-up analytics module so our association partners can get quick insights into the topics and resources resonating most with members.
- An announcement area where partners will be updated on new advertisers, campaigns, and features.
- Improved visuals for at-a-glance insights into performance analytics.
- A community center where association leaders can network and share ideas with other associations in the same industry.
These improvements are part of our ongoing mission to make our partners as successful as possible. Stay tuned for more on this upcoming release.
Employee Spotlight: Who is Miranda Deibel?
Two ingredients that make Lead Marvels uniquely marvelous are our tech and our people. As our lead developer, Miranda Deibel represents the combination of the two.
With a background in game design, Miranda is especially adept at new feature development and deploying new code that makes it easy for our users to interact with our technology — whether you’re an association partner checking on campaign progress, a sponsor or vendor interacting with leads via your dashboard, or a member interested in downloading a new report in your association’s online resource center.
Unsurprising to us, Miranda’s married to another developer. Hey, a couple who codes together, stays together, we’ve heard. We were curious if Miranda had interests outside of tech, you know — cooking, reading, gardening, that kind of stuff. Nope. Miranda breeds reptiles as a hobby. And while many of our employees have cats or dogs they like to hang out with, Miranda enjoys spending time with her Indo-Australian pythons. Put that search phrase into your Google machine!
New Partnerships
We’re excited to announce some important new partners this month, including the Arizona Society of CPAs. This expands our accounting and tax vertical to 30 total partners. If qualified, intent-based leads from engaged accounting professionals are important to your business, then our continuously expanding accounting and tax network could be your one-stop-shop solution.
And we continue to deliver on our 2022 mission to deepen our support for professional associations. As of this month, we’ve forged new partnerships with the Georgia Society of Association Executives and the Tennessee Society of Association Executives. We’ve also partnered with association industry veteran and influencer, KiKi L'Italien to launch a Knowledge Hub on Association Chat. The Knowledge Hubs (aka resource libraries) in our association network will offer a steady supply of timely and helpful thought leadership resources for association executives.
Platform Improvements
Our resource libraries are an invaluable source of information for professional association members in each vertical we serve, including tax and accounting, legal, credit union, transportation, and more. A resource center provides high-value thought leadership content from each industry’s premier solution providers. And who are the top solution providers in each industry? Good question!
We’ve updated our platform this month to include a “browse all companies” feature so that, with a single mouse click, you can see a listing of the companies committed to providing professional association members with first-class content. Click on any name, and you’ll land on that company’s dedicated page, where you can learn more about the company and access all of its thought-leadership resources. It’s a quick and easy way for members to learn more about the solution providers that can help them grow their businesses.
Employee Spotlight: Who is Tyler Gilham?
Meet Lead Marvels’ very own player-coach, Tyler Gilham. Tyler is not only an accomplished national account executive, but as our sales director, he also trains and supports the sales team, optimizes internal sales workflows and strategies, and coordinates across all other departments to keep Lead Marvels marvelous.
When he’s not at the sales helm at Lead Marvels, Tyler and his wife Krystal spend much of their time (and money, he tells us) on their new fixer-upper home in Florida. Tyler’s a huge fan of comedy so we know he appreciates it when we remind him to “save yourself while there’s still time!,” as Tom Hanks’ character shouts in The Money Pit (1986) while surrendering to his own home renovation project. Hang in there Tyler!
New partnerships
Our accounting and tax network has also expanded to include 30 total partners with the addition of the New Mexico Society of CPAs, the Arizona Society of CPAs, and the National Association of Enrolled Agents, our first national accounting organization.
And, we’ve added our seventh state society of association executives — A special welcome to the New Mexico Society of Association Executives.
We told you we’ve been busy! And please stay tuned for more announcements because we have no plans to slow down anytime soon.
Platform improvements
This can come in handy if you have a timely announcement or content piece that you want to release to as many people as possible or are just looking to build deeper brand awareness. When the Texas Society of Association Executives (TSAE) released their COVID-19 Association Impact Study, for example, they wanted to get it into the hands of all of their members so they published it to their Knowledge Hub without a registration form, allowing users to download the report directly from the landing page.
