Catalog Choice - You decide what gets in.

Many months ago, when we launched our service there was an active debate in the industry about accepting requests from our service. Read more about what spurred the debate here. But when almost one million people enter over 12 million requests to be removed from mailings and mailers are provided with a free and secure way to integrate these requests into their mailing process the results of the debate become clear – it is time to respect the consumers’ choice.

Thanks to sound reporting by the direct mail industry press we are moving beyond the debate. DMNews published recently published an article following our press briefing last week and it provides an excellent perspective from mailers that are using our service. You can read the whole article here. A couple quotes worth highlighting include:

“We think that [Catalog Choice is] a great benefit both to our customers and to us – to the bottom line and to the environment,” said Carolyn Beem, manager of public affairs for L.L. Bean.

Andrew Chane, VP of Tools for Wellness as quoted as saying:

“It helps with our postage costs, which as you know, have done nothing but go up and become more of a challenge over the last year or so to really manage,” said Chane. “We certainly don’t want to keep mailing to people that aren’t interested in what we’re about.”

Larry O’Connor, CEO of Other World Computing notes:

“Catalog Choice was a good option for our eco-conscious customers out there was well as people who just don’t want any sort of printed material regardless,” said O’Connor. He added that Other World Computing collects data from Catalog Choice a couple of weeks before it sends out a catalog. “We’ve had no issues with the data that they’ve provided us either.”

The DMNews article notes that “both Other World Computing and Tools for Wellness said they feature the Catalog Choice logo on their Web site and in their catalogs. It’s a way to show consumers that Tools for Wellness is concerned about the environment and about wasting catalogs and other resources, Chane said.”

The article provided the perspective from the DMA as well. It notes that the association also provides a mail preference service, DMAChoice.org, which prevented over 930 million mailings last year. This is great news.

The article raises two troubling rumors that the DMA continues to promote despite numerous discussions we have had with them.

Rumor 1: Using Member names for another purpose

“The DMA is concerned that Catalog Choice might use the names to raise funds for environmental groups that are pushing do not mail legislation, Rappaport said. “The concern is they’re a wolf in sheep’s clothing or they’re a Trojan horse and a catalog that works with them is contributing to their potential demise, he said.”

Rumor 2: Setting up Consumer accounts is bad

Donn is also quoted questioning the consumer’s need to set up an account with our service: he asked, why does Catalog Choice insist on retaining the names of people who have signed up for the service? Rappaport said that the DMA had met with Catalog Choice to talk about ways that the two organizations could work together, but discussions broke down over this issue.

Here is the answer to both of these issues:

1. We offer a free service to consumers and merchants and our agreement with the Members is to only use their Personally Identifiable Information (industry lingo for your name and address) to facilitate the mail preference choice that the Member makes on our site. We do not rent or sell names.

2. Users register at our site so that we can authenticate and validate their account, so that they can enter their mail preference requests as unwanted catalogs arrive at their home, so that they can return to the site and modify their request, and so that they can monitor the responses of the merchants. Registration is a basic feature of any Internet-based service in which the consumer is using to communicate their mail preferences. Providing consumers with a secure account is good.

We are moving beyond the debate and providing a useful service for consumers and merchants.