Hallmark+

Hallmark partnered with what is now Leyra in 2021, moving away from in-house development to tap into a specialised OTT technology team and the scalability advantages of a dedicated platform. The partnership enabled more frequent service updates, faster feature rollouts, and incremental improvements that would have been difficult to sustain with internal resources alone.

After more than a decade of in-house development, Hallmark faced growing difficulty maintaining a consistent, high-quality experience across devices and platforms at scale. The cost and complexity of sustaining custom integrations and applications was diverting resources away from what mattered most: content production and audience experience. Hallmark needed a partner who could take on that technical complexity, bring scalability, and help them confidently launch a reimagined streaming service.

‍

‍

Working closely together, the teams designed and delivered several key capabilities for the Hallmark+ launch:

• Unauthenticated homepage — allowing potential subscribers to explore content and subscription offerings before committing to sign-up, lowering the barrier to conversion
  ‍
• Conditional containers — serving content dynamically based on individual user preferences, behaviours, and login status, creating a more personalised experience
  ‍
• Gifting options — enabling users to purchase and send Hallmark+ subscriptions as gifts, reinforcing the brand's identity around celebrating relationships and special moments
  ‍
• Design facelift — a full redesign of the OTT interface to deliver an intuitive, visually appealing, and seamless navigation experience aligned with modern user expectations
  ‍

Beyond features, regular collaboration and structured check-ins positioned Leyra as a natural extension of the Hallmark team, enabling rapid diagnosis of issues and the development of tailored solutions.

A significant milestone came with the integration of Hallmark's retail operations into the Hallmark+ platform — creating a unified experience that combines ad-free streaming with exclusive retail and loyalty benefits, deepening engagement with Hallmark's passionate community.

‍
The Results

• Reduced total cost of ownership by replacing custom-built integrations with a scalable SaaS platform
  ‍
• Faster release cycles through pre-built templates and a collaborative development model
  ‍
• Hallmark+ launched successfully, integrating OTT and retail into a single, cohesive membership experience for 1M+ users
  ‍
• Stronger team alignment — Leyra's embedded partnership model was highlighted as a success factor in internal retrospectives following the Hallmark+ launch

‍

In Their Words

"The support we received from the [Leyra] team during this intense period was unwavering. Utilizing the platform to further grow and expand our offering has accelerated our progress tremendously, allowing us to bring Hallmark+ to market fast and greatly optimize our internal resources."

— Lusha Bodie, SVP Technology, Hallmark Media

"Maintaining a consistent and high-quality experience across various devices and platforms was difficult to do with in-house resources. By working with [Leyra], we've been able to tap into expertise that we didn't have in-house, improve scalability, and enhance the overall user experience of our SVOD while keeping costs down."

— Hallmark Media team

‍

About This Partnership

Hallmark+ is the streaming and membership service from Hallmark Media, built around the brand's mission of fostering caring and connected lives. The platform combines ad-free viewing with exclusive retail and loyalty benefits, serving one of the most engaged and brand-loyal audiences in the entertainment industry. Hallmark's technology partnership began with Accedo One, which has since merged with Magine Pro to form Leyra — bringing together best-in-class OTT platform capabilities under one brand.

‍

‍