Lenser, a premier, full service multichannel marketing agency, focusing on database marketing and creative services that drive results through multiple channels of distribution- catalog, internet and stores, published their position about Catalog Choice in their May 2008 Newsletter.

Their clients have been asking them what they should do when contacted by Catalog Choice. John Lenser, the President, states in the Newsletter:

While the DMA has taken the position that Catalog Choice is unneeded given their own “Do Not Mail” preference services, I no longer believe this position is in the industry’s best interest. Catalog Choice now has over 736,000 registered accounts of those who have requested that one or more catalogs not be mailed to them and registrations are growing by thousands each week.

Therefore, I am recommending that catalog mailers move forward and accept Catalog Choice’s merchant agreement and accept their file downloads. The negative repercussions for not doing so, at this point, outweigh any advantages of not joining. It is naive to pretend they do not exist.

We are pleased to get the endorsement of Lenser, one of the industry’s leading service providers. The four major issues referenced by John in the Newsletter were 1) the staying power of Catalog Choice, 2) what can merchants do when valuable customers opt-out, 3) fear of Do Not Mail legislation and 4) on-going collaboration between Catalog Choice and the industry.

Time has proven that we are here to stay. As the largest mail preference service, outside the DMA, it is clear that our service is popular among consumers and adoption is growing among merchants. As John says “At this point, we believe they are here to stay and deserve our backing.”

What should merchants do about valuable customers that are now opting-out of the catalog? After many discussions with merchants, Catalog Choice has agreed that merchants can contact customers with a secondary confirmation. The confirmation should not require an action by the consumer, as you have already stated your preference in Catalog Choice, but it can provide other information about how to interact with the merchant such as requesting fewer catalogs or opting-into an email relationship. Merchants such as L.L. Bean and Crate and Barrel are conducting these types of secondary confirmations with customers in their database.

At no time does Catalog Choice release the consumers email address to the merchant. We will be adding a service for merchants whereby Catalog Choice will send an email to a merchant’s customer who has opted-out on behalf of the merchant. This email will not go to all Catalog Choice members, just those who are recent customers of the given merchant. The secondary confirmation process is all part of facilitating the dialog between consumers and merchants around the issue of mail preference.

The third reason that Lenser references in his letter of support is that he recognizes Catalog Choice as a viable market-based approach to mail preference. He states:

We expect that bills will be introduced in Congress and hearings held. If the industry wants to avoid such governmental intrusion, we need to demonstrate that viable alternatives already exist. While the DMA’s mail preference service is the industry’s own internal answer, Catalog Choice represents a solid answer to those that are distrustful of an industry-managed program. The last thing we need is Catalog Choice giving testimony that the industry torpedoed their efforts.

The fourth reason Lenser supports Catalog Choice is that we continue to meet with the Lenser Team and other industry leaders to listen to their input so that together we can use our service to meet “goals of eliminating waste and pollution, but actually makes our mailing programs more cost-effective and profitable.”

We are in total agreement with John’s closing sentence in his piece “A word about Catalog Choice”. John states “By working together, we can make a positive difference.”

Last week, Crate and Barrel rolled out a new feature on their website supporting your preference to receive fewer catalogs or none at all. For those of you that made an opt-out choice on Catalog Choice and have purchased from Crate and Barrel in the past (and you still use the same email that you provided to them), they may send you the following confirmation email shown below. If you would prefer to receive fewer catalogs from Crate & Barrel instead of none, click this link to set your mail preference.

This is an example of the processes that merchants are putting in place to confirm your opt-out requests and provide you with other mailing options that meet your needs. At Catalog Choice, we are putting more services in place to help merchants provide similar services.

Crate & Barrel has been honoring Catalog Choice opt-out requests since March. The email confirmation and mail frequency site are new features that they are rolling out.  This is an example of the hard work that merchants are undertaking to respond to your request.  While it all seems simple in the end, it takes months of design, development and testing to get it right before enhancements like this can be rolled out.  We have been patient with Crate and other merchants who are working on responding to the opt-out requests that you have entered at Catalog Choice and we hope that you are too.

We applaud these new services and hope that other merchants will follow. Catalog Choice members can show their appreciation by going to the Bravo Merchants page and support Crate & Barrel or other merchants working to honor opt-out requests.

In an effort to better inform merchants about the benefits of honoring mail preference requests from Catalog Choice, we are holding a series of “webinars”.

Catalog Choice invites catalog mailers to participate in an educational teleconference to learn more about this free service and the business benefits it offers the industry.  Launched in October 2007, Catalog Choice is a popular online service that gives consumers a convenient way to reduce unwanted catalogs received in the mail.  The service offers merchants a way to honor consumer choices and reduce expenses associated with unwanted mailings.  The session will be offered Wednesday, May 7th and Wednesday, May 14th.  Each session will be held from 1 - 2 PM (EST). Executive director Chuck Teller, project manager April Smith, and industry consultant Larry Shaw will review all aspects of the service and answer your questions.  Join in to learn how to benefit from the service, tips on implementation, and hear what’s coming next.

To register, please email April at april.smith@catalogchoice.org with the date you wish to participate, the names of those attending from your company, and phone and email addresses of each participant.  Catalog Choice will follow up with call confirmation and details.

This past month the following merchants signed on to our service simplifying the process of honoring your opt-out requests. You will recognize some of the names and others are smaller merchants that you can discover here. April’s list includes:

Verilux, Body Shop of America, Hoofprints.com, W Atlee Burpee & Co., Shades of Light, Blue Canoe, Palumba, Hobby-Lobby International, Crosstown Traders, Dell, Nike, King Arthur Flour, J & R Music, Kelly’s Kids, Bra Smyth, Constructive Playthings, Lifetime Brands, Agri Supply, Tumi, Swanson Health Products and Blair LLC.

