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SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Lob, the leading direct mail automation platform, today released its 2023 State of Direct Mail report, in partnership with Comperemedia, to understand how enterprise marketers use direct mail to drive growth, how they measure the impact, how marketing budgets are changing, and what the future holds for direct mail. The study found 74% of marketers believe direct mail delivers the best ROI, response rate, and conversion rate when compared to other channels, including email.The report surveyed 250 marketing professionals who work at North American companies with more than 1,000 employees across financial services/banking, eCommerce, retail, healthcare, insurance, and nonprofit. Sixty-four percent of respondents say their companies conduct business through both online and physical locations with most stating their mail volume ranges from 100,000 to 100 million mailpieces annually.Marketers are responding to consumers’ openness to direct mail by investing more in the channel—despite recession rumblings and tech layoffs. Report findings include:Fifty-eight percent of marketers have more marketing budget allocated to direct mail in 2023 than they did in 2022: 69% of marketers have up to 25% of their total marketing budget allocated to direct mail 20% of marketers have 26-50% of their total marketing budget allocated to direct mail 11% of marketers have more than 50% of their total marketing budget allocated to direct mailhave more marketing budget allocated to direct mail in 2023 than they did in 2022: 81% of marketers who use a software platform for direct mail agree it delivers the best response rate of all channels their company uses today. This shifts to 70% for respondents who do not use a software platform. Marketers who automate direct mail reap the benefits of better response rates as the result of being able to create more targeted, personalized, and trackable campaigns.who use a software platform for direct mail agree it delivers the best response rate of all channels their company uses today

SphereOne, a crypto payment platform that allows users to make purchases with any cryptocurrency across any blockchain, said it has raised $2.5 million.The company is targeting the platform at the mass market, particularly people who don’t know much about cryptocurrency. Distributed Global led the round with participation from Newark Venture Partners, Zero Knowledge, as well as angel investors Leore Avidar of Alt.xyz and Lob.com and Eric Feldman of Bolt.com. The SphereOne platform prioritizes immediacy in transactions and features include a one-click checkout, as well as the ability to simplify swapping fiat to crypto and vice versa.It’s notable that the company has been able to raise the money during the cryptowinter, which started last spring and was exacerbated by the collapse of FTX. And this kind of technology will be useful in helping cryptocurrency and associated applications like blockchain games make it to the mainstream.“The user experience for consumers using crypto for payments is fragmented,” said Christopher Ries, COO of SphereOne, in a statement. “Web3 consumers continue to give us feedback that moving liquidity across different chains to purchase things is complicated, time-consuming, and risky.”According to Chainalysis an estimated $2 billion in cryptocurrency has been stolen across 13 separate cross-chain bridge hacks, the majority of which was stolen this year. Consumer confidence has been shaken and an increased security presence is critical for the next wave of users to feel good about using crypto payment rails.SphereOne said its founding team has unique credentials in both security infrastructure and early-stage products to create a platform able to protect the consumers of tomorrow