See how making something fun can affect people’s adoption rate. Brought to you by our friends at Volkswagen.
Using the trash can just got intriguing:
Got any ideas how to make reducing unwanted mail more fun, let us know by posting a comment.
Thanks to Green America (formerly Co-op America) for publishing information about Catalog Choice in their Spring 2009 Quarterly Magazine. They feature our service as part of their featured list of 25 ways to green the world. Co-op Amercia was founded 25 years ago on the belief that all of us in our economic roles – as consumers, investors, workers, and business owners – can work together through economic channels to create a socially just and environmentally sustainable society.
Green America’s vision for the next 25 years is for us to join together to rapidly deploy their 25 strategies across the economy, so that the marketplace and our society completes the shift to green by the middle of the century.
You can read the entire article here, starting on page 8. You will find Catalog Choice in item 17 – Be WoodWise.
Did you know that many states require telephone companies to deliver the White pages to your home? The folks at Whitepages.com released the results of a survey indicating that over 80% of people are willing to do without a local phonebook when told how many trees are used to produce it. While there is a little debate about the number of trees used to produce phone books (see the comments on their blog), the fact is that consumers deserve a choice about whether they get a phone book or not.
So what is necessary to give consumers the ability to opt-in to getting the white pages? Like many things, some laws have to be changed. There is something that you can do about it. Head over to Banthephonebook.org and sign their petition.
Thanks to NPR for running a short segment on this.
I can’t remember the last time I used the white pages to look up a phone number. Can you?
Most of us know that our behavior is being watched on the Web. As we browse and shop on the Internet, a “cookie” travels with us, recording our preferences. This technology is nothing new. Cookies identify and track information about a user. But cookies are getting more sophisticated, notes an article in today’s NewYorkTimes.com, and are now able to hold a lot more personal information about our Web behavior. As the article aptly states, “On the old Internet, nobody knew you were a dog. On the new targeted Internet, they now know what kind of dog you are, your favorite leash color, the last time you had fleas and the date you were neutered.”
Marketers love the profiling technology because it allows them to track a consumer’s interests and target advertising, giving them a way to pitch products to people most likely to buy. Retailers like The Gap and Victoria’s Secret are use Web tracking info in just this way.
The comfort level of many consumer and privacy rights advocates, however, is being pushed too far. In response, they are calling for Congress to force companies to make these Web shadowing practices more transparent to the consumer and give people a way to decline being tracked. What are your thoughts? Do you welcome more personalized advertising or are marketers getting too personal?
The Environmental Paper Network’s July Newsletter spotlights several high profile paper companies, including International Paper, that have announced Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) chain of custody certification at a portion of their pulp and paper operations. Many of IP’s largest customers, including Staples, OfficeMax, Universal Music Group, and TetraPak, have pushed IP to produce FSC certified products. This marks good progress, says the newsletter, as the industry is now acknowledging through these actions that FSC is the superior certification in the environmental paper marketplace. But what does this mean for what’s actually in your paper? In the case of IP, not much, yet, according to the forestry watchdog group Dogwood Alliance. But conservation groups are hopeful. You can get more of Dogwood Alliance’s perspective on the issue in this article.
We know that when many of you shop you look for products that are clean, green, organic, and efficient. As more and more green products enter the marketplace, a growing number of environmental labels are popping up to validate eco-friendly traits.
A recent article in The Wall Street Journal spotlights the growth and validity of these eco-seals. “As green marketing has proliferated, so has the number of ‘eco-labels’ competing to be the environmental equivalent of a Good Housekeeping seal of approval.” The article states that there are more than 300 such labels putting a green stamp on everything from cosmetics and seafood to bird-friendly coffee. Is the result helping consumers or creating confusion? Both, it turns out. The federal government may need to play a stronger role in shaping eco standards so consumers can trust green marketing promises. To read the entire article here.
Here’s a sampling of some of the many environmental offerings available through our participating Catalog Choice merchants:
Blue Canoe: Organically grown cotton clothing – all made in the U.S.A.
