Meet the Broker: Fabiola Molina

Today we meet Fabiola Molina, who presently handles list brokerage for Tabak’s Health Products, Kozinski Institute and other dietary and health product direct marketers for Bulls Eye Marketing Inc. She has also done a fair amount of brokerage for catalogers and mailers targeting opportunity seekers.

Her career in the list business spans 30 years in both list management and brokerage. She started out at Dependable Lists, and later worked for Prescott Lists, Woodruff-Stevens & Associates and Macromark Inc.

Part of her day is devoted to list management activities because she works for small company, but Molina primarily does brokerage work.

“I just don’t do brokerage presentations like they do at big companies, she said. “I’m in the office and on the phone working.”

For fun, Molina enjoys dancing and listening to all kinds of music, especially romantic Latin American rhythms. Marco Antonio Solis is one of her favorite musicians.

Molina tries to visit family in Guatemala every year or so, where she lived before coming to the U.S. at the age of 14.

She lives in Staten Island, NY, is married and has two adult children. Her pastimes include taking walks at beaches and parks, and going to the movies. Molina hopes one day to become a grandmother. “I am still waiting,” she said.

How do you come up with list recommendations to target offers for dietary supplements and other health products?

“Sometimes it means having to go outside the box,” Molina said. It’s kind of hard to get new lists because not many companies will put these kind of files on the market.”

Age and gender are key selections when direct marketers use out-of-category postal lists to target health-related offers. Molina said Internet-sourced files typically don’t work for her brokerage clients in the health products market.

The Federal Trade Commission watches what’s being sold and mailers are always being scrutinized in this product category, which Molina noted, puts a chill on list rentals.

Some postal list owners won’t rent lists to anyone for this reason, while others are reluctant to release files for certain kinds of offers like sexual potency products.

“It can be an issue, but after a while a broker knows who to approach to get names,” said Molina

What’s your list industry pet peeve?

“When I’m calling a list manager asking for information, I need an answer right away, because I’m making list recommendations for a client. But they don’t get back to you right away,” she said.

Granted, it may only be an inquiry for a 5,000-name test order, but delays in getting information or approvals can eliminate a list from test consideration and the possibility of future continuation orders, Molina pointed out.

“They’ll never know if that 5,000-name test could have turned into continuation orders. And there are some clients who will want all the available names later,” Molina said.

“Someone who doesn’t get back to me for two days probably isn’t going to get the order. So everyone loses, the list owner loses, my client loses, the manager loses and the broker loses 20%,” she said.

Know someone you’d like to suggest for Meet the Broker? E-mail Jim Emerson at [email protected]