Behind the scenes at Lead Marvels

We’re proud to announce two new association partners this month: The Massachusetts Staffing Association (MSA) and the Residential Real Estate Council (RRC).

These new partnerships in the staffing and real estate industries allow us to expand our professional services network while we also continue to grow deeper in our core verticals, including the legal, accounting, transportation, healthcare, association, and financial industries.

Be sure to visit the MSA Knowledge Hub and the RRC Knowledge Hub to check out the valuable resources shared by thought leaders in those industries, from tools, guides, and reports to eBooks, manuals, and more.

We’d like to take the opportunity to give you a sneak peek at a new program we’re launching very soon. Although lead gen is our raison d'etre, so to speak, we understand that not every company’s focus is new leads. Some simply want awareness, name recognition, or brand alignment with their favorite association.

For those companies, we’ll soon be launching a vendor directory platform that will allow our association partners to feature the sponsors that support them. Association members, in turn, will have a convenient and user-friendly digital directory to search by category, location, or company name for reputable solution providers in their industry.

Stay tuned to this page for more information!

Meet Jake, a key member of our superstar development team. Jake’s focus is front-end development. For those non-techies out there, front-end development involves work on the graphical interface of a website. That means Jake has a hand in everything you can see (and click on) on our partner Resource Libraries and customer landing pages as well as our dashboards.

One of the things we appreciate about Jake (and our customers benefit from!) is his love of learning. When he’s not working at Lead Marvels, he likes to build movie and gaming API websites, which tends to translate into new ideas for his Lead Marvels work. Jake’s also an avid gamer, and when he’s not heeding the “Call of Duty” (Modern Warfare 2, of course), he likes to spend time outdoors with his wife and daughter hiking or going to the beach.

If targeting actively engaged professionals in the legal industry is key to your business’s growth, you’ll be excited know that we’ve been focused on growing our legal network over the past few months.

We’re excited to announce new partnerships with multiple bar associations, including Indiana State Bar Association and Kentucky Bar Association, along with local bars, York County Bar Association and Boulder County Bar Association.

This brings our legal network to 20 total partners and still growing! We're excited to see how many more incredible associations we can help as we enter the final quarter of 2022. Make sure to check back next month for more partner announcements.

Our new onboarding portal is an enterprise-level feature that empowers our clients to kickstart their lead gen program at their own pace. Now, customers can set up their company profile, invite team members to the onboarding portal and reporting dashboards, and manage delivery, notification, and billing settings — all in one intuitive interface!

This exciting new feature lays the groundwork for future releases, including a landing page builder coming soon to a lead gen provider near you that will allow advertisers and association partners to build their own customized landing pages.

Stay tuned to this page for future announcements!

Meet our Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, Ben Schottland. Ben has been with us since our launch in 2017, so he’s pretty much seen it all when it comes to building successful lead gen programs. One of the reasons he’s among our top sales leaders at Lead Marvels is that he’s so passionate about helping his clients grow their businesses.

Ben’s also passionate about playing guitar and singing, but let’s just say we haven’t invited him yet to play at any company gatherings and leave it at that. Buy hey, he’s working on it — we’ll give him that. Ben’s recently married and loves hanging out with his family. One of his favorite things to do is to watch his son play on his school’s varsity soccer team, after having coached his team when he was younger. Ben’s got a great sense of humor and loves a good meme, so feel free to send him one.

This month we are excited to name the New Jersey Staffing Alliance (NJSA) as a new partner! Founded in 1960, NJSA is the New Jersey chapter of the American Staffing Association and represents more than 100 staffing firms and industry partners.

Executive Director, Denise Downing, explains, “Thanks to our new partnership with Lead Marvels, we’ll be able to provide our members with more resources through the new NJSA Knowledge Hub.”

NJSA is our first partner in the staffing space, an industry that will play a key role for us as we continue to expand our professional services network to complement other industries where we have a deep presence, such as accounting, legal, financial, and real estate.

Stay tuned for more announcements!

When our dev team heard that you want more control over your notification settings, they went to work! Now you can fully manage your notifications and communications settings with options like real-time lead notifications, so our customers receive an alert every time a prospective buyer downloads their content.

Our partners and customers can opt to receive lead reports, invoicing and billing information, and even updates every time we release a new platform improvement — kind of like this one!

At Lead Marvels, we make it a habit not only to listen to the feedback we get from our association partners and customers but to act on it, so please keep the feedback coming.

It’s important to us at Lead Marvels to make our programs as turnkey as possible for our association partners and customers. To do that, we need talented developers on our team. Meet Jerome Young, one of the newest members of our development team. Jerome is our Email Developer, so he’s responsible for building customized email campaigns for our association partners and customers.

When he’s not hard at work on your email campaigns, Jerome tells us he likes to play Yu-Gi-Oh! (If you’re not sure what that is, don’t worry – Some of us weren’t either. Thank you, Google!) Jerome hails from Las Vegas, NV, where he also loves spending time with his wife and kids.

We continue to break new ground this month, welcoming two of our newest partners — The Association of Vermont Credit Unions (AVCU) and The American Osteopathic College of Anesthesiologists (AOCA).

