Meet the Broker: Scott Caufield

Today we meet Scott Caufield, an account executive at AllMedia Inc. in Plano, TX. Caufield is enthusiastic about the shift he sees in brokerage from postal to e-mail lists.

“E-mail is the next frontier in the list industry. It’s exciting because there is so much to explore,” says Caufield. “It’s the newest and hottest area of marketing.”

Caufield began his list brokerage career when he joined AllMedia in Feb. 2000. Although he considers himself more of an e-mail list broker, Caufield also makes recommendations for consumer and business-to-business postal files.

His clients include the Massachusetts Medical Society, Harvard Business Review, the American Medical Association and CSC Publishing.

“I’ve been seeing the postal and e-mail list ratio shift gradually. I probably did 40% of business with e-mail lists in 2004 and 60% with postal lists, he says. Now it’s 60% e-mail and 40% postal.”

His enthusiasm about growth in the e-mail list market is tempered only by his concerns about online scam artists and dubious brokers. Typically the bad players are not the kind of companies that are members of trade groups, which he says is an indicator to steer clear of them.

“There are people though who don’t do due diligence for clients and of course there are all those pharmaceutical offers and online scams,” he says. “Clearly there are people getting away with things. Anyone with a junk mailbox can tell you this.

“If given the opportunity, there are brokers who would look the other way. I have to be vague about this and I don’t want to throw mud at anyone, but you know what I mean,” Caufield adds.

Home is where Caulfield likes to get his hands dirty. He’s an avid gardener. He and his wife have a 3-month-old son. “I spend my weekends changing diapers and working in the garden,” he says.

He enjoys taking annual trips to the Yucatan when he’s not pursuing his dream to be a contestant on “Jeopardy.”

“I’ve tried the online test a few times, but I missed one recently on the day my son was born,” he says.

How do you practice due diligence?

“The two things I look for most in a company are transparency and professionalism,” says Caufield.

By transparency, he means list source disclosure. It’s important to know all the aspects of the data collection process, he says.

As for professionalism, Caufield is concerned about the basics, such as the accuracy of counts and whether or not a company returns phone calls.

It’s important to thoroughly read all contracts. Brokers who fail to pay attention to the fine print risk receiving a list without contact names or some other unpleasant surprise, he adds.

As a matter of routine, he questions e-mail lists with large counts, since lists owners who follow proper opt-in list regulations typically have much smaller quantities compared to postal lists.

One red flag he spotted was a count for an ethnic selection that was significantly greater than the entire population of that particular group, according to census data. Another time someone offered him of a list of CEOs—one bank listed supposedly had 40 CEOs.

How do you judge the quality of an e-mail list?

The source is the best indicator of list quality, he says.

“Some of the best lists I work with come from publications, seminar companies and (specific) Web sites, and in that order,” says Caufield.

A good indicator is a list owner who limits the frequency of e-mail list use. Caufield says he doesn’t particularly like lists with data derived from Web site networks.

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