Today we meet Tom Chillot, senior vice president at TMA List Brokerage and Management. Chillot holds an MBA from Pennsylvania State University and has been in the list business for seven years.
He joined TMA after working various sales jobs, and for a dot-com firm where he was responsible for purchasing compiled lists from TMA. Following the dot-com crash, that business relationship landed him a job at TMA.
Chillot now works collaboratively with a team of TMA account executives to develop list recommendations for consumer and business-to-business campaigns. “List brokerage is the best job I’ve ever had,” he said.
Most of this brokerage work comes through agencies for such clients as Hewlett-Packard, Liberty Mutual Group and KitchenAid U.S.A. He also works directly with health services provider Lifeline Screening of America.
Chillot is presently reviewing lists to target offers for credit cards, software, wireless phone service, auto insurance, extended warranties and pharmaceuticals to consumers.
Chillot’s career in the list business has been more fulfilling than sales, he said, because brokerage work is more diverse and challenging compared to selling products for only one company. “Agencies I work with have clients in such a wide range of industries.”
Chillot unwinds from work and keeps fit by jogging and working out at the gym. Sometimes he plays golf. On weekends he spends time with his daughter 6, and son, 3.
He enjoys attending any kind of sports event. Miami and Las Vegas are his favorite travel destinations. “Las Vegas is my vice,” he said.
How do you like working with public databases?
“I’d rather work with smaller lists that net out more names, than large universes with a smaller percentage of unique names, said Chillot. It’s challenging to find enough data without getting crushed in the merge purge process.”
Public databases with names from various anonymous list owners typically yield a lower percentage of unique names compared to smaller individual lists, he explained. That is, of course, assuming the same names aren’t widely available from data resellers.
Although mailers only pay for the names they use, other charges for running lists through the merge purge process can significantly drive up the cost of finding unique names.
When names from one list are accessible from multiple public databases and resellers, it reaches a point of diminishing return for the mailer when everyone is renting from the same source, he added.
Chillot recommends all brokers inform list managers about the lists already being used and request that names from those same list sources to be omitted when data is ordered from public databases.
“Omitting files. Now that’s progress,” he said.
What do you think will be the next big thing in the list business?
“This industry is not all that innovative. There’s a lot of recycling and repackaging of ideas, but some public databases are offering what I think is new idea
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