Today, we meet Mark Zilling, senior vice president at MeritDirect. He’s specialized in the business-to-business arena ever since coming to the firm from Direct Media in 2001.
His clients work in industries ranging from technology and ad specialties to publishing and seminars. Among them are them Microsoft, Northern Safety and Reed Exhibitions.
Zilling began his career at Direct Media in 1986, working on the consumer side with credit card marketers like Diners Club and Citibank.
“I think our entire industry is definitely in a state of transition. The old model of just doing research and finding the list source and making them available to our clients is just insufficient,” he says. “It’s the fundamental basis of our business but we must provide much more — bringing in additional segmentation and targeting of the audience and across multiple channels.”
What changes has he seen in list brokerage over the years?
“Because of the volume of purchasing occurring online it becomes much more difficult to capture responses and identify the sources that were driving them than it was back when basically all you had to deal with was orders by phone and mail,” Zilling says.
“Response rates seem to go down in direct mail but a lot of it is because we’re driving people toward the Web,” he continues. “Because people are going on the Web and not plugging in a key code [from a catalog or mail piece], information from direct mail programs is a lot harder to capture today than it was 15-20 years ago before the Internet was really a major buying channel.”
Zilling is “cautiously optimistic” about the economy in the second half of the year.
“I think our sense is that businesses that are tied to employment are probably going to continue to see some tough times in the next six months or so at least,” he says. “But what we are seeing is that businesses that are demand-based like construction are starting to see some bottoming out of the downturn.”
Zilling has three daughters and lives with his family in Southport, CT. He and his wife both compete in local triathlons and engage in other outdoor activities “as much as possible.”
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