Meet the Broker: Tammy Penton

Today we meet Tammy Penton, senior account executive at Lake Group Media Inc. Penton deals primarily with business-to-business lists. She also helps devise and execute mailing strategies for consumer campaigns.

Penton’s career in the list business spans 14 years. She started at Lake Group as a word processor and received several job promotions over the years. “I got into this business through a job placement agency,” she said.

Most of her brokerage work currently involves seminar and investment offers. Penton’s client roster includes Dale Carnegie Training, Alexander Hamilton Institute, Nationals Inc., ESPN Magazine and Barclays, to name a few.

She also assists churches nationwide with direct mail membership campaigns targeting African-Americans. One of her recent inquiries for brokerage services came from a church in Hawaii.

“I put together lists to bring new members to start-up churches across the country,” said Penton. “I work with Pentecostal, Methodist and some Baptist churches.”

Penton’s interest in churches extends beyond list brokerage. She’s working to obtain a master’s degree at a seminary school. She also volunteers for her own church. “I do advertising and public relations work for the women’s department.”

She’s married and has two 15-year-olds, a boy and girl, besides two other adult children. She devotes most of her free time to family and church activities, and for a bit of escapism, enjoys watching the TV show “24.”

What advice do you have for new list brokers entering the business?

“It’s important to find ways to grow with your clients’ business, Penton said.

Brokers who focus mostly on selecting lists and dabble in merge-purge and response analysis get left behind competitors, she added.

Most new business comes from mid and small size companies, noted Penton. Larger companies tend to cut back on mailings, while smaller companies tend to be more circulation growth oriented, she said.

It’s more challenging to work with bigger companies, because it seems like they’ve already tried everything, she said, but there are opportunities to help them with list modeling and more specialized services to find new names.

“The big guys are more challenging to get as clients, but they have the money,” said Penton. “It’s important to have both (big and small clients) in your book of business.”

What’s new or changing with respect to African-American lists?

Historically, that market has been limited to compiled lists. Today, better self-reported and response lists are available for targeting African-Americans compared to a few years ago, Penton said.

This market has been expanding, as result of growth in businesses owned by African-Americans and companies offering products specifically targeting African-Americans, and new Internet data sources, she said.

Most lists of African-Americans on the market are postal files, but Penton said she is optimistic that more e-mail lists will become available. Companies may follow the lead of Essence and Black Enterprise magazines, which recently began offering e-mail addresses for reaching African-Americans.

Data overlaid on general market lists for identifying African-Americans typically works best when an affinity for a product has been identified as well, she said.

“Overlays work okay, but not usually as good as self-reported data,” added Penton. If the basis of the file doesn’t have a product affinity, well, I just don’t know.”

Know someone you’d like to suggest for Meet the Broker? E-mail Jim Emerson at [email protected].