We’d like to welcome new catalog companies & titles to our service! From art supplies to great food to all things Western, here are more terrific brands that have recently joined Catalog Choice to honor your mail preferences. Show your support by shopping with these brands online!
Paper Wishes by Hot Off the Press
If your company uses direct mail, you should be honoring consumer choices at Catalog Choice. Learn more about our free merchant account program here.
“Oops, I sent a request to Cheese Baseball Cards but forgot to include my last name.” Don’t worry, we have you covered. If a mailer needs more information to fulfill the opt-out request, they will send you an email to your Catalog Choice Account (using the unique Catalog Choice email address we create for each Member-Mailer combination). We also know that privacy is an important concern for you. That’s why Catalog Choice has developed an email system that allows you to communicate with mailers without using your personal email address.
Here is how it works. Log into your Catalog Choice account. All of your activity messages are shown right on your “Dashboard”. Messages that require action on your part are in the seciton highlighted in red.
By selecting “Respond”, you can write a message to the mailer giving them the additional information requested. We will track the status of your response the same way we track your original opt-out request. You know the familiar “unconfirmed”, “delivered”, and “confirmed” labels.
Did you know that you can receive all the activity messages from a mailer directly to your personal email address? Your email settings may be updated by going to My Profile. You can access My Profile from the login strip at the top of the page or go to your “Dashboard” tab and select “My Profile”.
Here is the magic part. If the activity message is delivered to your personal email and you reply, the response will be sent to the mailer from your unique Catalog Choice email address as well. So, when we say we never release your email address, we mean it.
Need proof that you sent them the information they requested? Your response is automatically saved in your Catalog Choice account for future reference.
With the completion of the Needs More Information system, we have the most transparent, straight forward mail preference service in the Nation. Catalog Choice is facilitating a round trip a communication between you and mailers to decrease the amount of unwanted mail that shows up in your mailbox! And did we mention that we do this without releasing your email address?
Catalog Choice was created because we believed that consumers deserved choice over what comes in the mailbox. We are pleased that the DMA followed our lead and created the Commitment to Consumer Choice (CCC). You can read all about it at DMACCC.org. Simply stated, the new policy is:
The CCC requires that you notify consumers of the opportunity to modify or eliminate future mail solicitations.
The DMA’s CCC launched shortly after Catalog Choice in late 2007. It originally gave marketers 12 months to comply. They increased the phase in period to 24 months – October 2009.
There are four specific elements of the CCC that everyone should be aware of:
If your company does not have a spot on your website where you can refer consumers to in order to set their mail preference, you should consider Catalog Choice’s new hosted Contact Preference Center. Learn more about our solution. If you want to offer opt-down options rather than just opt-out, we can make that happen. If you want to sending the consumer somewhere other than your privacy policy to set their mail preference, we have a solution for you.
Every month we are pleased to welcome new companies & catalog titles to our service. From the coolest shopping for horse crazy kids to escorted tours for worldwide travelers, here are more terrific brands that are participating in Catalog Choice to honor your mail preferences.
Catalog Choice now supports multiple logins for the Merchant account. Now your Service Bureau and colleagues at your company can have their own login to your company’s Catalog Choice account.
To add new logins, go to Edit Profile and add a new login. It only takes a second.
We spend a lot of time looking at how and where catalog merchants communicate mail choices to you, the consumer. Typically, you can find an unsubscribe email address, form and/or a telephone number in a merchant’s Privacy Policy on their web site. Many members of the Direct Marketing Association also provide a link to the DMA’s mail preference service. And now, slowly but surely, our participating merchants are letting consumers know they can use Catalog Choice as well.
We were thrilled to see this statement in Room & Board’s Privacy Policy:
“We love to send you our annual catalog but only if you want it. Because of that, we’ve joined Catalog Choice, an organization that lets consumers indicate which catalogs they no longer wish to receive. If you would prefer to not receive our catalogs in the postal mail, or if you are receiving extra copies that you do not need, please visit catalogchoice.org.”
Room and Board has also printed a version of this statement on the back of their catalog.
John Schroeder, Business Intelligence Manager for Room & Board, has this to say about the service:
“We love CatalogChoice.org! It is a perfect fit with our overall philosophy of sustainability and respecting our consumers’ wishes on how we engage them throughout the year. With our web site becoming a more frequently used tool it only makes sense that customers have the option of their preferred method of engagement with our company. Catalog Choice is one of the many ways we capture this. Thank you Catalog Choice for your services!”
Thank you, Room & Board. We hope other catalog mailers follow your lead!
