Meet the Broker: Jeanette Cassano
Today we meet Jeanette Cassano, senior vice president of list brokerage at Belardi/Ostroy in Corte Madera, CA. Cassano works with all kinds of nonprofit organizations and LPI Media, the largest publisher in the gay and lesbian market.
Cassano was first exposed to the power of list data as an intern on Capitol Hill working for two Ohio congressmen, keypunching data for constituent lists. She also spent some time working for a direct marketing agency before becoming a broker.
Cassano has been in the list business since 1983 when she joined Names in the News. She moved on the American List Counsel Inc. and then to Belardi/Ostroy in December 2007.
“I’ve always worked in brokerage for nonprofit groups. I can’t say that 100% of my work is fundraising, because I also work with LPI Media (publishers of the Advocate and Out magazines).”
Her other brokerage clients include such organizations as Americans for the Arts, National Organization for Women, Human Rights Campaign, League of Conservation Voters, NARAL Pro-Choice America and the Special Olympics.
She extends her activist bent to clients by encouraging them to honor consumers’ requests to opt off lists for privacy and to reduce mailing and paper waste. She’s a member of the Direct Marketing Association’s Committee on the Environment and Social Responsibility and wishes everyone would promote good list industry practices.
Cassano acknowledges that only some organizations do a good job at updating mailing lists and periodically providing notices giving individuals an opportunity to have their names removed from lists.
Her advocacy and work for nonprofits doesn’t stop with list brokerage. Cassano volunteers for an animal shelter and she helped clean beaches following the recent San Francisco Bay oil spill.
One political issue really hits home for Cassano. She and her partner took a stand for equal marriage rights along with nearly 4,000 other same-sex couples who were married at San Francisco City Hall in February 2004. The California Supreme Court is presently considering the constitutionality of same-sex marriages like hers.
How can brokers best help fundraising clients during an economic recession?
Accept that mailing volumes may decrease, but encourage nonprofits to stay in the mail to keep ahead of donor attrition and create future growth opportunities, advises Cassano.
“Some organizations will unfortunately stop mailing, which leads to income declines and a shrinking donor base,” she says.
Brokers can help by getting tougher with list price negotiations, specifically by getting better net name deals and waivers on selection charges. Strategic use of lists and better targeting with selects raises response rates.
How can brokers know when an organization takes good care of its lists, besides asking?
Ideally, no one should have to be dealing with change of address and Zip Code correction issues after a file has been run through a merge purge list processing.
“Some groups are terrific at updating lists and taking old names off lists. You can tell if you don’t get many change of addresses and you don’t have to do many Zip Code corrections,” says Cassano.
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