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.

Today, we launched the Catalog Choice Email Subscription service. Email is a great paper-free way to learn about new products and deals offered by my favorite merchants.  Over 60% of Catalog Choice members are making a mail opt-out choice because they want to “help the environment” or “prefer to shop online”.  We expect that many of members would prefer to receive product information via email instead of the paper catalog.

But as we all have experienced, once we provide our email address for one newsletter, it can sometimes lead to a flood of unsolicited email.  As a result, we have designed our email opt-in service so that our consumer and merchant members can be assured that signing up for email news through the Catalog Choice will not generate unsolicited email messages.  Only messages from your chosen merchants will be delivered to the your inbox.  We guarentee it.

Our approach is simple and elegant.  If you have ever used Craig’s List to sell something, you are aware of the anonymous email address they provide: example: sale-abcde-123456789@craigslist.org.  Any messages sent to this address are forwarded to the poster’s real email address. Our system is similar.  When you subscribe to email news through Catalog Choice, we generate a unique catalogchoice.org email address for the specific Member and Merchant relationship.  Email messages sent by the merchant are delivered directly to your inbox by Catalog Choice as though the merchant directly emailed you.  If any of our email addresses are inadvertently sold or traded and an email is sent to a Member from a Merchant that you have not subscribed to, our system will capture and destroy the unsolicited email before it reaches your inbox.

For merchants who have activated the email opt-in service, we provide Members a one-click email subscription on the merchant’s mail preference page.  As shown below, the Email Subscription section is highlighted in green.  You sign up by selecting the Subscribe button.

Once you subscribe, we generate and deliver the unique email address to the merchant.  Soon thereafter, you will start receiving their email news delivered right to your inbox.  The timing of the emails is dependent solely on the frequency of the Merchant’s email newsletter.

When a Participating Merchant downloads the file that contains your request, we post a message indicating that the Merchant has ‘confirmed’ your request.  Once they have processed your request, they will have an opportunity to send a ‘Thank you’ message that we will post in your activity feed.  Look for these acknowledgment messages in your feed in the weeks and months ahead.  Click the View link to read the message from the merchant.

We designed the Preference Activity system to work with all of the merchants represented in Catalog Choice.  As we have noted in the past, we contact Merchants who are not formally participating in Catalog Choice via email on your behalf.  Typically, the merchant will reply via email with one or several of the following responses:

1. received the request and will get back to us shortly
2. confirmed the request and removed your name from their mailing list
3. confirmed that they received the request, but can not find your name on their mailing list
4. need more information to find your name

The core of the Preference Activity system are a series of processes that scan the responses from the Merchant, figures out what it says and updates the status of each request.  We don’t read all these emails.  Rather our system is designed to process several hundred thousand email messages a day.  It links each message back to the correct Member and Merchant.  We have been testing the system for weeks to make sure that it works properly.  The system is flawless at linking the email response to the correct Member and Merchant.  The harder part is properly interpreting the content and labeling the status of the request.  Our tests show that the system is quite accurate at the labeling the process.  However, it is not perfect, so we will be adding a ‘flag’ for Members to alert us to mislabeled messages.

You can see the details of all the messages from a given merchant that relate to a specific mail preference request by selecting the Details link.  This will take you to the following page, which is part of My Choices.

Note, that the specific Member’s name has been hidden in this example.  In your account, you will see the exact name and address combination associated with the request and the Merchant’s reply.  In the example above, there are two messages from the merchant about this request.  The first message indicates that they received the request.  The second message indicates that they have confirmed that the given name has been removed from the mailing list.

All of the Preference Activity messages will persist in your Catalog Choice account.  If you would like to have the messages forwarded to your email inbox, go to My Profile and select the check box shown below.

Over the next couple weeks, we will be running more and more messages through our Preference Activity processor.  So if you don’t see any messages in your account right now, they will be there soon.  The Preference Activity system closes the loop with the Merchant.  With over 16 million requests in our system, that is quite a few conversations to close.  We’re quite excited about this enhancement.  Let us know what you think.

The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse provides information on many of the ways your name and address get on lists used to send direct mail.  You can review their information on this topic here.  The following is a brief summary.

If you have done any of the following recently, your name and address are likely on various name rental lists:

1. Participated in a supermarket loyalty club (except California, which prohibits supermarkets from selling such personally identifiable data to third parties (California Civil Code 1749.60).

