Meet the Broker: Sharon Traina

Today we meet Sharon Traina, vice president at Conrad Direct Inc. and a hands-on list broker. Her mother was a marketing director and worked with lists, which Traina says influenced her choice of career.

“I’m probably one of the few people in this industry who didn’t fall into this business,” says Traina. “I wanted to be a list broker. I’ve always found it fascinating.”

She worked full time at Mail Marketing Inc., while attending college part-time. Later she joined Conrad, where she’s been now for 16 years.

“I definitely have a niche. I work primarily in the alternative health market,” says Traina.

Brokerage clients that she works with include Healthy Directions, Natur-Med, Aloes International, Swanson Health Products, and Doubleday Book Club.

Traina enjoys reading for personal relaxation. “It’s a good thing I work with Doubleday because I go through so many books. I’m an avid reader. I’ll read anything.” She says one her all time favorite books is “The Da Vinci Code.”

She and her husband collect wine and occasionally attend wine tastings.

The couple has four children, 12, 11, and two nine-year-olds. Most of their free time is spent attending the childrens’ sporting events. “We have a dog and a picket fence. We’re the Brady Bunch,” she says.

Do you do much brokerage work with cooperative databases?

“I’ve gone from not using any co-op database names to actively ordering names from them,” says Traina.

Cooperative databases have become more broker-friendly, meaning that brokers can get paid commissions on orders. As the number of co-op databases has expanded, increased competition has opened the market for brokers.

It’s no longer the case that mailers only deal directly with cooperative database owners and vice versa. “The wall is coming down,” Traina says.

When there were fewer cooperative databases on the market nobody wanted to pay commissions to brokers. However, through working with mailers “interested brokers” can establish relationships with cooperative database managers. “Now I don’t have to charge my client because I’m getting my actual commission from the vendor,” she adds.

What changes have you seen in the alternative health market?

“Alternative health is almost becoming mainstream,” says Traina. “The universe of lists available for targeting alternative health offers has been expanding over the last 10 years, but so has the competition for names.”

It used to be a challenge to find a postal list for targeting consumers interested in alternative health. Now it’s more challenging to choose lists, based on specific data sources, she says.

Alternative health has become much more a multi-channel market with customer lists being generated from TV, mail and various means via the Internet.

Brokers want to know what percent of names on lists are derived from specific sources. It’s difficult to get this information and it would be valuable to have available on data cards, Traina says.

Often a data card will indicate the source as direct response or Internet, but that doesn’t disclose the actual source media.

It’s important to know whether a customer has placed a Web order in response to a catalog received in the mail, search engine inquiry, e-mail or a banner ad on a Web page, Traina points out. Yet, data cards don’t breakdown Internet-sourced response into specific categories.

Likewise, more offline response information would be valuable for brokers too, such as whether insert media response comes from a package insert, blow-in, card pack or statement stuffer—but that’s not normally found on most data cards either.

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