Joining our credit union network, AVCU is our first-state based credit union partner. The association was founded in 1947 and advocates on behalf of 16 member credit unions.

The AOCA will be a key part of Lead Marvels’ expanding health care network. It is comprised of physicians, residents, and medical students dedicated to the field of anesthesiology and was founded in 1959. The college now has more than 1,200 fellows.

If you’re a sponsor, vendor, or industry supplier interested in generating warm, intent-based leads in the credit union or health care space, please reach out. And stay tuned for more new partnerships we will be announcing soon!

In tandem with the release of our recent association dashboard update, we also just launched a massive update to our advertiser dashboards. Now, when advertisers log into their lead gen dashboard, they’ll see a sleek new interface that will include:

• Reports and more detailed lead views, with new business leads formatted as digital business cards.
• Enhanced visualizations for at-a-glance performance analytics updated in real time.
• Historical tracking to monitor performance trends.

Also, in addition to tracking the performance of their own resources, advertisers can measure their performance against the rest of their peer group and also get detailed insights into the topics and content formats performing the best in their space.

And even though we think this update is a game changer for our advertisers, we’re not done. We are committed to making continuous improvements based on the feedback we get from our association partners and advertisers.

Meet the newest member of our sales team, Craig Senechal. Craig is a national account manager whose new favorite hobby is to demo our platform to prospective customers. (We’re being serious. But, hey, it is a cool platform.) A true extrovert, Craig tells us his favorite part of the job is to meet new people from around the world, learn about their businesses, and help them grow their companies.

Craig just relocated from California to Florida with his wife and their dog, Jake. He loves hiking, and Yosemite is his favorite national park. In fact, he recently hiked to the summit of Half Dome, a mere 17-mile hike to an altitude of 8,800 feet above sea level. Piece of cake, right? Let’s just say that some of us prefer relaxing beach vacations.

Our network of associations serving associations continues its expansion! While you wrap your head around that last statement, here’s a list of our five newest partners:

• Mid-Atlantic Society of Association Executives
• Empire State Society of Association Executives
• Associations North
• Virginia Society of Association Executives
• Indiana Society of Association Executives

At Lead Marvels, we make it our mission to serve associations by launching Resource Libraries on their sites that offer their members tips, resources, and other thought leadership content. By partnering with these SAEs, we’re now able to offer association leaders themselves a steady stream of new content from the association industry’s solution providers and vendors. As of this month, we now have 12 association society partners with more announcements coming soon!

For months, we’ve been toiling away behind the scenes on our new association dashboard release. Well . . . it’s here! Now at a Resource Library dashboard near you, log in to check out the latest features including:

• A sleek, user-vetted, and substantially upgraded UX design.
• Visuals that offer at-a-glance insights into user behavior, campaign tracking, and performance analytics.
• Analytics modules so you can see the topics and resources resonating most with members.
• Revamped leads and revenue tracking reporting!
• And much more.

Whew! that was a big release. Maybe it’s time for us to take a breather to enjoy the rest of the summer? Not a chance! We’ll still enjoy our summer, but we’ll do so as we continue to make iterative improvements to our platform. And, by the way, you can keep track of those upgrades in your dashboard’s new announcement area.

If you’ve purchased a lead program from Lead Marvels recently, you may have met Karena Ortiz. As our project coordinator, Karena onboards new clients, making sure they’re set up for success. From content intake to setting up each advertiser’s page and getting them access to their lead dashboard, Karena lays the groundwork for a smooth experience for each of our customers.

When Karena’s not at Lead Marvels, she’s likely hanging out on a beach with her husband and son, teaching pilates, or taking care of one of her foster dogs. A softie for anything with four legs and fur, Karena has a special fondness for old and cranky dogs. She also loves to cook because, as she tells us, she loves to eat. Her favorite wine: beer. We get it – cheers!

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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!

It’s been a busy month at Lead Marvels, and we’ve added new partnerships to expand coverage in some of our core verticals. What does this mean for you? If you’re a company wanting to market to a group of actively engaged professionals, we can offer you more coverage every time we add a new partner.

In legal, for example, we’re excited to announce partnerships with the Bar Association of San Francisco and the Nebraska State Bar Association, bringing the total number of legal partners in our network to 18.

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.

We love leads at Lead Marvels, as you may have already guessed! Sometimes, though, leads aren’t the primary goal. Suppose one of our partners or customers wants to use our platform to get the broadest distribution and engagement possible for their content. In that case, they can promote their content on an “ungated” landing page, meaning that users won’t have to complete a registration form to access it.

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.

The web-based lead gen platform that we white label and manage for our association partners is built using our homegrown, proprietary technology. It basically makes the whole Lead Marvels machine run. But it’s the design and user interface that makes the experience seamless for our partners, customers, and members. And for that, we have our talented design team to thank! Meet Amanda Davis, one of the skilled members of our web development and design group. Amanda’s been applying her passion for design at Lead Marvels for just over two years now.

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.

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!

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!

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!

1. 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.


2. “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.


3. 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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

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

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.

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.

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?

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?!