Or, if leads are important to you, check out how the Washington Society of Certified Public Accountants used their new infographic, How to Become a Better Virtual Communicator, as a lead generator.
Talk to our team if you’d like additional details about this capability.
Employee Spotlight: Who is Amanda Davis?
Web developer and designer extraordinaire by day, Amanda is an accomplished DJ with her own radio show by night — Miss Deezy in the house! And when she’s not spinning mad beats on Planet 104 on Friday nights, Amanda’s an active CrossFitter and loves hanging out with her two nephews and her dog, Hank.
New partnerships
A key part of our mission at Lead Marvels is to support the professional associations that support the professionals who keep our economy going. Since our inception, we’ve partnered with more than 50 associations to build digital resource libraries that provide members with enriching thought leadership content. These associations serve a variety of industries including legal, accounting, credit union and banking, transportation, engineering, and others. Now, we’re providing associations who serve associations with enrichment-based content and resources that will help association professionals address some of the key challenges they face.
Last month we announced the launch of the FSAE Knowledge Hub in partnership with the Florida Society of Association Executives. They joined the Texas Society of Association Executives, which launched the TSAE Knowledge Hub in collaboration with Lead Marvels. We also told you to “stay tuned” for more partnership announcements similar to TSAE and FSAE.
We weren’t kidding! We’re excited this month to be able to announce new partnerships with the Oklahoma Society of Association Executives, the Georgia Society of Association Executives, the Tennessee Society of Association Executives, and the Idaho Society of Association Executives. In fact, Oklahoma’s OSAE Knowledge Hub is now live! This brings our number of partnerships with state societies of association executives to six and still growing!
Platform improvements
If you’ve perused one of our partners’ knowledge hubs lately, you may have noticed a new feature called, “The Monthly Minute.” How do we summarize a whole month in just 60 seconds? Well, we don’t literally do that. That would be crazy. But we do give a shout-out to some of the most exciting content offers that have been featured in each resource library in the past 30 days to draw members’ attention to resources likely to be of interest.
We offer these videos at no charge to our association and publisher partners, who can decide which offers they want to feature in their Monthly Minute. It’s a value-add for our partners and a great way to generate additional interest among members. We’ve also been told by our association partners that they’re looking for more video content to offer their members. Ask and you shall receive!
Employee spotlight: Who is Michael Palacios?
If you’re one of our customers or partners, chances are, at some point you’ve been in touch with Michael Palacios, Lead Marvels’ President, aka Chief Utility Officer, corporate jack-of-all-trades, and human Swiss army knife. An engineer by trade, Michael oversees our business operations, HR, legal, and finance. His strength is in client relations, and he’s also an account manager for clients in the transportation, legal, accounting, and other industries. We mentioned that he’s a jack-of-all-trades, right?
What does Michael do when he’s not working at Lead Marvels? Nothing — he’s always working at Lead Marvels. We’re kidding around, of course. Michael and his wife are the proud parents of two teenagers, two dogs, and a rabbit. (We haven’t met the rabbit yet, but the rest of the family are lovely!) Michael’s an avid traveler who’s been to 58 countries and all seven continents— yes, including Antarctica. He also volunteers for local, national, and international programs in Bible education and community support. And he’s an avid foodie, imbiber of craft cocktails, and all-around good guy. Cheers, Michael!
New partnerships
It’s hard to believe it’s February already! With that said, we hope your 2022 is off to a great start and that you’re meeting your Q1 goals! Well, one of our 2022 goals is to deepen our support of professional associations. And we’re proud to say that we’re on our way towards meeting that goal. It’s why we’re so excited to announce our new partnership with the Florida Society of Association Executives and the recent launch of the FSAE Knowledge Hub.
Similar to our partnership with the Texas Society of Association Executives and the TSAE Knowledge Hub, we’re making a concerted effort to partner with associations that serve associations. (We know, it’s a little bit meta.) This means that the digital resource libraries that we launch on behalf of our association partners to serve their members will now provide enrichment-based resources to association professionals themselves in Florida and Texas.
And, spoiler alert, we’re also in partnership talks with several other state societies of association execs, so keep an eye on this page for future announcements.
