Recycled fiber procurement is a reverse sale. The “customer” is a company that generates baled cardboard (OCC), mixed paper or roll stock as a by-product, and the recycler pays them to take it. Volume is measured in tons per month, prices float with commodity indices, and the decision to switch haulers is made by facility managers, sustainability leads and procurement people who are not thinking about it most of the year. Relationships are local — a plant serves a radius — but the largest generators are national accounts (grocery, distribution, big-box) whose contracts are negotiated centrally and executed at hundreds of sites.

That produces two very different marketing problems inside one business. National accounts require a small-list, multi-persona approach: the decision maker who signs the master agreement, the sustainability influencer who cares about diversion rates and reporting, and the operations stakeholder who lives with pickups and bale quality. Plant accounts require reach across a large, fragmented list where the trigger is often a service failure by the incumbent or a change in volume. Win-back is a third motion: accounts that churned to a competitor and can be recovered when pricing or service shifts.

Traditional marketing in this sector is nearly nonexistent; business is won by sales reps, brokers and word of mouth. That is an advantage for a company willing to show up with targeted, useful content — the benchmarks are low and the competition for attention is light — but it also means there is no playbook, no MarTech muscle memory, and a sales force that has never worked marketing-sourced leads.

On the packaging side, corrugated is bought as a commodity by manufacturers and CPG companies with reliability as the top selection driver (68% of IP customers rank it top-4; roughly half of 2026 volume shifts were reliability-driven, per IP’s August 2026 voice-of-customer study). Selling it as a performance input rather than a cheap box is a brand problem before it is a demand problem.

IP Recycling wanted to grow tonnage from new and expansion accounts and win back churned accounts, and to do it with measurable marketing rather than sales effort alone. An earlier pilot had shown promise — 0.95% social CTR (+217% vs benchmark), 34% target-account engagement (+240% vs baseline) and early closed-won tonnage — and the business wanted a full program with sales-visible reporting.

Internally, IP had a corporate marketing function focused on the packaging brand, a Recycling team with limited marketing resources, and sales reps organized by mill region and by national account. Marketing technology existed at the corporate level but had not been used for Recycling’s account list.

Recycling, 2024–25

1. 01Target account lists: national accounts (expansion, nationwide, sustainability, win-back) and plant accounts by region, loaded to 6sense and LinkedIn
2. 02Persona and cohort messaging matrix (decision maker / influencer / stakeholder × growth-expansion / win-back)
3. 03Lead and demand paid search on Google and Bing (launched Aug 2024) with form tracking
4. 04ABX programmatic display in 6sense (Nov 2024 pilot; full launch Mar 2025), LinkedIn campaigns (Mar 2025), multi-touch email
5. 05SQL definition and sales handoff; opportunity tracking in tons per month and monthly revenue, direct vs. assisted
6. 06Dashboard (reach, engagement, leads, SQLs, opportunities, closed-won, tonnage) with training for IP; monthly performance reporting and year-in-review

Expansion, 2025–26

1. 07PSNA RFP 1:Few campaign (six waves) and four regional campaigns
2. 08Corporate brand awareness campaign, six waves Aug 2026–Jan 2027, with leadership briefing and full report scheduled Feb 2027
3. 09SEO and GEO strategy and AEO report; integrated marketing scope for 2026–27

Results are stated as of April 2025 reporting. Brand campaign figures are Wave 1 (Aug 2026) scale metrics, not outcomes. Customer names withheld.