Archive for September, 2008

DM News: Mail Crowd Rallies for Choice

Saturday, September 27th, 2008

Senior Editor Chantal Todé covered our press announcement this week with this article in DM News.  If you are a merchant still considering whether to activate your Catalog Choice account, this is a must read article.

If you are a consumer wondering if we are making progress within the industry, you will be pleased with the support that we have garnered from the most influential catalog merchants.  The article chronicles the improvements to the DMA’s mail preference service that have occurred over the past year as a result of the new standard that we have set.

If you want to learn more about the hosted service we will be offering, please contact me at chuck (at) catalogchoice.org.

Posted in Catalog Choice | 3 Comments »

American Catalog Mailers Association Endorses Catalog Choice

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

Today, the American Catalog Mailers Association (ACMA) published a press release endorsing Catalog Choice.  The endorsement is the results of months of research on mail preference services.  According to the release, the ACMA Board of Directors announced its:

“unanimous decision to recommend catalogers actively embrace consumer mail preferences and enter into a merchant licensing agreement with Catalog Choice, consistent with their own policies and business models”.

In the release, Hamilton Davison, Executive Director of the ACMA states:

Our conclusion is that Catalog Choice is sincere and focused on reducing unsolicited catalogs, waste that places a burden on catalogers and catalog customers alike,” said Hamilton Davison, executive director of ACMA. “Based on eleven months of work, the ACMA Board is broadcasting a public call for the catalog industry to actively execute consumer preferences.

…

“We committed early on in the process to dig through the rhetoric, assess all the major participants in mail preference area, and come to a recommendation on how to deal with the building proliferation of preference services. While it is not feasible for catalogers to continuously draw consumer preference requests from dozens of different services—each with their unique data architecture and different data format and integrity—it was clear to us that new methods deserved careful consideration,” commented John Seebeck of Crate and Barrel and co-chair of the ACMA task force on consumer preferences. “Our company, Crate and Barrel is today joining with other leading catalogers to formally expand our working relationship with Catalog Choice. We call on our industry colleagues to do likewise.

…

ACMA supports the Catalog Choice goal of eliminating unsolicited catalogs from American mailboxes. “Our members do not want to send catalogs to anyone that does not want them. It is wasteful of company funds, unnecessarily wasteful of resources and presents a hassle we do not want to impose on consumers,” said Jim Feinson, CEO of Gardeners Supply and a member of the ACMA Task Force. “The vast majority of catalog customers look forward to receiving catalogs through the mail. We respect and honor consumer preferences and seek feedback as to how, when and how frequently customers want to hear from us,” continued Feinson. “We have a variety of methods to do this already and are now adding a clearinghouse approach with demonstrated commitment to consumer and industry interests.”

Posted in Catalog Choice, Environment, Media Coverage, Merchants | 5 Comments »

One Million People and Industry Agree: Consumers Deserve a Choice

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

This morning we issued an important press release announcing our new merchant partnership agreement.  The agreement was crafted to benefit both consumers and businesses.  Our team worked with executives from Crate & Barrel, Williams-Sonoma, L.L. Bean, Orchard Brands and the American Catalog Mailers Association to develop the new agreement.  Hundreds of hours were invested in developing the partnership which provides the foundation for a productive vendor relationship between Catalog Choice and merchants.

What does this agreement mean for consumers and members of Catalog Choice?

It means that more and more merchants will be activating their accounts in the coming weeks and honoring your mail preference requests entered at Catalog Choice for years to come.  While some of you may still be receiving unwanted catalogs, the service will be much improved in 2009 because of this agreement.

What does this agreement mean for Merchants already participating in Catalog Choice?

The agreement solidifies our obligation to provide the Merchant with a service that provides secure access to the mail preference requests entered at our site.  It also means that more of your colleagues in the industry will be honoring our members’ requests.

What does this agreement mean for the merchants who have yet to activate their Catalog Choice account or have chosen to not participate in our service?

The agreement resolves all of the issues raised by the DMA about our intentions and business practices. It details our agreement to focus on providing high quality vendor services and to not engage in advocacy.  We hope that the agreement gives you all the information you need to make an informed decision about accepting the mail preference our members have recorded.  For those merchants who have decided not to participate, we hope that the agreement will give you reason to reconsider.

What does this agreement mean for Catalog Choice?

It means that we now have over 285 catalog titles (see them all on Bravo Merchants) who are actively working to honor our members’ mail preferences.  It means that we can focus our efforts on being the nation’s leading independent mail preference provider.  We can continue to enhance our service for our members – both consumers and merchants.  Best of all, it means that we have a great set of industry partners with whom we agree – Consumers Deserve a Choice.

