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In the words of our members …

Tuesday, April 14th, 2009

We have collected a handful of testimonials from our members that we want to share. We welcome your comments in the blog.

“What a great idea this is! Tell businesses that this is actually excellent advertising for them. I investigated and found a whole bunch of new catalogs that I am interested in while browsing through your list. I have bookmarked their websites, so I can browse their products online.”
-Catalog Choice member

“I shop 95% online. In less than 90 days I’ve opted out of 303 catalogs that weighed 120 lbs. My on line shopping will not diminish, just the waste. Thanks for a terrific site!!!”
-Catalog Choice member

“Thank you for helping! In three months I’ve gone from 51 catalogs to fewer than five stragglers, and seen your “confirmed” labels grow from single digits to almost half of the total as (I suppose) more merchants joined Catalog Choice. For the rest of the merchants, your “My choices” page and notes feature at least helped me keep track of those I contacted personally…The decrease in my daily mail volume is striking. Tell your merchants that the success of this effort will lead me to keep Catalog Choice bookmarked as a way of adding catalogs once the flood has ceased.
-William from Washington, DC

“I joined Catalog Choice last year after being inundated year after year with un-asked for catalogs at the holiday time. I wanted to let you know that this year, I have received a FRACTION of the amount of catalogs that I normally get. THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!!”
-Debbie from Villanova, PA

“I definitely will support merchants who participate in this service. The reason I will go to these merchants first is that I support anyone who is concerned about making our world better. We are living in a time where we need to cut down on waste. As our life is simplified (in this case by removing waste), it allows for more free time to do the things we enjoy… which can mean shopping and browsing online. I visit your website and have hundreds of catalogs at my fingertips and can browse and shop without having my mailbox cluttered where there’s so many that I don’t even look at them. They go straight to the recycling bin, because it’s overwhelming. It’s easier to just put them in the recycle bin than to start sorting through. Now I can just visit the catalog I’m in the mood for when I go to your website. Thanks for this service, and I hope the merchants know we really appreciate them listening. It certainly doesn’t mean I will not shop with them. I
will shop with any merchant online which is more convenient, and I’m happy to be doing something to help our environment, and working with others who have the same interest.
-Donna from Norridge, IL

“I definitely see the difference–and I’m thrilled!!! Catalog Choice is a tremendous service for the environment! Since I’ve been using your site to decline catalogues, I’ve seen a dramatic decrease in unwanted catalogue mailings. I could not be happier to see my mailbox emptied of wasted paper by the tons.”
-Brenda

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you!!!! We have noticed a significant reduction of catalogs in our mailbox. You are providing a wonderful service.
-Carol and Jim

Posted in Catalog Choice, Featured | 1 Comment »

San Francisco Speaks out on Do Not Mail

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009

Yesterday, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a resolution requesting establishment of a Do Not Mail Registry and urging both the California State Legislature and United States Congress to establish a Do Not Mail Registry. The full text of the resolution is here.

The resolution calls for, among other things, the establishment of an effective, user-friendly system to voluntarily stop the receipt of unsolicited direct mail:

The San Francisco resolution reflects strong consumer sentiment regarding the issue of unwanted mail. According to the Resolution, 89% of likely voters nationwide voiced support for a Do Not Mail Registry in a 2007 national poll commissioned by Zogby International.

Hundreds of companies know that honoring mail preferences is a fundamental part of good business practices. That is why they work with us to listen to consumers. And consumers are not content with the time consuming process of contacting each company individually. That is why consumers use our secure service to deliver their requests.

The DMA notes in a press release today regarding the San Francisco resolution:

Do Not Mail programs are unnecessary as individuals already have many existing options available to manage their mail including the Direct Marketing Association’s Mail Preference Service (MPS) at http://www.dmachoice.org/.

The key question about the “existing options”, of which Catalog Choice is one of the largest, is whether we can obtain sufficient participation and compliance from direct mailers?

Our system makes it easy for each member of Catalog Choice to know which company is honoring their choice and which ones are not. Collectively, we have insight into how 1,000 direct mailers are managing 15.7 million requests submitted by over 1.2 million consumers. For many mailers, the results are excellent. They regularly download the requests through their secure Merchant Account and make sure that consumers registered in our service will not be included in their mailings. There are also many mailers who are not formally working with us, but are honoring requests emailed to their customer support team. All in all, we estimate that 75% of the requests entered through our service are honored in a timely manner.

Improved mailer participation in mail preference services such as Catalog Choice is key to addressing consumer sentiment regarding unsolicited mail. Catalog mailers, if you are not participating in the mail preference services available to you, then your actions undermine the solutions that your trade association is calling out as the reason that Do Not Mail programs are unnecessary. Indifference to or rejection of effective mail preference solutions, such as Catalog Choice, sends the wrong message to the consumer and ultimately works against the collective interests of the catalog industry.