Platform improvements
There’s a lot that goes into a lead gen program but, ultimately, the “landing page” is where the rubber meets the road! Someone lands on a page and makes a decision – sometimes in less than a single second – about whether or not to complete the registration form to access the content. If they complete the form, they get access to high-value info to help them be more successful, the B2B marketer sponsoring the content gets a business lead, and our association partner gets revenue. Truly a win-win-win!
Since we think everyone deserves to be a winner, our team is constantly working on optimizing our landing pages so you can keep on winning. We have three updates in fact!
- Social Sharing: We added social sharing functionality that enables a visitor to easily share the content campaigns with their respective social networks. Now, with a simple click, the content provider or the association can share the page with their respective audiences, generating more exposure and engagement.
- “More Like This”: Located at the bottom of the landing page, visitors will now find links to ‘Tags’ – related topics and content types – driving members and site visitors deeper into the resource libraries, increasing their time on site.
- Design Enhancements: We’ve updated the landing page design ‘pattern’ to include several new graphical options for advertisers to choose from. Each option will also utilize the respective association’s primary branding and color palette. This allows for brand consistency throughout the association’s digital resource library, while giving advertisers control over more design elements.
Employee spotlight: Who is Kara Thurmond?
You may not have personally met our very own Kara Thurmond until now, but we’re pretty sure you’ve seen her work. You know how our digital resource libraries are designed to seamlessly integrate with each association partner website? That’s Kara’s doing. And she does it well!
Kara is our Senior Front-End Web Developer and an important part of the team here at Lead Marvels. Kara is the link between user-facing design and the back-end, proprietary tech platform running our Lead Gen as a Service (or LGaaS) solutions.
When she’s not doing her Lead Marvels thing, Kara likes hiking, biking, and skiing in the Catskill Mountains, where she resides. A creator to her core, when Kara’s not outside, you might find her engaged in one of her creative pursuits, from print-making or mix-media painting to writing or sewing.
New partnerships
As we expand into new industries by forging new partnerships, it’s important to us to continue to grow within our flagship industries. In accounting, we’ve recently partnered with the Oregon Society of CPAs to launch a new Knowledge Hub. That brings the total number of state accounting societies we’ve partnered with to 27 and still growing.
And, in legal, we’re excited to announce a partnership with The Florida Bar, which has 109,000 members. Together, we’ve launched the LegalFuel Knowledge Center on the Florida Bar’s Practice Resource Center website. Lead Marvels’ legal network now includes a total of 14 different partners (... and growing)!
Our accounting and legal networks will continue to grow over 2022, offering marketers more reach and more connections with engaged professionals who can help them grow their business.
Platform improvements
You know how sometimes, you just want to give someone a pat on the back and say, “Hey, thanks for being there for me”? Well, associations like to do that too sometimes for the corporate sponsors who give them the most support.
Now our association partners will be able to give their sponsors a virtual pat on the back within their digital resource libraries. We’ve recently launched the “Premier Partners” ribbon so associations can identify and give a shout-out to their premier corporate sponsors within their lead gen platform.
Check out this sample from The Ohio Society of CPAs’ Knowledge Hub.
Employee spotlight: Who is Kjell Petersen
We probably don’t need to introduce some of you to Kjell (pronounced “shell”) Petersen, our Manager of Partner Success, because you may attend regular meetings with him. Kjell is in charge of making sure our association and publisher partners are successful. So when we partner with a new association and promise to help them grow non-dues revenue, Kjell’s the guy we’ve put in charge to make sure we’re fulfilling that promise by keeping tabs on our partners’ lead gen programs and making sure you have everything you need to build out a healthy, recurring stream of revenue.
Kjell and his wife Annalee, also on our marketing team, have two beautiful daughters, one fat tabby cat, and one old, ugly French bulldog. (That’s Kjell’s description of his dog, not ours, but we’ve seen pictures and, yeah, …) Kjell and family are hikers, and Kjell’s a mountain biker, golfer, and aspiring guitarist. Keep up the good work, Kjell!
