Web-Based Startup Attempts to Streamline List Rental Business

One-stop process eliminates broker/manager stage.

By Chandra Johnson-Greene
Monday, November 9, 2009

Seattle-based online marketing company Marketfish, Inc. has spent the last year developing a platform targeting direct marketers looking for a quicker way to rent lists. It entered its closed beta phase (for marketing agencies and enterprises) this month and is currently in talks with various companies to further populate its site with lists for rent.

Marketfish’s online tool allows marketers to search for U.S.-based b-to-c and b-to-b lists, apply selects, rent those lists and add them to their campaign in real-time. The company works directly with the list owners (on a exclusive or non-exclusive basis) to populate the system with permission-based lists. Each list has an “audit trail,” that shows the renter how the list has performed in previous campaigns. The entire process is done without a traditional list broker or manager.

If a marketer rents multiple lists at a time, Marketfish will de-dupe those lists for free. Users can also confidentially load their own lists into the system and have them de-duped against the lists they rent.

“Marketfish is aiming to be the Google AdWords for list marketing,” founder and CEO David Scott, told AD. “This company was started by a group of marketers who were frustrated by a list-renting process that was slow, manual, not very measurable and overall inefficient. So we used technology to create the same level of speed and efficiency that Google has and applied it to the list rental industry.”

Members of the list rental industry have criticized Marketfish and other similar start-ups for attempting to “cut out the middleman,” referring to list brokers and managers that come with an extensive knowledge of the lists they work with beyond just metrics. They’re also able to assist their clients with circulation planning, market research and competitive planning.

Matt Bramble, circulation manager, Tennis Magazine, told AD that his company was skeptical when Marketfish approached them one month ago. “We weren’t sold on the idea because we’re very protective of our email lists,” he said. “But the fact that they give you full control over the campaigns that use your names made the difference.”

When marketers register on Marketfish to rent lists, they are prompted to share campaign test data with the company, which then shares it with list owners. The owners can then decide whether they want their lists to be a part of that marketer’s campaign or not. Owners can also control how often their names can be rented out to clients.

“So if a pharmaceutical company, for example, wants to rent our names, which is questionable because we’re a tennis magazine, we can decline,” Bramble said. “And we also have our fatigue rate set to where our names can only be part of a campaign once every three weeks.”

Tennis, which has decided to test its email names with Marketfish, but will keep its postal names at a traditional list management company, is still in the process of getting its data into the system, but has high hopes. “We’re going to try it out for a few months and see how it goes,” Bramble said. “We chose to do it because times are tough, and anytime you’re presented with a new revenue stream, you have to look at it.”