The odds are that Lyle Sammons not only has your name on a little list, he`s got it on several little lists. Some of the lists are actually not so little, and not everyone makes every list, but you`re probably there somewhere.
Of course, you`re not likely to be on the list labeled ”Arabs, in Their Native Lands, Who Gamble and Invest.” Just 986 names on that one, whereas there are 5,000 names on the list of ”Jewish Philanthropists and Investors.” ”Doctors Who Are Known To Have Gambled” is the name of one of those lists that might make you stop and wonder if your bodily concerns are in the hands of one of the 68,000 who made this list.
Sammons and his staff of three work out of the small offices of First National List Services Inc. on the Northwest Side. It is Sammons` company, which, at 30 years old, is one of the oldest list brokers in the country, he says.
The computer age has made the list brokers the kings of direct mail. There are thousands of lists in the country, and list brokers such as Sammons essentially act as detectives, finding the lists that will fill the needs of the buyer and then brokering between supplier and customer.
For example, a manufacturer of scalpels looking for customers would contact a list broker who, in turn, would contact surgical societies to see if the organizations had member lists for sale. The broker would then arrange for the rental of the list. The rental fee would go to the surgeons` organization, and the scalpel maker would get his list of potential customers.
Sammons does not actually own any lists. Lists of names (yours, your Aunt Nellie`s, your teenage son`s) belong to the compiler. When was the last time you bought batteries in an electronics store? Why do you suppose the sales clerk took the time-his and yours-to ask your name, address, ZIP code for the sales slip on your $4 cash purchase? He captured your name and stats for a list.
Magazines frequently ask readers to join them in a survey so they ”can better serve their readership.” In fact, they better serve their advertisers, who can get demographics on the kind of people who read their magazines.
You can get lists as small as all the names in a ZIP code area. The big compilers, Sammons says, are R.L. Polk, R.R. Donnelley (the phone book people) and Metro Mail, a subsidiary of Donnelley. ”Buying a list” means you are renting it. The list owner will spew out a bunch of names and addresses on labels for you-as many thousands as you want.
The cost of the names is figured per thousand and varies according to the quality of the names on the list. Lists can be ”platinum”-a class of names separated out by how much money the individuals make, what kind of lifestyle they pursue, what kind of clothes they buy or cars they drive. (The TV show
”Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” is like someone`s idea of a mailing list translated to the small screen.)
Some lists are as low as $40 per thousand, although a minimum order is usually $200, Sammons says.
What`s to prevent a list buyer from ripping off the list owner by simply copying down all the names he rented and using them over and over again?
Sammons, who`s built like a fireplug and has a voice like a foghorn, smiles and shrugs. ”Lists get old fast,” he says. ”And another thing,” he adds, revealing one of the secrets of a secretive industry, ”every list you rent is salted with decoys, one or two per thousand, just to check on thievery.” In other words, every list has ringers thrown in-phony names and addresses that will reveal a list thief when he sends materials to the phony addressee.
Lists can be as ordinary as a neighborhood. ”You`re a small restaurant owner and you want everyone within three miles of you to come over some night and try a special. So you get a partial ZIP code list and send out a mailing,” Sammons says.
Some list compilers have stringent rules about use of their names. Sammons says American Express will give its lists only to firms that will take American Express cards in charge payments. It has the clout to get away with it.
Some of the old list sellers are out of business now. ”Churches. They don`t do lists anymore,” Sammons says, shaking his head. I didn`t know they ever did. All those Sundays contributing my coins in an envelope might have had something to do with getting on a list for something like a subscription to The New World (now Chicago Catholic).
You don`t know whom to trust with your name.
Some 35 states, including Illinois, sell driver`s license lists to customers, but the lists are generally garbage, Sammons says, because they won`t include such information as height or weight or whether the driver wears glasses.
Height and weight lists would be useful to buyers in the clothing business or in the marketing of diet formulas. Eyeglass makers would love a list of people who wear glasses.
Sammons explains his business with quiet enthusiasm. ”It`s all just research, pure research. There are thousands of list compilers out there, and you have to go from one to the other and find the names that will be most useful to the customer who comes to you seeking a list,” he says.