New partnerships
Since our inception, Lead Marvels has been all about helping associations enhance member engagement and create new sources of non-dues revenue. It’s pretty much what we do. Now, we’re taking it to a whole new level – What better way to support associations than to partner with an association that serves association executives, we ask you?
That is why we are very excited to announce our new partnership with the Texas Society of Association Executives. TSAE’s mission is to help their Texas-based association executive members become more successful by connecting them to “peers, resources, inspiration, and innovation.”
“The partnership with you guys makes a lot of sense for us,” said Steven Stout, FASAE, CAE, Executive Director of TSAE. “We’re both working to help associations become more successful, so the synergies are too good to ignore. By working together, we’ll be able to provide even more value for our members.”
We’re currently in discussion with sister associations of TSAE in other states, so watch for this network to expand as we enter 2022!
Platform improvements
You know the page that shows up after a lead fills out a form to access gated content, like a white paper or ebook? Well, we call those ‘Thank You’ pages. Our template for these pages has now been enhanced to drive deeper, more sustained engagement. Once a member or subscriber downloads a lead gen content asset, they will be offered additional content options based on their behavioral data and areas of interest.
For B2B marketers, this means you’ll have opportunities to nurture your leads even more with related content offers branded for your company, such as videos, blogs, or ebooks.
For our association and publisher partners, a recommendation engine will generate new content offers to keep members engaged and interacting with your organization for longer periods of time. Plus, you’ll continue to gain insight on what topics are resonating most with members.
At Lead Marvels, we’re always optimizing our platform to enable your success!
Employee spotlight: Who is Dan Schottland?
Vice President of Business Development
As our Vice President of Business Development, Dan Schottland is responsible for establishing new relationships and driving revenue. Having been with us since our early days in 2017, Dan’s actually one of the very first employees we hired. He’s responsible for working with 35 of our key accounts. Dan’s customers appreciate his integrity, honesty, and expertise. They also know that Dan’s going to give it to them straight when advising on their digital marketing strategies.
On weekends, you’re likely to find Dan hanging out around a firepit with his wife, two sons, and close friends. And, those who know him best aren’t surprised to see him frequently gazing up into the sky at night, since he has a passion for astrophotography – rivaled only by his appreciation of a good scotch and fine cigar, by the way. Cheers, Dan!
New partnerships:
We’re proud and excited to announce the launch of the MedCity News Knowledge Hub this month. MedCity News is a leading online news source for the business of innovation in health care, and this partnership represents Lead Marvels’ entry into the healthcare and health IT space. With the launch of their Knowledge Hub, MedCity News can now supplement their existing advertising products with a premium, scalable content marketing and lead generation program designed to deliver qualified, intent-based leads to B2B marketers targeting the healthcare space.
John Lerner, CEO of Breaking Media, which publishes MedCity News, calls the partnership a “no-brainer.” Not that we don’t agree with him, but we asked him why he thought so. (We care about what our partners think about us, what can we say?)
“You guys built the platform for us,” Lerner responded, “so it was easy to implement, and it gives us a new lead gen solution our advertisers really like. Plus, we like the incremental revenue.”
Well said, John! We’re looking forward to a long and fruitful partnership with you and your team.
Photo: John Lerner, CEO of Breaking Media
Platform improvements
One of the unique things about Lead Marvels is that we provide our association and publisher partners with fully managed sales support. In other words, we’ll carry the full weight of the sales effort for you if you need us to.
But if you have your own sales reps also selling lead gen, our platform now provides third-party access to our administrative dashboards, so your sales staff can use the same tools as Lead Marvels sales execs to grow your non-dues revenue. Your reps now have 24/7 access to admin capabilities so they can monitor lead gen campaign performance, download and deliver leads, audit and finalize admin reports, and more.
At Lead Marvels, our goal is to enable your success. Call it our mission. Call it our raison d'etre if you want to sound fancy. Call it whatever you want, but it’s what we do.
Employee spotlight: Who is Caryn Campagna?
When you work with Lead Marvels, you have a whole team of people working behind the scenes to make sure you’re successful. Caryn Campagna is an important part of that team. As Lead Marvels’ Technical Production Lead, Caryn has her hands on the wheel of Lead Marvels’ own innovation and product development efforts.