Check out the cool coverage we got in CRM Magazine. Jessica Tsai covered our recent release of digital marketing tools in this article titled Paperless Marketing for the Digital Customer.
We figure that providing merchants with new digital marketing tools gives them one more reason to collaborate with us and honor our member’s mail preference requests. We’ve learned that you can not push merchants away from paper marketing tools, you need to provide compelling alternatives.
Look for more exciting announcements and new features leveraging our new catalog widgets in the coming weeks.
We are pleased to welcome a great array of new catalog merchants to the Catalog Choice service. From lobsters to jewelry to gifts, there are more great brands joining Catalog Choice and honoring your requests.
Charles P. Rogers Co.
Fetch Enterprises, LLC
Stauer
The Popcorn Factory
Container Store
Brooks Brothers
Museum ofJewelry
DHC USA, Inc.
Lobster Gram
Old Harbor Outfitters
1-800-Homeopathy
Miles Kimball Company
Walter Drake
Exposures
As We Change
Home Marketplace
Easy Comforts
EuroSport/Soccer.com
National Geographic
Chasing Fireflies
Uno Alla Volta
Cooking Enthusiast
Ben Silver Collection
Southwest Indian Foundation
West Coast Computer
Smithsonian Journeys
The Heritage Store
DreamSacks, Inc.
The Barn Door, Inc
Thomson Family Adventures
Cyberguys!
X-treme Geek
Abercrombie & Fitch
American Science & Surplus
Coach
Colonial Williamsburg
World Rugby Shop
Tafford Uniforms
Sam Ash Music Corp
Yogabela
Ben Bridge Jewelers
Jockey Intl., Inc.
Malley’s Chocolates
Save the Children Federation
Banyan Botanicals
Dakin Farm
Over the past year we have had the opportunity to work with the executives at Abacus as our mail preference service rapidly gained popularity. Abacus is an important player in the direct mail business. They run the largest cooperative database for the merchant community.
Many merchants asked their Abacus colleagues about participation in Catalog Choice. As a result, Abacus published a paper – Abacus Viewpoint – “Opt-outs” and Name Suppression. The paper poses the following questions for merchants to consider when deciding whether to work with a mail preference service. Below are the Abacus questions and our answers.
1. What is the organization’s intent in capturing the names of your cusotmers?
Catalog Choice provides secure consumer accounts so that the names can be provided to mailers to honor the customer’s mail preference choice. We do not release the names for any other purpose. We do not rent or sell the names of our members. We are acting on behalf of our members to contact mailers because the process to do so is time consuming for consumers.
2. What is their verification process?
Catalog Choice uses a double opt-in verification system. A consumer must establish an account and then respond to an email we send to them to fully activate their account. This is the same verification model used by DMAChoice and Donotcall.org.
3. What is the organization’s underlying philosophy about direct mail?
Catalog Choice wants to make direct mail more resource efficient by connecting consumers and companies to reduce unwanted mail and go paperless. Our website and blog are clear that we are working on behalf of both companies and consumers. Our funders are leading organizations working to encourage sustainable business practices.
4. Does the opt-out service require payment from the consumer?
Catalog Choice is free to consumers.
5. Does the opt-out service offer consumers the opportunity for seasonal, channel, or specific opt-outs?
Catalog Choice is the only service in the nation that supports “opt-down” – the ability to offer fewer mailings rather than none at all. Our “opt-down” system can be customized to the unique mailing requirements of the company and can be implemented without changing the mailers customer database.
6. Will the opt-out service allow an email contact to the consumer to confirm an opt-out request and allow a request for the consumer to opt-down?
Catalog Choice provides a unique email address for each request that the mailer can use to confirm the request and offer opt-down options. The email is presented to the consumer within their Catalog Choice account associated with the specific mailer. Consumers can choose to have confirmation emails forwarded to their personal email address in their profile settings.
These are great questions and we are pleased to be able to provide clear and concise answers to each question. If you, the mailer, wish to discuss the service in more detail, please review the information on our Merchant site, contact us to ask any question and hopefully activate your account.
Did you know that you can receive a catalog in a digital format? Catalog Choice has teamed with V-Mags Media to provide our merchants the opportunity to publish their paper catalogs in an easy to read digital format.
Our first customer for this new service is Thomson Family Adventures. Take a look at their gorgeous digital catalog and pick your next family adventure.
When you go to request at catalog at Thomson’s site, their first option is to send you the digital version as shown in the snippet of their form below.
If you are interested in going paperless with our digital catalog service, drop me a note at chuck (at) catalogchoice.org.
