Today we meet Ed Krug, vice president of new business development at Plattform Advertising, where he works primarily with business-to-business lists.
Working at Plattform for about the past six months or so, Krug has also worked for MeritDirect and Walter Karl
Some clients include Advanstar Communications, United Stationers, RSA Software and Sun Microsystems.
He also brokers lists for such consumer clients as Taylor Gifts, Gotham Writers Workshop, DirecTV and Samsung. [Krug notes that even though Gotham uses Plattform to broker its list and do online lead generation, Gotham does not release the names of its students].
Krug got his start back in 1979 with Market Compilation and Research Bureau, compilers of college and high school student and new birth lists.
He’s definitely seen the industry branch out from what it was originally.
“You’ve seen the business evolve from traditional list compilation and list management to database marketing to now multichannel marketing,” he says. “Now I kind of consider us a combination of data brokers and media brokers because clients are really using a variety of media to bring on new customers or to communicate with their existing customers.”
One noteworthy development he’s seen, at least in B-to-B, is the growing use of e-mail prospecting. He says this has a better chance of success in B-to-B than consumer because of higher average order sizes and customer lifetime value.
It also help that these leads go straight to sales people who then call personally on those customers and/or prospects.
Despite the growth of interactive media and the movement of marketing budgets in that direction, Krug feels there’ll always be a place for direct mail because of its tangibility.
In his off hours, Krug is a high school basketball referee from his home in North Potomac, MD, near Washington, DC out of which he also works.
