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After neglecting my mailbox for a week I opened it today to find a heap of letters fall out. As you can imagine the bulk of it consisted of promotions from local companies and pre-approved credit card offerings. The junk seems to pile higher with each passing year.
While shredding these annoying messages, my curiosity overcame me and I opened a letter from American Express. I say curious in the sense that I wanted to know if they provided an opt-out method. To my surprise AE offered a prominent phone number at the footer for opting out from pre-screened offers. Now with a piqued interest, I set about scouring the web and discovered www.optoutprescreen.com.
Happily I opted out of receiving further pre-screened credit offerings from the Credit Bureaus for five years. Now if only I could pick and choose which advertisements reach my mail box from local companies. The Direct Marketing Association offers a way to remove your name from many national companies lists but that still leaves a lot of noncomplying third parties. A growing tide of consumers are fed up with unsolicited mail and their limited options in preventing it.
According to mailmovesamerica.org:
Advertising mail is under threat. In 2007, 15 states proposed the creation of state Do Not Mail registries, similar to the national do not call registry, or are considering other limitations on advertising mail. This is a significant increase in the number of Do Not Mail bills seen in previous years; three in 2005 and four in 2006.
Considering that consumer control over other communication mediums is increasing this development is not extraordinary but an expected trend. The tone taken by mailmovesamerica is that successful legislation on this front will put hard working people out of work and hamper the US economy. Not a surprising viewpoint, especially since the MMA site is created by the Direct Marketing Association. I partially agree with the DMA, direct mail should continue if it provides personal, relevant communication, however I consider these moves by state governments to be the wake up call Direct Marketers need to clean up their act.
I understand the creative cycle and implementation take longer for print, yet that does not mean the medium should be held less accountable than Internet marketing.
New Standards For Direct Mail:
Definitely not fool proof methods for stemming the influx of Spam bulk mailings. But it is time for the industry to show a little restraint. Direct Marketers must learn to self-regulate, it will be better than the consequences of zero-tolerance Do Not Mail bills.
