Today we meet Heather Martin, vice president of list brokerage at Belardi/Ostroy ALC LLC. Her brokerage background primarily involves catalog circulation planning and working with cooperative databases. She has more than 10 years experience.
Martin began her list brokerage career in May 1996 at Specialists Marketing Services Inc., where she met her mentor Donna Belardi. She moved on to Belardi/Ostroy when the firm was still known as ALC of New York.
Brokerage clients include the children’s catalogers One Step Ahead and Sensational Beginning; various Williams-Sonoma titles; Red Envelope Gifts; apparel marketer Mark Shale and the Sundance gifts catalog.
Martin said she believes list brokerage has become more stressful for everyone because of the trend for a later and shorter holiday shopping season at the end of the fourth quarter. This compares to a few years ago, when the busy season was more evenly spaced between September and December.
To prepare for the annual shopping frenzy, Martin spends a considerable amount of time analyzing the prior year’s response results and exploring how to apply lessons learned to current circulation planning.
What she likes best about list brokerage is challenging clients’ plans. She also enjoys the flipside of being in the hot seat when clients challenge her. “It happens both ways and in the end we come to an agreement,” said Martin.
Martin is single, a Jersey Shore sun worshipper and an avid sports fan. She attends family gatherings on most Saturdays where everyone watches Penn State football games. She spends most of her free time during summer sunbathing at Long Beach Island, NJ. Her other interests include reading, running and scrapbooking when she has some “down time,” she said.
How do lists drawn from co-op databases compare to individual lists?
One of the biggest challenges when working with cooperative databases involves measuring the incremental value co-op generated lists offer clients, because the data source is more complex compared to individual lists, said Martin.
Co-op lists are normally used for statistical modeling, which changes the whole dynamic for selections and understanding lifestyle characteristics, she said.
With co-op names it’s not as easy to determine how often a particular household has been targeted with offers, compared to individual lists with more detailed usage information.
Lists drawn from co-op databases offer advantages over individual lists in terms of the quantities of names available, she said. With a co-op database it’s easy to generate a list with 70,000 names drawn from smaller sources that otherwise might not be available, while new individual lists rarely have counts exceeding 20,000 names, she added.
What’s the biggest challenge for catalog list users?
Response allocation has become a major concern as more companies become involved with multi-channel marketing, said Martin.
Probably 80% of the clients she works with use a data match-back process to analyze the impact of catalog mailings on Internet orders and retail sales. However, few companies are measuring the impact of affiliate marketing Web sites on catalog response, according to Martin.
Affiliate Web sites are being credited as the source for orders, when in reality many consumers participating in rewards programs will place catalog orders at particular Web sites to receive points and other incentives—after they receive a catalog in the mail, she said.
Some companies have found that 40% to 60% of Internet orders are being generated by catalog mailings, as many consumers have simply switched from ordering by telephone to ordering online, while envelopes for postal orders have all but disappeared from catalogs, she said.
Martin said she believes the catalog market is actually much stronger than many perceive. The problem is that response data is routinely misallocated to the Internet, not to mention retail store sales generated by promotions in catalogs.
More needs to done to track and match back orders to catalog mailings, but with so many affiliate Web sites and orders being shipped to home and business addresses, plus retail transactions--it’s not as simple as it might sound, she said.
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