How Quilter AI Uses Surface to Qualify Leads, Reduce Manual Work, and Find Alpha in B2B Marketing
About Quilter AI
Quilter AI is a cutting-edge platform focused on transforming underwriting in insurance. As a category-defining company with a highly specific Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), Quilter needed more precision in its demand gen programs than traditional platforms could offer.
The Challenge
Before Surface, Quilter’s "Request a Demo" workflow was wide open. Anyone could book a meeting:
There were no guardrails to ensure fit.
Calendars filled up with unqualified prospects.
Data was duplicated and fragmented across tools.
"We were asking for the same info twice — once in the form, and again in the scheduler," Darin recalls. "Plus, there was no logic layer. Everyone just got the link."
The result? Lost pipeline, missed opportunities, and a sales team forced to rely solely on inbound form submissions.
The Solution
Surface Forms now powers the critical conversion points across Quilter’s funnel:
Pre-Qualification for Demos
Instead of letting anyone book, leads must complete a form that dynamically qualifies them. If they’re a fit, they can schedule. If not, they get a thoughtful off-ramp with relevant resources.Data Enrichment & Deduplication
Whether a lead uses a corporate email or a Gmail address, Surface pulls in firmographic data via ZoomInfo or Apollo to auto-enrich leads behind the scenes.Consolidated Lead Intelligence
Surface serves as Quilter’s de facto master lead dashboard — qualifying, syncing to HubSpot, and auto-filling calendar fields — with zero extra clicks.
"Now we have all our leads flowing through Surface. It’s not just a form anymore — it’s where marketing ops happens."
The Results
Higher Lead Quality: Only qualified leads reach the sales team, and the experience is better for both sides.
Less Manual Work: No more stitching together Excel/Airtable sheets. Surface pushes clean, enriched data to HubSpot and the scheduler automatically.
Smarter Funnels: Surface enables new workflows for free signups, newsletter access, and gated content — all with enrichment and lead scoring built in.
"Surface has turned into our lead ops layer. We're starting to think of it as the place where anonymous traffic becomes qualified pipeline."
Darin envisions a future where Surface doesn’t just qualify leads — it helps nurture and route them intelligently, too. Partial form fills, for instance, could trigger personalized follow-ups using tools like n8n + Surface.
The Tao of Marketing
As a marketing leader who studied in Japan and Taiwan and lived in Asia for over a decade, Darin brings a unique perspective:
"You can't force outcomes. You have to create the environment for them to happen naturally."
That’s the essence of what he calls the Tao of Marketing: combining inbound principles with cultural nuance and precision tooling.
"I’m not trying to drive someone to buy. I’m trying to make sure they’re fully informed, so they choose us — naturally. Surface lets us create those environments at scale."
Loved by top marketers
"We feel pretty embedded in Surface, especially since we did the PLG stuff there. I would consider Surface to be like a pretty core part of what is running our website, which is a good thing."
Maddy Fennessy
Growth Marketing Lead
“If we turned off Surface tomorrow, we’d lose a lot of inbound. We’re almost entirely inbound-driven, so Surface is a critical part of how we operate.”
Shubh Agrawal
San Francisco
"We actually saw that 37% more users on average converted with the new form that they built for us"
Alexandra Doan
San Francisco
"We’re growing at the speed of light, and Surface is one of the few vendors keeping up with us. I'd pay whatever it takes to solve this problem—and Surface solved it."
Pujun Bhatnagar
CEO
“Whenever I had a feature request, the Surface team would update me throughout the process and follow up after launch to make sure everything was working correctly. It really feels like a white-glove experience.”
Angela Kou
Chief of Staff
"We used Typeform in the early days. It was great but you can tell when a company outgrows it. Surface gives us the mechanics we liked from Typeform, but with enterprise-grade control over brand, format, and functionality."
Ian Christopher
CEO
