Today we meet Michele Volpe, vice president, sales and marketing at Media Source Solutions in Plantation, FL. She joined the firm 6 years ago, after time with Millard Group (now Direct Media Millard) and Byrum & Fleming.
Volpe brokers a wide range of postal and telemarketing and e-mail lists.
“MediaSource has been very fortunate that last year we actually saw growth in our company,” she says. “We saw a big increase in e-mail lists and I think that’s because mailers were more willing to spend on something where they could get a quick ROI. And larger mailers that were interested in branding recognized that e-mail is a terrific way to get your name out there.”
In the industry since 1996, she notes the rapid increase in automation. While that does save time, it took away some of the opportunities to build relationships with clients.
"When I first started, everything was done more manually,” she says. "The very first day I started I was handed a stack of printed datacards with written instructions for the counts.”
Volpe was supposed to call the list managers for further clarification even though she was not yet familiar with industry terms and acronyms. She credits this for helping her get acquainted with the industry.
"That helped me develop relationships with the list managers because I would actually talk to them,” she notes. “And I would say it’s become a little more impersonal because we do things with e-mail.
"I think a lot of the courtesy has gone out of the communications between list brokers and list managers since I first started,” she says.
On top of that, this heightened impersonality has made it a bit more difficult to recommend some lists she might have been better able to do if she had more personal relationships with list managers.
The faster pace is also forcing brokers to be well-read and stay abreast of market developments so she can help clients react to them more quickly.
In her off hours, Volpe likes to cook and go to the beach near her home in Boca Raton, FL.
