120Water
accelerates critical regulatory mail by 80% with Lob
Impact at a glance
- Up to 80% faster turnaround to mailboxes
- 1.8M compliance letters mailed in ~2 weeks
- 30–40% survey completion via digital forms
“The fact that we can have a mail piece printed and in the mail stream within two or three days – that’s a massive differentiator. That speed is critical for helping our customers meet compliance.”
120Water is a digital platform that makes it easy for government agencies and water systems to manage their programs.
Industry
Environmental
Website
https://www.120water.com120Water helps water utilities and state regulators run drinking water programs, often with critical, time-sensitive letters to residents. Federal and state rules mean strict mailing deadlines, and 120Water’s manual processes made it challenging to keep up.
Before Lob, the team leaned on in-house staff and local print shops for its direct mail program. Turnaround was slow, unpredictable, and hard to scale as volumes climbed into the millions.
“When we were working with local partners, it was a seven to ten-day turnaround time,” said Abby Warner, Chief Experience Officer at 120Water. “As our customer base grew, the requirements and workload grew as well, and we needed a partner that could help us more easily distribute our programs.”
When it came time to scale, 120Water chose Lob for its plug-and-play direct mail API, deep personalization capabilities, and delivery tracking that confirms exactly when mail hits the USPS system, critical for meeting regulatory deadlines.
Depending on the need, 120Water either manages campaigns directly for utilities, or whitelabels Lob’s API for customers, allowing utilities to:
- Draft and send letters to print in minutes from within 120Water’s own editor within the Lob platform
- Automatically route jobs through Lob’s nationwide Print Delivery Network for faster local delivery
- Track every piece with delivery data for compliance reporting
- Personalize at scale, tailoring letters to each individual resident. “We customize letters with things like service address, whether the recipient is an owner or renter, and what the material of their service line is,” Warner says.
- Verify and normalize addresses to significantly improve list accuracy and reduce undeliverable mail.
With customers across the country, Lob’s nationwide print network is a critical asset for 120water. The network uses AI-based routing to dynamically match each campaign to the best print partner by geography, timing, and cost, which means every mailpiece takes the fastest, most cost-effective path to delivery.“Knowing that printing is load-balanced across local print shops throughout the United States is really powerful,” Warner says. “It’s also a selling point for many of our customers, mail is being handled locally, even at scale.”
With Lob, 120Water cut production timelines from 7-10 days to just 2-3 days, enabling utilities to consistently hit federal and state notification deadlines.
“The fact that we can have a mail piece printed and in the mail stream within two or three days – that’s a massive differentiator,” Warner says. “Sometimes it’s within 24 hours, depending on the program. That speed is critical for helping our customers meet compliance.”
They’ve also seen strong response rates using QR codes and personalized URLs on their letters to drive action. “Campaigns that drive recipients to complete a survey now see 30–40% survey completion rates,” says Warner.
Campaign Spotlight:
1.8 million compliance
letters in two weeks
In November 2025, a sweeping new federal regulation required water utilities to notify every resident with a lead, galvanized, or unknown service line.
The stakes were high: each utility had to send personalized notifications within a set regulatory window, including service line details and a link to a survey.
Through its partnership with Lob, 120Water distributed roughly 1.8 million letters for more than 7,000 utilities to residents across the United States – within weeks.
“It’s not just about sending a letter,” Warner says. “It’s about trust. Residents need to know this is important, not junk mail. The speed, personalization, and accuracy we get with Lob makes that possible.”
120Water plans to expand mailing options within its platform, adding more mailing class choices, color printing, self-mailers, and additional postcard sizes to give customers greater flexibility.
For Warner, these enhancements build on the foundation Lob has already made possible:
“Lob has taken what used to be a bottleneck and turned it into one of our strongest capabilities,” she said. “Now we can focus on creating better experiences for the communities we serve, instead of worrying about whether we’ll hit a deadline.”