Sammons is one of about 25 such brokers in Chicago and about 400 in the country. He got into the business as a fundraiser for the Jerry Lewis Telethon for Muscular Dystrophy.
Raised in Alma, Mich., he went to Michigan State University on a GI Bill scholarship earned during four years in the Navy. He recalls his quiet 15 minutes of fame came in the late 1960s. He was in New York, working as a fundraiser for the Easter Seals Society, when he decided to take in The Tonight Show.
In those days, Johnny Carson would go into the audience to find people who could ”Stump the Band” with names of songs the band didn`t know. Sammons stumped them with the opening words of ”Saloon”, a song that begins, ”I`ve been lookin` through the dictionary.”
Johnny Carson moved to California shortly after this. Lyle Sammons became a list broker.
Because of the nature of his business, he is full of trivia: Eye doctors like lists of people 40 and older, while foot doctors generally want people 55 and up.
Why?
The eyes go first, Sammons explains.
You want gamblers? Sammons can get you 92,000 of them. Or 48,000 millionaires who take risks or 42,000 investors in cattle or new movies.
”You`d be surprised how many calls we get every week from people who want to be on all our lists,” he says. ”We turn them down because it doesn`t work like that. Demographics is the key to most lists. Just because you`re lonely and you`d like to get junk mail, we can`t put your name on any old list.”
Of course, some people don`t want their names on a list. They can call the Direct Mail and Marketing Association in New York (212-768-7277), which puts such names and addresses on computer tapes that are made available, at nominal expense, to all the people in the country who compile lists. The compilers, in theory, interface the tapes with their lists and remove the names of persons who want off.
Sammons provides this information and then shrugs. ”Personally, I don`t know what good it does. Your name goes on a list somewhere every day. Somewhere, somehow. The state has your name, credit rating companies like TRW have your name, your demographics are being gone over by lots of people all the time.”
This demographic probing of the American character for profit is frowned upon in other countries. ”All you can get in Canada are names and
addresses,” Sammons grumps. The direct mail business in other countries, in fact, is not nearly what it is in the United States, and costs of lists, such as they are, often run three times what an American list can cost.
However, Sammons has compiled one list of 127,000 foreign investors who invest in the U.S. This is further refined to 2,640 names of Arab investors in U.S. stocks, bonds, commodities or land.
Lists are positive in the sense that the best people make them. You can talk to Sammons or some other broker about a list of 121,000 millionaires or 9,000 multimillionaires. It is deeply satisfying to know that even
millionaires get mail from people they don`t know and don`t especially want to know.
Currently, Sammons` quest has been to find a good list of left-handers. There used to be such a list, he says, but it`s not good anymore. Lists go bad as they get old, and they get old fast. That`s one reason compiling lists is a task that changes its face every day.
Other factors affecting his business are the restlessness and their ever- changing financial status of Americans. Some 15 percent move every year, invalidating entries on whatever lists those people were on. And companies that are also credit reporting services, such as TRW, have stopped sending out lists of deadbeats because of privacy suits against them, Sammons says.
Every three months, Skokie-based Standard Rate and Data Services sends out a two-inch-thick catalogue containing ads and offerings from the thousands of list compilers in the country, as well as ads from list brokers and from list managers who are often employed by large list compilers to sell the lists to customers through brokers. It is a complex, hands-on kind of business, Sammons says, and it depends on instinct, intuition and even good old detective work.
”You have to get a feel for what the client wants and whom he wants to reach, which means that you have to understand what the client wants to sell,” he says. And what does all this research yield? A return of 1 percent or 2 percent of a mailing is considered good.
Meanwhile, our mail boxes bulge with more and more mail from more and more firms. But while reaching individuals is a big part of list-making and list-brokering, so is reaching specific industries and specific managers. At the latest count, Sammons says, there were a total of 590,000 manufacturing firms in the United States that spend more than $1 trillion a year on materials, equipment and services. So while every doctor who gambles is important to someone, so are the 348 firms that make dog and cat food.
Despite the worldwide reach of his brokerage, Lyle Sammons` office on the Northwest Side is small, his three staffers utilizing computers and knowledge of previous lists to create new lists.
Now you know the human face of the people you`re supposed to hate for putting you on the list you don`t want to be on.
