Our Work
Overview
US LBM is the largest privately held distributor of specialty building materials in the United States, supplying windows, doors, millwork, wallboard, roofing, siding, decking, cabinetry, lumber, and engineered wood products to homebuilders, commercial builders, and remodelers from more than 450 locations nationwide.
Evenbound’s relationship with US LBM started in 2015, when our CEO and founder John Heritage gave a talk on marketing for builders and construction companies, and the marketing director of Zeeland Lumber & Supply, a family-owned Michigan lumber yard, approached him afterward. Evenbound became Zeeland’s outsourced marketing department, standing up inbound marketing, a CRM, and a website that hadn’t existed before. In 2020, Zeeland Lumber & Supply was acquired by US LBM. Standard Companies, another Michigan operation with no marketing function of its own, was acquired around the same time and came to Evenbound next. Northern Building Supply, a Northern Michigan brand, joined the portfolio after that.
Eleven years later, Evenbound still runs marketing for all three companies — Zeeland Lumber & Supply, Standard Companies (Standard Supply & Lumber and Standard Kitchens), and Northern Building Supply — as a Team-as-a-Service Growth Partnership. Each company runs as its own brand, with its own customers, product mix, and go-to-market approach, under the same national enterprise. It’s Evenbound’s longest-running client relationship, and one that has never stopped being strategy first, people second, and technology to support both.
The Challenge
Before Evenbound, none of these companies had a marketing function. What existed was whatever got done between everything else, and for a construction-adjacent industry in 2015, inbound marketing wasn’t yet a common approach; these companies would end up ahead of the curve rather than behind it.
The biggest challenge was building marketing from the ground up, then keeping it consistent across three companies that each need their own voice while selling on the same seasonal calendar.
No Marketing Department or Inbound Knowledge: There was no team, no consistent lead sourcing, and no familiarity with inbound marketing, let alone for a construction audience.
No Email Program, No List, No Social Strategy: There was nothing to nurture a lead into a customer and no consistent presence to build one in the first place
Fragmented Brand Architecture: Standard Lumber, Standard Kitchens, and other related identities operated as separate entities online, splitting attention and diluting domain authority instead of building it.
Three Companies, Three Different Systems: As the relationship grew to cover Zeeland, Standard, and Northern, marketing ended up running on three different HubSpot setups with no shared visibility across brands.
Category and Seasonal Messaging Nobody Owned: Building materials sell on a calendar (e.g., decking in spring, roofing before winter). Without a strategy behind it, that seasonality wasn’t being planned for or promoted on purpose.
HubSpot Tools We Used
Marketing Hub Starter + Professional
The Solution
Evenbound didn’t walk into an existing marketing function and optimize it; there wasn’t one to optimize. The first work was strategy: defining what marketing needed to look like for three distinct companies selling into overlapping markets, before a single email went out or a single ad ran.
What that strategy called for has changed a lot since 2015. SEO, social, and what “inbound” means have all shifted over eleven years, and the program has been rebuilt and re-evaluated along the way rather than left to run on autopilot.
Marketing Strategy Built From the Ground Up: Defined an inbound and outbound approach for all three companies, covering branding, positioning, messaging, and how each business should show up as the market around them expanded.
A CRM Where There Wasn't One: Implemented HubSpot CRM with marketing automation and a lead tracker for Zeeland from day one, with training so their team could actually use it, not just have it.
Websites Built to Convert: Re-platformed and re-wrote all websites using a growth-driven design, treating the site as something that keeps getting refined rather than a project that ships once and sits still.
Email Marketing Stood Up and Segmented: Built email programs and lists where none existed, segmented by audience (homeowner and builder) so the same product gets positioned differently depending on who's reading. That included a builder newsletter built around lumber pricing, a detail this audience specifically cared about, and a separate homeowner newsletter.
A Social Strategy Built for Purpose: Redefined the social media approach for Zeeland and Standard, moving away from posting for the sake of posting and toward content tied to the broader marketing strategy.
Content Built for AEO and SEO: Began blog and content production that's purposeful for search and AI-driven answer engines.
Paid Media Aligned to the Selling Season: Built seasonality campaigns around how these companies sell (e.g., decking in spring, roofing ahead of winter).
General Marketing Counsel, On Demand: Ongoing advice on branding, positioning, messaging, and market expansion as questions come up, functioning as an embedded marketing team rather than an outside vendor.
Brand Architecture Guidance: As part of the ongoing branding and positioning counsel, advised on consolidating messaging and identity across Standard Lumber, Standard Kitchens, and related names.
One Reporting View Across Three HubSpot Portals: Set up email marketing, social publishing, and list-based segmentation, backed by custom reports and dashboards that give leadership one consistent view of what’s happening across all three brands.
Content Offers and Landing Pages: Built gated content offers and landing pages to give each company something to run traffic toward, standing up the top of the funnel where nothing existed before.
.png?width=2000&name=Screenshot%202026-08-10%20at%201.52.50%20PM%20(1).png)
The Results
Eleven Years and Counting: The longest continuous client relationship at Evenbound, and one that's grown from a single point of contact at one company to an embedded, cross-functional marketing team across three.
10,000+ Monthly Website Visits and 3,000+ New Contacts: Early results from the rebuilt inbound engine, generated through the re-platformed website, content strategy, and SEO work (Zeeland).
A 50%+ Email Open Rate: Well above typical benchmarks, driven by segmenting the builder and homeowner audiences instead of sending one message to both.
A Marketing Function Built From Nothing, Three Times Over: Zeeland, Standard, and Northern each went from no marketing department to a full, functioning top-of-funnel program, covering strategy, content, email, social, and paid media.
Dashboards Leadership Actually Uses: Custom reporting gives sales and marketing full visibility into performance, with an executive dashboard that's become the go-to view for what's impactful, not just what's easy to measure.
215 Sessions and 21 New Contacts From Social So Far in 2026: Combined across Zeeland, Standard, and Northern's organic and paid social, with a clear ramp starting in Q2 and peaking in the summer selling season.
Paid Media Conversions Up 167%: Since rolling out seasonal paid campaigns starting spring 2024, conversions are up 167.10%, cost per conversion is down 41.94%, and conversion rate is up 128.25%, compared to the prior period (Zeeland).
A Seat at the Table: What started as tactical execution has grown into higher-level strategic conversations with leadership, with continued visibility into how the system is performing.
