Meet the Broker: Larry Roth

Today we meet Larry Roth, vice president of list brokerage at MetaResponse Group Inc. Roth learned the list business at Worldata starting in 1990, where he worked with clients in the high tech industry for nearly 10 years. He left during the dotcom boom to become co-founder of MetaResponse, based in Deerfield Beach, FL.

“I still do some brokerage in the high tech market but not exclusively anymore. I do a little of everything now, but primarily I work with publishers of investment newsletters,” said Roth.

Likewise, over the years Roth has shifted from working mainly with agencies to working mostly with marketers. “One of the clients that I work with through an agency is HP,” he said.

He personally oversees brokerage accounts with Motley Fool, StreetAuthority, The Ladders, Cleveland Clinic and the Things Remembered catalog. “I actively make list recommendations, I’m pretty hands-on with clients but I have help from assistants.”

Aside from negotiating list deals, Roth plays golf and spends time gardening. He’s married and has three daughters, ages 10, 4 and 1. “I like playing with my kids, going to parks, going swimming and to the movies.”

His other pastimes include attending baseball and football games, and collecting sports memorabilia. “I have signed baseballs from Mickey Mantle and Joe Dimiaggio.”

What’s important to know about e-mail lists?

“The best e-mail lists come from publishers of magazines and newsletters, said Roth. “Probably 90 to 95% of the lists that I recommend come from publishers.”

More business-to-business e-mail lists are available and typically perform better than consumer e-mail lists. B-to-B e-mail lists generally have better deliverability track records, which in turn leads to higher open rates and higher response rates.

Roth said he’s less enthusiastic about e-mail lists assembled from Internet co-registration and Web site surveys, because such data tends to be less relevant, compared to the more qualified data sourced from publishers.

Frequent postal lists users not familiar with e-mail list practices may be surprised to learn they cannot select active names from e-mail lists. Most e-mail lists are basic house files with trials, actives and everything all compiled together.

“E-mail lists have not evolved as much as postal lists. Few if any (e-mail list owners) sell active names separately,” said Roth. “I think that’s why Internet marketers are turning to postal lists.”

Finally, Can Spam e-mail list regulation is only a burden for legitimate e-mail marketers, because so much e-mail hitting e-mail boxes comes from spammers who don’t adhere to Can Spam guidelines. “If we were all following the guidelines everything would be fine,” Roth said.

How do postal and e-mail list practices differ?

Unlike postal lists, e-mail lists are rarely released through third-party service bureaus, which can be a cause for anxiety for brokers dealing with new and unfamiliar list owners.

“Some e-mail lists go through service bureaus for (data) suppression and merge purge, but even then the list owner wants to send out the e-mail. List owners say it’s their privacy policy not to release lists to anyone else,” Roth said.

Extra caution is needed when renting e-mail lists in the absence of an independent verification system to ensure that an e-mail file was used as intended, he advised.

Mailers using postal lists have records from printers and postage receipts, but there’s nothing comparable for monitoring e-mail list use. “Now I’m not accusing anyone but I want to know if they’re reputable and how’s their relationship with their ISP