Meet the Broker: Nancy Reiser

Today we meet Nancy Reiser, vice president at the Millard Group Inc. Before joining Millard a little over five years ago, she had a long career in cataloging, including eight and a half years at Brylane (now Redcats) where she helped launch the company’s kitchen catalog and its entry into online and e-mail marketing.

Having worked earlier at Tweeds, Hanover and J. Crew, she decided to jump to the list brokerage side to offer a little catalog know-how.

“I thought I would challenge myself to move to ‘the other side’ and lend my expertise to working with more than just one catalog,” she says.

Reiser brokers lists for gift and home catalogs as well as apparel and museum catalogs.

One or the biggest challenges she sees right now is keeping her clients in the mail.

“We’re definitely looking to help our clients keep their costs down but continue to let their files grow,” she says. “There are many clients saying they’re not going to prospect as much but in the long term it’s going to hurt them because their files aren’t growing. So we’re looking to keep their costs down and think outside the box.”

Some of these practices include mailing postcards in between catalog drops and making greater use of e-mail. “We’re trying to use other strategies instead of just saying ‘let’s mail a list and see what’s out there,'” she says.

Of course, the recession isn’t helping matters with many clients cutting back on their mailings.

Reiser says she counsels them to mail smarter and more efficiently “so when we do get out there we make sure it’s very cost effective and smart so that we can continue to mail and grow the business. I think that five or six years ago if you asked about mailing a postcard or mini-catalog [clients] would say no. Now they’re looking to do that.”

In her time in list brokerage Reiser has seen many changes, one of the largest being the growing acceptance of online marketing, noting that as recently as five years ago some clients were reluctant to test e-mail.

“I remember doing an Abacus model with an e-mail list and it was awful,” Reiser recalls. “But now that people are more comfortable online there’s more out there so people are going back to e-mail lists more.

Just the same, Reiser’s cautiously optimistic that the hard economic times might ease as soon as this fall.

“I believe that the holiday season should we should see a lift,” she says. “Last year’s holiday season, there was a lot of turmoil. You had the October recession when the market was down, you had the election. I think that this season we should start seeing an improvement.”

To back this up, she points to what her clients are doing.

“I have seen spring and summer decreases in circulation but I do not see that occurring for this fall holiday season,” she says.

When not brokering lists, Reiser lives with her husband; her 12 and 13-year-old sons; two St. Bernard and one Newfoundland dogs in her home in Bellmore, NY outside New York City.

During the summer, she watches her kids play baseball and basketball and tries to take in a few concerts at nearby Jones Beach.