Catalog Choice - You decide what gets in.

To see the current member count and number of catalog opt-out requests, log into your account.  The numbers are growing rapidly.  We were pleased to see the counts slow on Thanksgiving as we all took a break from the daily rush.  But thanks to a nice piece on All Things Considered by Melissa Block, an excellent editorial in the Chicago Tribune and the continued support from the Catalog Choice members, over 28,000 members signed up between Friday and Monday.

You might have noticed that the site was down for a couple hours today. We apologize for the inconvenience. Here is what happened. We made some improvements to the site last night. One of those was to put the real time count of members and catalog opt-outs on one of the pages that can be viewed by guests (those of you who have not signed up yet). After some investigation, we discovered that this was causing the site to run slowly. We are busy fixing the issue, but in the meantime, we temporarily disabled this feature.

We have already heard from many Catalog Choice members that they miss the real time counter. I guess it is kind of like the National Debt counter, but one that we all make run the right way:

Check back soon. The Catalog Choice clock will be there for everyone to enjoy soon. In the meantime, keep on making those choices because the clock is still running.

When we were deciding who to host our application with we looked at several vendors. In the end, we decided to put our faith in Engine Yard to make sure that our service would run smoothly and could respond to big spikes in user traffic. Now that we are 40 days into our service, we know we made the right call.  We have put the EY team to the test with three showings on the front page of Yahoo.com, numerous high profile newspaper articles and last Friday’s Bill Moyer’s Journal interview. It pays to have good partners in all aspects of your business. Our hosting partner is one of the best.

When I go to the mailbox to gather the daily mail and bring it into the kitchen and plop it down, it feels like I have that familiar mailroom job. Here is how we manage the daily mail onslaught in our home.

First, I situate myself directly above the mixed paper recycling bin.  The catalogs that we like go in the browse later pile.  The ones we are tired of getting, we rip off the back cover stick it with the bills and recycle the rest of the catalog.  The junk mail disguised as personal letters get shredded and recycled.  The bills go where bills go – into the To Do pile.  The donation solicitations go into the bill stack if they are on our donation list and into the recycling if it is not.  When it is time to pay the bills, we go to two online sites – our bank’s online bill pay site and Catalogchoice.org to opt-out of catalogs.

On on the rare occasion,  we get a personal letter – we read and savor it.  In our family, we can always count on Aunt Georgia to send a personal card at birthday time.

So, how do you do manage all that unsolicited mail?

A crystal clear video about Catalog Choice, how to use the site and the other options in the market can be seen here:

Matt from Makalumedia, our design and development partner at Catalog Choice sent the team a note today that is worthy of sharing with everyone. Matt noted:

Watching the 38,000 participants run the New York Marathon today, it occurred to me that I was looking at a visualization of the size of one-third of the Catalog Choice user community!

Here is a picture to help the visualization:

Catalog Choice for Merchants went live this weekend. If you have not received your merchant sign up code, email us at merchantservice@catalogchoice.org and we will get you all signed up. The service is free and easy to use. Click here to read how it works.

With a Merchant Account, you will receive the list of customer opt-out requests transmitted over a secure connection and in the form of a CSV or XML file. You will also have your company name shown as a hyperlink in every consumers My Choices view who opted-out of your paper catalog. The hyperlink will facilitate online shopping with your company.

What are you waiting for? Hurry on over to Catalog Choice to make the process of respecting your customers choices about the mail they receive from you as easy as possible.