2. Subscribed to a magazine.

3. Filled out a warranty or registration card.

4. Given money to a charity.

5. Entered sweepstakes.

6. Purchased products online or through a catalog.

7. Carried a mortgage on a home

8. Had a baby

Basically, if you are an active consumer in today’s economy, your name and address are on numerous direct mail lists.  Some companies rent these lists when they send out catalogs in hope of gaining new customers.  They don’t just mail their catalog to anybody.  They use sophisticated analysis to identify prospective consumers whose purchasing patterns make them a good prospect for the company’s products.  It is expensive to rent the list, analyze the data, produce and mail the catalog.

Some Catalog Choice members have complained on this blog and to our customer service team that they are receiving more catalogs since they started using our service. Let me describe why it is highly unlikely that your participation in our service is the cause of additional catalogs, what Catalog Choice is doing to protect your privacy and how we are working to reduce the volume of unsolicited mailings in the United States.

First and foremost, Catalog Choice does not rent or trade your name with anybody.  This notion flies in the face of our mission, values, ethics, by-laws and business practices.  If a customer service representative at a catalog company tells you that we rent and sell names (several have started this rumor), recognize that this employee is not properly informed and politely direct them to get their facts straight.  You can refer them to the ACMA press release about Catalog Choice, the recent DMNews article titled Mail Crowd Rallies for Choice or our Merchant FAQ to get the straight scoop.

Second, merchants who are participating in the Catalog Choice merchant account program have signed a license agreement that prohibits them from renting, trading or sharing the names of Catalog Choice members with anybody.  They can only use the personally identifiable information provided by Catalog Choice to fulfill the mail preference request entered at our site.

Third, it has been surmised by some that merchants are trading the names of Catalog Choice members with others so that consumers will become discouraged with our service.  While anything is possible, we believe that it is highly unlikely that a given merchant would spend thousands of dollars to mail catalogs to consumers who have taken the time opt-out on our site.  Why would the mailer risk their brand value and financial resources on this?  They want to mail people who will buy their products.  Just to make sure that this practice does not occur, we will be instituting a list seeding program.  Through list seeding, we will include specific names in each merchant’s list that if mailed will provide clear evidence of the mailer’s violation of our confidentiality agreement.

Fourth, we never release your email address.  When you make an opt-out request with a most merchants not participating in our service, send the request via email on your behalf by using a unique catalogchoice.org email address that we create for each member-catalog title.  We are not willing to trade a well managed physical mailbox for an email inbox clutter with unwanted email.

I hope this post helps our members understand the source of new catalogs you may be receiving during the holiday season and the steps we are taking to build a secure, scalable mail preference service.  So, this holiday season, if you get a new catalog and you don’t want it in the future, add it to My Choices and we will work tirelessly to get your preference honored.  If you get a catalog that has products you like and you enjoy receiving it, then keep that one coming.  The choice is yours.

If you want to suppress your name from most name rental lists, the best bet at this time is to register your name on the Direct Marketing Association’s Do Not Rent list.  DMA members are suppose to honor this list and not mail catalogs to prospects on this list.  You can register for this list at http://dmachoice.org.  Once you register for this service, go to Other Mail Offers under the Manage My Mail menu on the left hand side of the site.

As always, thanks to all the members who dedicate their valuable time entering your mail preference requests at Catalog Choice.  Without your time and effort, we would not have made such significant progress working with the direct mail industry to reduce unwanted mail over the past year.  With your continued support, we are dedicated to have the best title-specific mail preference service in the country – a service that allows you to choose the mail you no longer wish to receive, reduce the frequency of other titles and go paperless with any merchant.

This holiday season, join thousands of other Catalog Choice members by showing your support for the merchants that are leading the way by honoring your Catalog Choice request.  Over 340 catalog titles are participating in our program and new ones are added every day.  Start your holiday shopping with these merchants by visiting the Cool Catalogs page.

THIS INFORMATION IS FALSE.

We only send your name and address to the merchants you set your mail preference for.  We do not get paid by the merchants for delivering your opt-out request.  The merchants are not permitted to rent or sell your name if Catalog Choice provides it to them.

Furthermore, we do not share your email address with any of the merchants.

If you have been informed that we are selling or renting names, please let us know.  If you are told that we engage in this practice, please refer the merchant to this blog post.

Thanks.