Caroline Hecht has been with Preferred Office Network for over 14 years, nearly since the company's founding.
Today, she serves as Director of Partnerships, and her job centers on the flexible workspace operators who make up the network.
"My role is to help our members, who are flexible workspace operator brands all over the globe, experience tangible value when they join Preferred Office Network," says Hecht. "Our pitch to them is simple: join our network of flexible workspace operators, and we're going to send you our enterprise client businesses."
That pitch will sound familiar to anyone who knows iPostal1.
Both companies exist to bring customers to workspace operators, answer to operators and end users at the same time, and have built their businesses on a single, consistent program across hundreds of locations.
Those parallels are why a collaboration between the two is taking shape, and Hecht sat down with us to explain how it came about and where it's headed.
Preferred Office Network and iPostal1 serve the same two audiences
Preferred Office Network speaks to operators on one side and enterprise clients on the other.
Hecht, who has a marketing background, knows how much that shapes the business.
"We essentially are speaking to two audiences, which makes marketing a lot of fun," she says. “I'm always thinking about who our audience is and what we're trying to communicate."
iPostal1 runs in a similar fashion.
Workspace operators list their addresses on the platform, and customers who need a business address and digital mailbox choose from those locations.
Every decision has to work for both sides.
"We both have the same audiences," Hecht says. "Our operators are a valued audience, and then also the end user. Our end users are looking for different things, but at the end of the day, the same providers are delivering those services."
Both companies bring customers to operators at no acquisition cost
For operators, Hecht describes the value in plain terms:
It’s free to join and list your space
You're part of a larger network of like-minded operators and receive all the perks that come along with membership
We place our clients with full-time office needs within our network
"There’s no cost to get visibility on our website and our internal database," Hecht says. "Plus, we're removing that marketing spend for you as an operator. You don't have to digitally advertise to get clients from us. We're delivering them to you."
That includes operators in smaller markets who assume enterprise demand will never reach them.
"Some operators in tertiary markets think an enterprise client doesn't want to be in their market, and that is not true anymore," she says. "There's no harm in getting listed with us, because as we're doing our searches for clients, we'll see your space and know right away that you can accommodate them."
iPostal1 works the same way for digital mail.
We invest in marketing to drive customers to iPostal1.com, where every partner location is listed.
When a customer chooses an operator's address, that operator gains a new digital mailbox customer without spending anything to find them.
"The big takeaway value for an operator is that both companies offer you another revenue source where you're not having to spend to earn," Hecht says.
Standardized terms are the foundation of both businesses
Preferred Office Network started in 2010, founded by three flexible workspace operators who wanted to give enterprise clients an alternative to the single large provider that dominated the market at the time.
"If a client wanted any sort of standardization across locations, they had to go to one brand, and they were given a corporate account manager," Hecht explains. "That was the only option they had."
Fifteen years later, the network has grown from three brands to more than 300, spanning more than 1,400 locations.
Every operator has agreed to the same terms and conditions, which is what makes the model work for large clients.
They get:
Access to 1,400-plus locations with the same terms, so they no longer have to be married to one brand to get a specific benefit
One invoice, whether they have three locations or 300
One point of contact with their dedicated account manager
Flexible lease terms, month-to-month with a 60-day notice, at all locations
Hecht is also clear about what Preferred Office Network is and isn't.
"We're not an aggregator, and we're not trying to just resell an operator's space," she says. "We're account managers for enterprise clients. We use our curated network to place them and then manage the account from start to finish."
The piece that matters most to Hecht is consistency, and iPostal1 brings that same consistency to virtual office services.
Instead of every operator in the network running its own digital mail program with its own pricing, a client who needs addresses in several cities gets one experience.
"Pricing is standardized," Hecht says. "Let's say you need virtual mailing addresses in three markets. You're going to get standardized pricing, for the most part, wherever you want to have those."
For a company whose entire enterprise business rests on the same terms at every location, that matters.
It gives Preferred Office Network one trusted place to send clients and gives those clients the predictability they already expect.
Preferred Office Network recommends iPostal1 to operators adding virtual mail services
The working relationship between Preferred Office Network and iPostal1 began with a practical problem:
Newer operators joining Preferred Office Network often want to add virtual mail services but don't know where to begin.
"Let's say you're a newer coworking operator, you've joined Preferred Office Network, you're excited to get business, but you're also doing a million things," Hecht says. "Maybe you want to start doing virtual mail services, but you don't know who to work with or where to start."
Preferred Office Network's answer was a vetted list of industry partners on its website, covering everything from phone answering to furnishings.
iPostal1 is on that list for virtual mail.
"We've partnered with different brands, iPostal1 being one, to say yes, we would recommend this company, and you receive a perk if you let them know that you're a Preferred Office Network member," she explains. "Right off the bat, we're trying to create additional value by promoting vetted companies we'd recommend working with."
Then there's the matter of inbound demand that Preferred Office Network isn't set up to serve:
Roughly 97% of Preferred's business is full-time office leases. The company doesn't advertise virtual offices, and yet the requests arrive anyway.
"If you publish an address online, someone's going to find it, click on it, and reach out to say, 'I need a virtual office at this location,'" Hecht says. "We're not even advertising on our website that we sell virtual offices, and we still get those requests."
The teams behind both companies go back years
The collaboration also reconnects people with long histories in the industry. Hecht has known iPostal1 Workspace's William Edmundson since his days at Office Evolution, and Shannon Carter, iPostal1 Workspace's Director of Business Development, previously worked at Preferred Office Network.
"It was fun to see William come back into the industry and work with him in a different capacity," Hecht says. "And Shannon used to work for Preferred as well, so it’s a blast from the past on all sides."
Two companies with the same audiences, a similar model, and overlapping teams were always going to find reasons to work together. Now they are.
Connect with Preferred Office Network
Operators interested in joining the network can learn more about Preferred Office Network or connect with Caroline Hecht on LinkedIn.
Ready to get started with iPostal1? Contact us today to start building a new revenue stream for your workspace with digital mailbox solutions.
