The Do Not Mail issue is on the agenda at the City of Berkeley City Council Meeting. This is our home town, so we follow the Council closely. They use a cool tool, Open Town Hall, to solicit input from citizens on the issue. Check it out here and see how the Yes votes stack up against the No votes. Click Read More and then scroll to the bottom of the page to see the vote.
Last week I read a column in Catalog Success (we follow the industry press) by Jim Gilbert about the conversation regarding USPS moving to a 5 day delivery schedule. What is interesting about Jim’s article, USPS Column Hits a Naive Nerve, is his response to a comment attacking direct marketers. Jim, a seasoned expert in the direct marketing, caught my eye in his description of what consumers can do to work with marketers to go green. Here is an excerpt from his article:
More and more, mailers and catalog companies are doing what they can to go green. But is this enough? In a word, NO! We’re getting there though.
Here are some suggestions for you:
1. Recycle any direct mail you’re not interested in.
2. Contact catalog companies who send you their catalogs and ask to be removed from their future mailings.
3. DON’T buy anything from a catalog, otherwise (and here is the relevancy issue) you will be tagged as a “mail order buyer” and will receive other catalogs of products which have an affinity to your last mail order purchase. In fact, don’t buy anything mail order, or respond online to any offer!
4. Opt out of receiving business mail using Catalog Choice: http://www.catalogchoice.org/.
5. Use the Direct Marketing Association’s Mail Preference Service to manage or stop direct mail offers: http://www.dmachoice.org/.
We’re happy not to mail offers to you if you don’t want them (it saves us a bunch of money). Just let us know as described above, and we won’t send you any more mail.
We were very pleased to see our solution called out as an ingredient for what consumers can do to help green their end of marketing channel.
As Jim and all the other marketers I talk to say, they don’t want to mail offers to those of you who don’t want them. So, take Jim’s advice if you want to cut down on unwanted mail.
Mailman Steve took the issue of unsolicited mail into his own hands. According the News & Observer,
This spring, postal inspectors discovered years worth of junk mail piled in the garage of Padgett’s Raleigh home and buried in his yard. All were third-class pieces of mail, including direct mailings and circulars that advertisers use to offer up deals on pizzas, windows and oil changes. Padgett pleaded guilty in August.
At least the judge was not hard on him:
Mailman Steven Padgett received a probationary sentence today from a sympathetic judge for failing to deliver years worth of junk mail on his Apex route.
“Today you’ll get credit for a life well lived,” U.S. District Judge James C. Dever III told Padgett. Dever could have sent Padgett to prison under federal sentencing guidelines; instead, he put him on three years’ probation, fined him $3,000 and ordered him to perform 500 hours of community service.
If only Steve knew about Catalog Choice and how we work to connect companies and consumers to reduce unwanted mail and go paperless!
