This week we introduced a major enhancement to the Catalog Choice service that we refer to as Mail Preference Activity messages. When you log into your account, you may see a list of messages on your dashboard. Each message corresponds to activity related to your mail preference request and the status labels that we assign to each request. Many of the messages are direct correspondence from the Merchant regarding your request. Others are messages from Catalog Choice about your request. We have designed the system so that we never have to release your real email address. As described below, you can have the Preference Activity messages delivered to your inbox if you choose.
When a Participating Merchant downloads the file that contains your request, we post a message indicating that the Merchant has ‘confirmed’ your request. Once they have processed your request, they will have an opportunity to send a ‘Thank you’ message that we will post in your activity feed. Look for these acknowledgment messages in your feed in the weeks and months ahead. Click the View link to read the message from the merchant.
We designed the Preference Activity system to work with all of the merchants represented in Catalog Choice. As we have noted in the past, we contact Merchants who are not formally participating in Catalog Choice via email on your behalf. Typically, the merchant will reply via email with one or several of the following responses:
- received the request and will get back to us shortly
- confirmed the request and removed your name from their mailing list
- confirmed that they received the request, but can not find your name on their mailing list
- need more information to find your name
The core of the Preference Activity system are a series of processes that scan the responses from the Merchant, figures out what it says and updates the status of each request. We don’t read all these emails. Rather our system is designed to process several hundred thousand email messages a day. It links each message back to the correct Member and Merchant. We have been testing the system for weeks to make sure that it works properly. The system is flawless at linking the email response to the correct Member and Merchant. The harder part is properly interpreting the content and labeling the status of the request. Our tests show that the system is quite accurate at the labeling the process. However, it is not perfect, so we will be adding a ‘flag’ for Members to alert us to mislabeled messages.
You can see the details of all the messages from a given merchant that relate to a specific mail preference request by selecting the Details link. This will take you to the following page, which is part of My Choices.
Note, that the specific Member’s name has been hidden in this example. In your account, you will see the exact name and address combination associated with the request and the Merchant’s reply. In the example above, there are two messages from the merchant about this request. The first message indicates that they received the request. The second message indicates that they have confirmed that the given name has been removed from the mailing list.
All of the Preference Activity messages will persist in your Catalog Choice account. If you would like to have the messages forwarded to your email inbox, go to My Profile and select the check box shown below.
Over the next couple weeks, we will be running more and more messages through our Preference Activity processor. So if you don’t see any messages in your account right now, they will be there soon. The Preference Activity system closes the loop with the Merchant. With over 16 million requests in our system, that is quite a few conversations to close. We’re quite excited about this enhancement. Let us know what you think.
