Meet the Broker: Esther Brown

Today we meet Esther Brown, an unintentional though hardly accidental list broker at VentureDirect Worldwide. Like many folks, her official job title doesn’t tell the whole story.

When she joined the list services group at VentureDirect in April 2007 as a senior list manager, Brown figured she’d walked away from nearly 20 years of brokerage. “I felt it was time for a change,” she sighs.

“My job title now is, well, I guess I can call myself what I want,” Brown pauses. “I’m like a senior account executive in brokerage.”

She was expecting to oversee list management and work more with clients’ in-house lists, besides prospecting for new business. And she does all that now, but clients haven’t let her forget she was a broker first.

“I’d mention to clients that I’d be moving on to marketing, but someone would call with a brokerage question and then there would be another call and another call,” says Brown.

As it turns out, Brown still predominantly does list brokerage. But she also handles a few list management accounts, in addition to mentoring list managers and brokers.

She began her career at L.I.S.T. Inc. in 1989 doing both list management and brokerage. After a few years Brown found herself working exclusively in brokerage. Her specialty has always been the high-tech market, even before e-mail lists came on the scene.

She worked for Statlistics, Direct Media Inc. and Transcontinental Direct List Services, which became part of Specialists Marketing Services Inc., prior joining VentureDirect.

Her brokerage clients include MIT Conferences, Ouellette and Associates, Georgia Institute of Technology, Washington University, Seapine Software Inc., SafeNet Inc., TopDeq Office Furniture and Brocade Communications Systems Inc.

Brown is married and has one adult son. Outside of work she thrives on New York theater, museums and restaurants. At home she likes reading for relaxation and planning travel adventures.

“I’ve recently been to Istanbul, Rome, London and Greece. And this year I’m planning to go to Alaska and the Canadian Rockies.”

How important are co-branding endorsements for e-mail list users?

“I think it’s going to be a trend we’ll see more of over time, says Brown. List owners who want list rental income will have to work more with mailers because response is down.”

Typical response rates for e-mail offers in the high-tech market have fallen from the mid teens during the dotcom boom to just over 1%, which is driving demand for co-branding endorsements for e-mail lists, according to Brown.

“Recipients won’t open e-mail unless they’re aware of the source. Between the filters, blocking and Can Spam, response to e-mail is down and it’s going to stay down,” she says.

E-mail list endorsements allow marketers to send offers using the list owners’ name in from boxes, a practice that’s becoming more prevalent and subject for broker negotiations. “I have conversations with list owners about it several times a month,” she adds.

Can lists ever be too targeted?

Indeed, postal and e-mail list requests can be too specific, which inadvertently wipes out opportunities to generate response from untested segments of lists.

“People tend to pigeonhole too much. What starts out as a universe of 150,000 names can be culled down to 11,000 by overly restricting the target audience by job title or industry,” Brown says.

The best strategy is to always test different cells within lists to uncover new opportunities. “It can start off with job title, company size and industry,” she adds.

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