Art Supply Warehouse Express

CWI Medical

Famous Smoke Shop

Fort Western

Impromptu Gourmet

Jerry’s Artarama

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.

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?

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:

1. A marketer should proivde existing and prospective customers and donors with notice of an opportunity to eliminate or modify direct mail solicitations from their organization. It effects consumer and nonprofit mailers.  The notice should:
   Appear in every marketing offer and be easy to read, find, understand, act upon.
2. Upon request by a consumer, a marketer should disclose the source from which it obtained personally identifiable data about that consumer.
3. Use the DMA’s Mail Preference Service file on a monthly basis.
4. A marketer should establish internal policies and practices in support of the CCC.  Specifically, a senior level executive should be responsible for making sure that your organization implements its policies and practices, and reviews and updates them as necessary.

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.

Calyx Flowers

Crystal Classics

Go Ahead Tours

Home Decorator’s Collection

J. Jill

Otis S. Twilley Seed Co.

PajamaGram

Tracy Porter

Van’s Gifts

Vermont Teddy Bear

Wild Horsefeathers

To add new logins, go to Edit Profile and add a new login. It only takes a second.

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!

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.

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

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.

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.