Today we meet Shannon Holleman, manager of list services at Huntsinger & Jeffer Inc., a direct marketing agency in Richmond, VA. Holleman oversees list brokerage and a few in-house list management accounts.
Holleman holds a certificate in direct marketing from the Interactive Marketing Institute at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Besides making list recommendations for direct mail fundraising campaigns, Holleman works with nonprofit organizations doing predictive modeling, data appending and list enhancements.
“I like all the research, the numbers and results and analysis of demographics and psychographics,” she says.
Her brokerage clients include the American Red Cross, Volunteers of America, Prevent Blindness America, National Association of Police Organizations and PCI-Media Impact, to name a few.
Holleman is married and has two daughters, ages 13 and 2, and a 12-year-old son. She keeps busy outside of work with home improvement projects, church and her children’s activities. She plays in a billiards league and her hobby is making stained glass.
How do you evaluate lists of donors before making recommendations?
“I want to know why someone on a list made a donation, what triggered their original donation,” says Holleman.
She’ll take into consideration, whenever possible, whether or not a premium was offered, if the contribution came from a member of an organization and the number of times contributions have been given.
“I like to look at the language of the ask string (history of donation requests) and the average gift,” she adds. “I’m wary of low contributions.”
What raises your skepticism about lists?
“Anonymous list owners and lists compiled from anonymous sources make me skeptical,” says Holleman.
A broker who makes an effort to learn how the names got on such lists probably won’t find out the source 75% of the time by her estimate. “Those lists go to the bottom of the pile,” she says.
Holleman exercises caution with list owners who split files into multiple segments, offering essentially the same files under different names managed by different companies. “There should be one data card per organization,” she says.
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