Posted in Catalog Choice, Featured, Merchants | 10 Comments »

Respecting the Customer’s Choice Drives Sales

Friday, September 19th, 2008

Susan Bratton, co-founder of Personal Life Media, published an article praising merchants who honor mail preference requests from Catalog Choice.  Her article is titled – Big Gold Star for Crate & Barrel’s Direct Marketing Guru Today, CatalogChoice.org’s Opt Out Program WORKS.

From the sounds of it, Susan is going to head down to the nearest Crate & Barrel store to buy something just because Crate & Barrel followed up on her opt-out request entered at Catalog Choice with an email acknowledging that they will be honoring her request.

Susan’s post is a great case study for why we built the service and the enhanced customer loyalty that we hoped would result from companies honoring consumers choices to reduce the amount of mail they receive at home.

With the holiday shopping right around the corner, I wonder how many people will start your holiday shopping by looking at our Bravo Merchants page.

By the way, we will be making it easier to find the merchants you are looking for by adding the ability to search through Bravo Merchants by product category.  Look for this enhancement in a couple of weeks.

Posted in Customers, Featured, Merchants | 5 Comments »

One milestone down, many more to go

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

Today we signed up the one millionth member at Catalog Choice.  When we developed our projections a year ago, we thought it would take 2 years to hit this milestone.  We’ve reached it in 11 months.  I guess the demand for a free and easy to use mail preference service is greater than we thought.

Thanks to everyone who has told their friend about our service.  More and more merchants are coming on board as our membership grows.  That means that more and more of your opt-out requests are getting honored.  As we approach our 1 year anniversary, we are working hard on some great new updates to the service.  Stay tuned …. and until then, thanks to everyone of our members!

Posted in Catalog Choice, Featured | 27 Comments »

Is your friend the millionth member?

Friday, September 5th, 2008

We are getting very close to the magical million member milestone.  Yvonne, we don’t have any big celebrations planned at the moment. We are busy working on a new and improved version of Catalog Choice and we don’t have time to take our eye off the ball right now.  Stay tuned for Catalog Choice 2.0 in the coming weeks.

We do plan on celebrating the millionth member with a guest appearance on the blog, if that person so chooses.  We don’t have any fancy systems to identify the millionth member as they click the sign up button.  Once we see the real-time member counter always present on the home page ring up the 7th digit, we will figure out who the lucky member is.

What continues to inspire us is how fast we reached a million members.  But it is not a mystery – it is due to lots of hard work by everyone involved.

  1. It is our easy to use solution designed by our killer development team.
  2. It is a result of hard work by our partner organizations, NWF, NRDC and Ecology Center, who have help spread the word to the media.
  3. It is a thanks to so many of our members who used our Invite a Friend feature to invite over 435,000 friends.
  4. It is thanks to our dedicated readers of the blog who jump into the comment section to answer questions and clarify the facts about the confusing process of honoring mail preference requests.
  5. It is the power of social media and citizen bloggers that has helped spread the word to so many Americans and driven our natural search result to the #2 spot on Google’s list.
  6. It is because hundreds of merchants have been open to accepting our mail preference requests in a secure and automated fashion. I know the “Bravo Merchants” will appreciate your support this holiday season.
  7. Most of all, it is because no one wants to waste time, money or natural resources; and that is what Catalog Choice aims to accomplish for consumers, merchants and the environment.

We know we have hard work ahead of us to get more merchants to honor the requests entered through Catalog Choice.  Catalog Choice is far from perfect.

I know you wonder every time you receive a catalog in the mail that you have already opted-out of on our site – is it worth the effort?  The answer is yes – it is worth the effort – because it is the easier for everyone to use a service like ours than pick up the phone and call customer service.  So when you pick up that unwanted catalog, drop it in the recycling bin, rest assured that we will not stop working on behalf of every member, every merchant and every sponsor to make our mail preference service the best in the nation.

Posted in Catalog Choice, Featured | 9 Comments »

The Secret Life of Paper

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008

INFORM’s Secret Life Series is a collection of videos that highlight the environmental impacts of everyday products we all use.  This one on the secret life of paper is well done and presents clear facts about paper use in the United States and across the world.  Since over 15% of the members at Catalog Choice indicate that they would rather shop online than receive a catalog, I thought it was relevant to share the benefits of online shopping and going paperless.

Posted in Environment, Recycling, Reducing | No Comments »