We have made it incredibly easy for any mailer to collect and honor mail preference requests. We have gained the trust and support of over 350 catalog mailers by providing quality, innovative services that meet the needs of both consumers and mailers. Best of all, there is no cost to establishing a Merchant Account with Catalog Choice – we are the only free solution for both consumers and the industry.

Posted in Catalog Choice, Featured | 9 Comments »

Thanks for your donations

Tuesday, March 24th, 2009

Financial support for Catalog Choice comes from several sources: foundation grants, site advertising, merchant services that support our mission and your donations.

I want to take a moment and thank the hundreds of Members who have made a donation to our service.

Posted in Catalog Choice, Featured | No Comments »

Email Opt-In Service

Monday, March 16th, 2009

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. catalog-choice-eliminate-unwanted-catalogs-you-receive-in-the-mail-168

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.

Not sure what to do with the email that has something you might want later? You can always find the email message in your Catalog Choice account. We post the email newsletter in your Activity Feed that appears on your dashboard. If you delete an email in you inbox, but days later you realize that you are ready to buy that special item, you can always come back to Catalog Choice to find it.

Since we just released this feature, it will take several weeks for merchants to activate the service for their catalogs. Look for the list of merchants offering email opt-in on your dashboard in the coming weeks.

By the way, please don’t opt-into Cheese Baseball Cards. We are for demonstration purposes only.

Posted in Catalog Choice, Customers, Environment, Featured, Merchants, Privacy | 4 Comments »

I saw the future at Crate&Barrel

Saturday, March 14th, 2009

Back in 2007, before we launched Catalog Choice, I often dreamed of a time when it would be as easy to opt-out as it is to opt-into catalog mailings. Today I saw the future at Crateandbarrel.com – they added an “opt-out” link to the footer of their consumer website.

As soon as I saw the link, I called the head of marketing at Crate&Barrel to learn more about what caused them to add this link. He indicated that they made this change because their customers asked for a more convenient way to find their email and mail preference forms.

I asked, “Are you afraid that you will lose customers if it is too easy to opt-out of your catalog mailings?”, echoing the concerns many companies have expressed to me. He answered, “If we don’t do what our customers want, that will cause us to lose them. Even if we don’t send them catalogs in the mail, they are still our customers.”

Crate&Barrel is the first website that I am aware of that makes it convenient for a customer to voice their choice about how often they receive catalog mailings on their consumer site. Williams-Sonoma, Inc. provides a convenient link on the home page of their corporate site. If you know of others that have a link to their mail preference form on their home page, please list the URL in the comments. Other leading merchants have developed online forms where consumers can opt-down or opt-out of catalog mailings, but it remains difficult to find these forms. Crate&Barrel is the first merchant to put the link on their home page.

This reminds me of a story a seasoned catalog marketing consultant told me. She said that years ago merchants did not recognize the value of making it easy to return items that we bought through their catalog. Once merchants started making it easy to return items, more people bought merchandise through catalogs and the web. I believe that we are seeing the beginning of the same sea change in mail preference. Since it is expensive to mail catalogs to households and there are convenient online shopping tools for anyone who has a computer and access to the internet, it is time to make it convenient for consumers to state their mail preferences. Congratulations Crate&Barrel.

Any company interested in providing a convenient online form that allows consumers to communicate their mail preference can contact Catalog Choice to learn about our hosted mail preference service. Offer consumers the same preference options at Catalogchoice.org and your website. We can provide this service running within your website without any development costs on your part.

Posted in Featured, Merchants | No Comments »

We’re closing the loop on millions of conversations

Saturday, February 28th, 2009

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.

Posted in Featured, Fulfillment, Merchants, Privacy | 13 Comments »

Join our team – we’re hiring

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

Catalog Choice is looking for a great person to join our team as an Account Manager. The full job description is here.

The primary responsibility of an Account Manager is to assist direct mailers in using the Catalog Choice mail preference service. In addition, this role entails providing non-technical support with the development and operations of the Catalog Choice service and providing customer service support to our consumer members.

Working at Catalog Choice is a team effort. We all wear several hats and tackle each task to contribute to the overall success of the organization.

We prefer someone who can work out of our Berkeley, CA office. Send your resume to jobs@catalogchoice.org to be considered. No phone calls please.

Posted in Catalog Choice, Featured | No Comments »

Move over paper, here come the bits and bytes

Thursday, February 12th, 2009

Saw this short post on John Battelle’s Searchblog about Google buying a Finnish paper mill and converting it into a data center. Now that is what I call going paperless!

Here is the Reuters article.

Posted in Blogs, Environment, Featured | No Comments »

Eco-Labeling on Catalogs—What do all those logos really mean?

Saturday, January 31st, 2009

By April Smith, Catalog Choice managing director.