Once these merchants pull down the names to start processing the opt-out requests, they will appear on the Bravo Merchants page.

If you have visited the Bravo Merchants page lately, you will see that the list is getting quite long. We are working on making it easier to sort and organize the list of Bravo Merchants so that you can browse catalogs online and start your shopping by browsing the list of Merchants who are working with Catalog Choice to honor opt-out requests.

There is nothing better than having merchants inform their customers to come to Catalog Choice to set their mail preference. Today, we learned that Tools for Wellness will be printing a notice for customers in their next printed catalog. They announced their relationship with us on their blog in this post. Here is an excerpt:

The past few years has seen a greatly increased awareness of how precious our natural resources are. Greenhouse emissions, pollution from fossil fuels, and the depletion of the ozone layer are just a few examples of how were are slowly destroying the earth.

While we’ve made the switch to using recycled materials in our shipments whenever possible, we’re proud to have teamed with Catalog Choice, a free service that is a sponsored project of the Ecology Center.

We welcome any other merchants who are pointing customers to our site to let us know so that we can give you the shout out that you deserve.

In a continued effort to reach out to merchants, Catalog Choice Project Director April Smith is attending the New England Mail Order Association conference this week. She will be hosting a round table discussion about Catalog Choice on Friday and is available to speak to any merchant or industry representative at the conference.

If you ask April, she will tell you about the cost savings merchants will discover when they sign up for a free Catalog Choice account and no longer send unwanted catalogs to the consumers that have submitted requests through their secure, verified account. Join the growing list of merchants that are honoring consumers mail preferences - save money, save natural resources and respect the consumers choice.

Join Sierra Trading Post, Guitar Center, Cuddledown, Rod’s Western Palace and others who are using new personalization features in Catalog Choice. This week, we launched features that allow merchants to configure the mail preference process.

Merchants will be able to:

1) Add a photo

2) Configure a message on the Mail Preference Page; and

3) Configure a message on the Confirmation Page

Look how good Rod’s Western Palace’s mail preference page looks! This is the page users see when they register their mail preference for a particular catalog.

In the next couple of weeks, we’ll be unveiling even more features for merchants. If you’re a merchant and would like to activate your free account, please contact us at merchantservice@catalogchoice.org.

The fruits of merchant account managers’ labor are ripening. Every week, more and more merchants are signing up to our free, secure service to honor consumer mail preferences. In the past week, PC Connection, Van Bourgondien, Wisconsin Cheeseman, and Duluth Trading Company have all opened accounts and started the process of honoring consumers requests.

These and the other Bravo Merchants, are saving money in many ways by setting up a merchant account. First, it is easier and faster to honor the request through our secure download rather than transcribing requests sent via our push email fulfillment service. Second, there is no sense in sending a catalog to someone who does not want it. If you want a free merchant account, contact us at merchantservice@catalogchoice.org.

The other day we came across a note from a Catalog Choice member.  They wrote to inform us that one of the catalog merchants, Fahrney’s Pens, has printed a notice within their recent catalog instructing readers that if they wish to no longer receive their catalog to head on over to Catalog Choice and set their mail preference.

Fahrney’s made the decision to make it easy for customers to set their mail preferences through Catalog Choice.  They certainly earned my respect and my business.  If you want to applaud Fahrney’s Pens, head on over to their website and buy yourself a pen.  Perhaps you could use the pen to write a note to those merchants who are not honoring your mail preference request through Catalog Choice.

The formula is straight-forward:

• an unwanted catalog is a waste of marketing resources and natural resources.  Bad for the financial and environmental bottom line.
• a wanted catalog is a pleasure to receive in the mail; you can browse the merchandise in the comfort of your home. It can provide you with the inspiration for a gift or that product you have been thinking about buying.
• the consumer is the one who has the right to decide what is wanted and unwanted.   That is why we built Catalog Choice.  Up until now, there was no straightforward way to communicate your decision about unsolicited mail.

There are other reasons to like catalogs, now that you have the choice of which ones to receive.  If you live in a rural area, a catalog can be one of your key ways of connecting to your favorite stores, whether online, by phone, or by mail.  Catalogs give you access to product selection beyond what you will find at Wal-Mart, the dominant general merchandise retailer in rural America.

If a merchant operates in all three channels (catalog, online, physical store), the catalog lets you check out what a retail merchant is now featuring before you decide to go shopping.

Another thing we like about catalogs is that the store is always open.  When we are ready to make a purchase, we can pick up the phone and talk to a knowledgeable customer service representative or point our browser to the merchant’s website and make the purchase any hour of the day or night.  This is a real boon to those of us who work or are busy during the day and usually take the time to peruse a wanted catalog or website in the evening.

In addition to these benefits, several catalog merchants are leaders in the effort to reduce their environmental footprints.  Some use recycled and/or Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)-certified papers.  Some ask if you want to combine multiple products into one carton, reducing the amount of natural resources used (both in terms of packaging and transportation emissions) to send your items.  Some have information in their catalog and website to educate consumers on the environment and sustainability issues.  And, some merchants are starting to let the consumer specify the frequency and media channel (print, online, email) in which they communicate with you.

One of our goals is to help you find those catalogers that care about your choices and the environment so that you can incorporate that information into your purchasing decisions.  We plan to work with merchants to identify those “best management practices”, and to communicate those findings to you.