Caryn’s job is to investigate the overlap between our clients’ needs, product data, and program performance in order to identify and deliver new product improvements that fast-track our customers’ success.
When she doesn’t have her pedal to the metal at Lead Marvels, you might find Caryn working on home improvement projects or hiking with her husband, their adorable daughter, and their dog named Cooper.
New partnerships
Lead Marvels is proud to announce our recent partnership with CUES, the Credit Union Executive Society. With this alliance, we’ve expanded our credit union coverage to unprecedented levels. Check out the newly launched CUES Resource Library, where we syndicate branded, thought-leadership content for sponsors and vendors aligned with the credit union space.
If you’re a B2B marketer targeting credit unions, our network has expanded to approximately 40,000 engaged credit union professionals. Contact us to find out how we can connect you with the kind of engaged professionals that are critical for your business’s growth.
And, if you’re an association executive or B2B publisher and are interested in having us create incremental revenue streams for you, let’s chat.
Platform improvements
You may have already noticed that we recently updated our platform to include visuals so you can determine with a quick glance how your campaign is tracking against your goals. (You’re likely so busy following up on those fresh leads we’ve sent you that you don’t have a lot of surplus time on your hands anyway, right?) And remember, we filter out all leads that don’t match your ideal customer profile so you only pay for the kinds of leads that will help you grow your business.
Employee spotlight: Who is Jessica Ikaika?
At Lead Marvels, your success is our success. Yeah, yeah, we know, other companies have said the same thing. But we’re so serious about it that your success now has a name and a face . . .
Meet our Director of Customer Success, Jessica Ikaika (pronounced ee-kai-kuh). Jessica works directly with our customers to get to know them, their company, and their goals. And, she leads our production team, so she’s empowered to make sure your goals will be met. We told you we’re serious about your success!
When she’s not hard at work on your lead gen campaign, you won’t find Jessica camping, that’s for sure. Not even glamping. (We checked on that.) An indoorsy person, Jessica likes to write fiction but will only read non-fiction. She recently confessed a possibly unhealthy obsession with true crime that has us a little worried, if we’re being honest. But, hey, as long as she takes care of your success, that’s probably ok. Right?
New partnerships
Lead Marvels proudly welcomes our newest partners – the state CPA societies of Indiana, Alabama, Minnesota, South Carolina, Massachusetts, North Dakota. In total, Lead Marvels now has partnerships with 26 state CPA societies. For organizations interested in marketing to CPA audiences, we boast broader coverage for you than ever before.
If engaging active accounting professionals is vital to growing your business, contact us to find out how you can promote your brand’s thought-leadership content on Knowledge Hubs like this one.
Platform improvements
Some would say we’re obsessed with improving our platform for our partners and vendors. Let’s just say we’re extremely passionate. To that end, we’ve enhanced the user experience of our digital content hubs to give users even more ways to find the content they’re looking for from our B2B vendors, using keyword search functionality, the ability to browse by company, and additional filtering by content and topics.
Take a look for yourself by visiting a Knowledge Hub in the legal, accounting, credit union, or transportation industries.
Employee spotlight: Who is Jonathan Michel?
You’ve come to know us as a lead gen company, and that’s certainly true. But we have the DNA of a tech company coursing through our network. Our lead gen platforms are built from the ground up using proprietary technology that is unique to Lead Marvels. Without our stellar tech, well, there just wouldn’t be as much “marvel” in Lead Marvels.
Meet our CTO, Jonathan Michel, the mad genius behind our software development efforts. Jonathan has been building tech-based lead gen solutions for more than 20 years! The man is singularly focused on his craft. Jonathan and his team of techies work with our association and publisher partners to build streamlined digital content hubs, super slick performance dashboards for B2B vendors, and those highly sticky landing page capture forms our customers rely on to get your leads.
Jonathan has a wife of 22 years and two beautiful children. What does Jonathan like to do when he’s not coding, you ask? Frankly, we were a little curious about that ourselves because it seems like he’s always coding, so we asked him. Jonathan likes to hike, play volleyball, and strum some Pink Floyd tunes on his guitar. Favorite food? Pizza with pineapple – who knew?!