How Bennie Became the Strategic Partner Lob’s Benefits Program Always Needed

Industry

Technology-Enabled Logistics / Direct Mail

Employees

115+

Headquarters

Fully Remote

HR Leader

Victoria Ashton, Chief People Officer

HR Challenge

Legacy Broker Complacency,

Manual HR Processes,

Lack of Year-Round Strategy

Results

Year-Round Proactive Renewal Strategy,

$1,000's saved for employees

About Lob

Our Customer

Modernizing Direct Mail Through Technology

Lob is a technology-enabled logistics company that helps businesses send direct mail seamlessly — bringing cost savings, automation, and efficiency to an industry historically defined by manual processes. With approximately 115 full-time employees and roughly 30 contractors spread across 29 states, Lob is fully remote and geographically distributed by design. That footprint makes the complexity of benefits administration immediately apparent: a plan that works for an employee in New York must work just as well for one in Arizona or Texas.

For a company whose entire value proposition is built on making an outdated industry modern, accepting a legacy approach to benefits was never going to be good enough.

Our HR Leader

Meet Victoria, Chief People Officer

Victoria Ashton is Lob’s Chief People Officer, with full ownership of the company’s benefits strategy, budget, and execution. She approaches benefits not as an administrative function but as a strategic differentiator — a key element of the employee value proposition that should meet every employee where they are, regardless of life stage, personal circumstances, or geography.

Before Bennie, Lob’s broker relationship checked the necessary boxes but failed to make benefits a meaningful part of why someone would choose to join — or stay at — the company.

HR Challenges

1. Manual, Slow, and Under-Supported

Beyond the strategic gap, the operational experience was a grind. HR processes were manual, slow, and dependent on Victoria’s team absorbing friction that should have been handled by a capable broker. When employees had problems, the team found itself caught between the employee and the carrier with inadequate support.

2. A Broker Who Went Through the Motions

Lob’s previous broker was adequate in the narrow sense: renewals happened, coverage was placed, and the process moved forward. But “adequate” is not a differentiating employee experience. The relationship was transactional and reactive — a pattern Victoria recognized as a ceiling on what Lob could offer its people.

We were with a legacy broker that, sure, went through the motions, did the things they were supposed to do, but didn’t necessarily make benefits a differentiating part of why someone might join Lob, and it wasn’t part of this amazing employee experience that we wanted to build.

3. Benefits Strategy That Only Happened Once a Year

Like most legacy broker relationships, Lob’s prior experience was defined by a once-a-year renewal conversation. Strategy, market insight, and cost planning all compressed into a single window — leaving the rest of the year without meaningful engagement.

If your broker only shows up at renewal time, they’re not your partner. They’re a vendor.

Bennie is different.

Bennie’s Impact

Year-Round Proactive Strategy

The most immediate and defining shift in Lob’s Bennie experience has been the rhythm of engagement. Strategy is no longer a once-a-year event. Bennie’s team, led by account manager Melissa Johnson, builds renewal strategy throughout the entire year — tracking what’s happening, flagging what might affect the next cycle, and ensuring Lob is never caught flat-footed.

We have much more proactive support from Bennie, specifically our dedicated benefits specialist, who’s amazing — in that we’re talking about strategy nine months out before we’re even getting to the time of renewal. We’re forming the strategy for our renewal the entire year.

Victoria draws a direct contrast to the prior model:

It’s really not just a once a year, here’s your renewal rate conversation. It’s really an ongoing strategic conversation throughout the whole year — knowing what levers we can pull to make sure that we keep costs down as much as we possibly can.

A Partnership That Goes Well Beyond the Renewal

The Results

For Lob, the ROI of the Bennie relationship is real and multifaceted: thousands of dollars saved for employees through claims advocacy, proactive renewal strategy that keeps costs as controlled as possible, and a benefits experience that employees actually appreciate and talk about.

But Victoria is quick to point out that the full value of the partnership isn’t reducible to a single number:

The relationship that you have between Lob and Bennie is priceless. You really can’t quantify that. I’d go back to what Ask Bennie has done for our employees, what our benefits consultant has done for us with our renewals, with our strategy, and the relationships that you build so that when the problems do come up, you’re just one phone call away. You’re not waiting days for an email.

At Lob, the technology-enabled future of direct mail is already here. Their benefits program is catching up — and Bennie made that possible.

2025-state-of-employee-engagement-report-v2

You’re going to get a high touchpoint type relationship, as well as concierge with Ask Bennie. This is the way that things are going now, and the legacy brokers are being left behind. I think that their organization would also be left behind if they didn’t make a switch.