Meet the Broker: Mark Lewis

Today we meet Mark Lewis, president of Lewis Direct, a Boulder, CO company he’s owned and operated since 1993.

Before that, he spent 10 years at Career Track Seminars, which was later acquired by Fred Pryor Seminars.

Why the switch into the list brokerage business?

“I think I’ve always been attracted to lists and postage and letters and just the whole more personal relationship of direct mail,” he says.

But it was the experience at Career Track that helped define Lewis Direct’s brokerage emphasis.

“Our concentration is the seminar training conference and university sectors so we still focus on every aspect of the seminar, whether it’s universities or an expo company,” he says.

On top of that, Lewis Direct does quite a bit of international list brokering, the landscape of which has changed in the past few years.

“I think in the old days there were not as many American-based lists overseas,” he says. “Now so many lists are integrated that they’ve got U.S., Canadian and overseas names.”

Another change internationally is that e-mail has become much more accepted.

“Delivering [seminar] brochures was always an issue years ago but with people choosing e-mail lists that’s not as big a problem,” he says.

He notes that the opt-in nature of e-mail lists has helped to somewhat sidestep potential privacy-invasion problems in those other countries.

Back here at home, many changes in the list business have affected how business is done.

“When I started what I really loved were the public databases that had 100 or more lists in them,” he says. “So there was a plethora of public databases, which there hardly is today.”

Those public files were good for seminar marketers, he notes.

Of course the slumping economy is still taking a toll on business.

“Last year was a tough year for us and the industry. I can’t say I’m seeing a silver lining for 2010,” he says “I’m just hoping that things improve, that budgets increase and that companies just feel empowered that they do need to do something,” he says. “Marketing is just such a key part of a company’s life.”

At home in Superior, CO near Boulder, Lewis hangs out with his wife, high school age son and three cats, and follows college basketball and football.