Crate & Barrel: An assortment of ecologically harvested and FSC certified outdoor and indoor furniture
Cuddledown: Many certified eco-friendly items from towels, sheets, blankets and sleepwear
Fair Indigo: Full line of fair trade clothing and jewelry and fashionable organics
Fetch Dog: Eco-friendly dog supplies from dog beds to leashes to toys
Garnet Hill: Organic cotton clothing, bath accessories, and sleepwear
Johnny’s Selected Seeds: A variety of organic seeds and tools to help organic growing
REI: A variety of outdoor gear made from recycled fibers
The Y Catalog: Organic yoga and fitness clothes, beauty products, and eco-friendly yoga mats
UncommonGoods: An assortment of handmade, recycled, and organic merchandise
Interesting article in Slate about contribution solicitations titled: Stop Pleas! The charities I support send me way too many fundraising letters. I’m sick of it. What can I do?
The story is reminisant to the too many catalogs issue we are addressing. One solution to the give to your favorite charites online. We use Network For Good for our online donations. You can find lots of great causes to support there.
Over 55% of Catalog Choice members are opting out of a catalog mailing because they either prefer to shop online or they want to help the environment. Another 40% are making the request because they have no interest in the products of the given catalog. These survey results are based on responses from over 6 million surveys.
NOTE: There has been an update to the Email Opt-in Service. We are no longer using the anonymous email address and mail forwarding system described below. Merchants offering email opt-in through Catalog Choice have pledged to never trade your email address. Here is the update blog post.
Today, we launched the Catalog Choice Email Subscription service. Email is a great paper-free way to learn about new products and deals offered by my favorite merchants. Over 60% of Catalog Choice members are making a mail opt-out choice because they want to “help the environment” or “prefer to shop online”. We expect that many of members would prefer to receive product information via email instead of the paper catalog.
But as we all have experienced, once we provide our email address for one newsletter, it can sometimes lead to a flood of unsolicited email. As a result, we have designed our email opt-in service so that our consumer and merchant members can be assured that signing up for email news through the Catalog Choice will not generate unsolicited email messages. Only messages from your chosen merchants will be delivered to the your inbox. We guarentee it.
Our approach is simple and elegant. If you have ever used Craig’s List to sell something, you are aware of the anonymous email address they provide: example: sale-abcde-123456789@craigslist.org. Any messages sent to this address are forwarded to the poster’s real email address. Our system is similar. When you subscribe to email news through Catalog Choice, we generate a unique catalogchoice.org email address for the specific Member and Merchant relationship. Email messages sent by the merchant are delivered directly to your inbox by Catalog Choice as though the merchant directly emailed you. If any of our email addresses are inadvertently sold or traded and an email is sent to a Member from a Merchant that you have not subscribed to, our system will capture and destroy the unsolicited email before it reaches your inbox.
For merchants who have activated the email opt-in service, we provide Members a one-click email subscription on the merchant’s mail preference page. As shown below, the Email Subscription section is highlighted in green. You sign up by selecting the Subscribe button.
Once you subscribe, we generate and deliver the unique email address to the merchant. Soon thereafter, you will start receiving their email news delivered right to your inbox. The timing of the emails is dependent solely on the frequency of the Merchant’s email newsletter.
Catalog Choice COO April Smith is attending the 2009 NEMOA (New England Mail Order Association) Spring Conference in Boston this week. NEMOA was the first conference April attended last year and at that time it was still difficult to convince mailers of the benefits of Catalog Choice. This year everything has changed. April will be meeting with many merchants already participating in Catalog Choice and others who will soon be activating their account.
If you are one of the several hundred mailers at NEMOA, make sure you introduce yourself to April and she will be happy to tell you about all the great new services we have for mailers. We continue our dedication and focus to make Catalog Choice a premiere service for catalog mailers and consumers.
Based on the huge turn-out we have had over the past two weeks for our Webinars, we are very encouraged by the attention that mailers are paying to honoring consumer mail preference requests. There is one more webinar scheduled for next week – if you are interested contact me at chuck (at) catalogchoice.org.
