The problem
Customers had no simple way to acquire address lists for direct mail — they'd leave the platform, buy from a third party, then re-import the data. That fragmented process cost time, introduced errors, and delayed campaigns, especially for businesses doing local targeting.
Designing under real constraints
This was a 0→1 feature with a hard dependency: an external data provider. I worked closely with Product, Legal, and Finance to evaluate vendors — budget limits and compliance requirements narrowed our options, and the partner we could actually use didn't support real-time search — only a request-and-wait model. Rather than force a "browse and buy" flow the backend couldn't support, I redesigned the journey around the constraint: submit a request, get notified when data is ready, review and purchase. The job became building trust in the waiting period — clear expectations, status, and guidance at every step.
Shipped in phases, validated at each step
Because this was net-new, we treated it as a bet to de-risk, not a big-bang launch.
- Phase 1 Self-serve geo + demographic targeting, shipped to test demand.
- Phase 2 Multi-location search in a single list purchase.
- Phase 3 Exclusion-list upload, so customers only paid for genuinely new addresses.
Business impact
The feature kept marketers inside the Lob ecosystem end-to-end instead of bouncing to third-party tools — generating $175K in revenue within the first 6 months and cutting campaign launch time by 25%. It became a template for how Lob ships 0→1 features under real vendor and compliance constraints.