Today, we meet Gwen Coryell, director of list management at Kroll Direct Marketing. She keeps her hand in the brokerage side of the business, where she started nearly 25 years ago at American List Counsel. Like everybody in the business now, she sees a fixed number of brokers doing everything they can to chase down a dwindling number of mailers.
“I think the thing that’s interesting now is how many list owners are willing to make more aggressive deals than they would at any time before,” she says, pointing to such things as discounts and net name arrangements as examples.
“There was a time a few years ago when you would ask a list manager for a discount and they’d basically come back and say ‘the price of the list is the price of the list,’ she notes. “Whereas now, everybody’s getting a little more aggressive with the discounts they’re offering. There are fewer mailers out there and these list owners realize they’re going to have to entice mailers to use their lists by lowering their rates.”
In addition to running Kroll’s management operation, Coryell handles list brokerage for several business-to-business publications and trade shows, a position she says enables her to have a fairly holistic view of what’s going on.
Coryell has worked her way up in the business, starting as a receptionist at ALC in the mid-1980s, working there with Lee Kroll [later the founder/CEO of Kroll Direct Marketing] , moving up to his assistant in brokerage there, before joining him in 1989 when he struck out n his own.
“When he left and started his own company, I was actually on maternity leave with my daughter
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