American Catalog Mailers Association Endorses Catalog Choice
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.
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“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.
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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.”