Meet the Broker: Dina Fanelli
Today we meet Dina Fanelli, a list broker who co-founded Trinity Direct 10 years ago. She does list brokerage mainly for Roman Catholic charities, animal welfare groups and libraries.
She started out at Direct Mail Decision Makers, and worked at Data America and Ed Burnett Consultants Inc. prior to joining Trinity Direct. She’s been in direct marketing for 18 years.
Fanelli presently handles list brokerage for several clients, including Catholic Relief Services, Rescue Missions, The Salvation Army, PetSmart Charities and the Zoo Consortium.
She’s quick to lament that universe of Catholic names keeps shrinking. “We are all competing for the best prospect names in a very limited pool, Fanelli said. “The competition at times is overwhelming.”
Fanelli doesn’t rely on managed lists for all the names she needs. She works directly with many list owners to arrange private list rentals, for access to files not available through list management agencies. To find these lists she attends conventions frequented by Catholic organizations.
Fanelli often uses ZIP Code selects and data overlays to uncover Catholic names from secular lists. “We do investigative digging. And there are advantages when no other nonprofit is using a file,” she said.
When she’s not brokering lists, Fanelli teaches an aerobics exercise class and enjoys skiing. She has two youngsters, a girl, 7 and a boy, 5, plus four cats. Fanelli also volunteers as a Girl Scout Brownie leader.
Her husband also works in direct marketing at Experian, which makes it easier for them to talk about their workday. “We share the same industry, but not in the same building,” she added.
Are mail clearing dates for list rentals important?
“Personally, I don’t believe in protecting mail dates,” said Fanelli.
Brokers working with nonprofit organizations almost invariably must arrange pre-clearances for specific dates for list tests and continuations, a practice rare among commercial mailers and commercial list owners, she noted.
It makes little sense for list owners to keep calendars of mailing dates for selected mailers, because so many other mailers will be sending out appeals and offers without coordinating their mailing schedules, Fanelli said.
“Calendaring,” in her opinion is only worthwhile in situations that involve limiting list exchanges, not list rentals, she said.
What’s changing or should change in the list business?
“There’s more turnover on the management side,” Fanelli said. I don’t know if it stems from smaller companies being gobbled up by larger companies.”
Employee churn sometimes leads to absurd situations in her opinion, where longtime clients who’ve rented the same file month after month for years are being required to submit sample pieces when nothing significant has changed.
Mom and pop companies are going out of business, replaced by larger firms, a trend that disturbs her, she said.
What’s not changing is the volume of paper and faxes still being used in the list business. It seems only the larger companies are making an effort to reduce paper use and rely more on e-mail and PDF files, according to Fanelli.
“It’s interesting