Like me, you’ve probably noticed a forest certification logo, recycling symbol, or sustainability statement on the back of more and more catalogs. As a growing number of catalog mailers examine the environmental implications of their catalog production and make greener choices, eco-labels on catalog covers become more commonplace. Here’s a sampling of labels and statements I’ve noticed recently:

The Fair Indigo catalog states “We take sustainability seriously. This catalog was printed in the USA with 30% post-consumer waste and paper certified for sustainability.” The catalog even lists the amount of natural resources saved as a result, although no specific forest certification program is mentioned. The back cover of the FLOR catalog sports the PEFC certification label and says “Printed on 100% recycled paper, 85% post-consumer waste.” The Vermont Country Store also prints on paper certified by SFI. The “FSC Mixed Sources” logo appears on a number of catalogs, including Heifer International, Title Nine, Sundance, and all the Williams-Sonoma brands. And countless catalogs sport the recycling logo with post-consumer recycled content ranging from unspecified amounts up to 85 percent.

Eco-labels for paper choices are powerful communication tools, conveying environmental information quickly and conveniently to the consumer and showing a commitment to environmental stewardship on the part of the catalog mailer. But what do all the logos really mean? If you are confused by these symbols and certification schemes, here’s a summary to help demystify the most common catalog eco-labels.

Let’s start with recycled content. We’ve all seen the ubiquitous arrow Mobius strip symbol. Some mailers print the recycling logo on the back of the catalog with the generic claim “printed on recycled paper.” This doesn’t tell you much except that the paper contains some recovered material. Recycled fiber can be “pre-consumer” or “post consumer” waste. Pre-consumer just means industrial trimmings and scraps that haven’t reached the consumer market. What you want to look for are post-consumer percentages, which indicate recovered waste that has completed its life as a consumer item and was destined for the landfill. The higher the post-consumer waste percentage, the better. But remember, a catalog mailer needs to balance paper quality, availability, and cost with environmental considerations. That’s why you’ll see a variety of recycling percentages and claims on catalogs.

There are a variety of forest certification programs which verify that practices meet recognized standards for responsible forest management. Certification helps balance the economic benefits of forest use and the ecological value of forest conservation. Three common certification logos you’ll see on the back of catalogs are those of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) and the Programme for the Environment of Forest Certification (PEFC).
FSC certification is widely considered the most rigorous certification scheme. Strengths include the protection of ecologically important forests and the banning of the conversion of natural forests into plantations. Plantations, while necessary to meet global fiber needs, cannot replace older, diverse, natural forests nor can they sequester as much carbon dioxide as mature trees, which is important for climate stabilization. FSC maintains three label types based on the product’s content: FSC Pure, FSC Recycled, and FSC Mixed Sources. Of the three, the FSC Mixed Sources label makes the most frequent appearance on catalogs. FSC Mixed is a blend of FSC Pure, Recycled and/or Controlled Fiber. FSC Pure is 100% virgin fiber from an FSC certified forest. FSC Recycled certifies paper that contains a minimum of 85% post-consumer fiber. Controlled fiber refers to the remaining wood fiber (not Pure or Recycled) and is screened to exclude the worst forestry practices, such as illegal logging, the liquidation of high value forests, civil rights violations, and genetic modification of forest species. Papers that contain both post-consumer waste and are FSC-certified reduce virgin fiber use but also ensure that when needed, it comes from sustainably managed sources.
Largely in response to FSC, the country’s largest forest-industry trade association (AF&PA) formed SFI which has operated as a fully independent forest certification program since 2007. Critics claim that SFI lacks rigor with regard to some forest management issues. Unlike FSC standards, SFI certification allows the use of genetically modified trees and the conversion of natural forests to plantations, including forests deemed to have critical environmental or socio-economic value.
Launched in Europe, PEFC is technically not a certification scheme but an umbrella organization for national forest certification programs. PEFC provides assurance to wood and paper product purchasers that they are buying sustainably produced goods, irrespective of where they came from. PEFC prohibits the use of wood from some controversial sources, but allows the use of genetically modified trees and the conversion of forests to plantations. PEFC has endorsed the CSA (Canadian) and SFI certification schemes, so weaknesses inherent in these systems also apply to PEFC.

We hope this helps you understand the various labels you see on the back of a catalog.

Posted in Environment, Featured | 2 Comments »

Welcome New Merchants

Friday, January 16th, 2009

January is only half way over and 22 new catalog titles have activated their secure account. As our team of merchant account managers work away, there is nothing more pleasing to see a new merchant’s name appear on the Cool Catalogs page.

The account set up process is so simple that most merchants step through the set up in minutes. This includes personalizing their mail preference page, defining a set of mail frequency options, uploading links to their electronic catalog and downloading the mail preference requests. Before your morning coffee gets cold, a new merchant can be well on the way to saving money and resources by helping their customers go paperless through Catalog Choice. If you are not already signed up, there is no time like the present. Contact us at Merchantservice@Catalogchoice.org and we will get you started.

We are pleased to have the following companies working with us to honor mail preference requests.

Eastern Mountain Sports