Telemarketing has felt the affects of the National Do Not Call Registry, and now, it looks like catalog mailers will be the next group to be rejected by consumers thanks to a nonprofit agency, CatalogChoice.org. According to the CatalogChoice.org website, the group's mission is, "to reduce the number of repeat and unsolicited catalog mailings, and to promote the adoption of sustainable industry best practices."
Anyone can register on CatalogChoice.org then search the catalog database and decline those catalogs they don't want. CatalogChoice.org then notifies the companies that send the catalogs the registrant declined and requests that the registrant's name be removed from the mailing lists for those catalogs.
The environment is one of the main concerns behind CatalogChoice.org who states on their website that 53 million trees are used each year to print 19 billion catalogs. That's a lot of trees being used to produce a lot of catalogs that end up in the garbage can. With that in mind, CatalogChoice.org is a great idea.
So what does CatalogChoice.org mean to marketers? Of course, it's important to remember that there are no legalities behind CatalogChoice.org as there are with the National Do Not Call Registry, but there certainly is a negative PR risk if companies don't comply with customers' requests to be removed from their catalog mailing lists. At the same time, it could be argued that most people who request not to receive catalogs from specific companies would be unlikely to make purchases from those catalogs if they did receive them, so CatalogChoice.org is actually helping companies by weeding out the least profitable customers.
I think overall that CatalogChoice.org is a good thing for marketers by helping them create more targeted catalog mailing lists, which should ultimately increase ROI.
What do you think about CatalogChoice.org - good or bad for direct marketers?
Great post on Catalog Choice.
I wanted to give you a heads-up on another great Web site that I thought your readers would find interesting and help them de-clutter their mailboxes and simplify their lives.
Its called ProQuo.com, a free, easy-to-use site that gives you the ability to remove yourself from the most commonly used marketing lists in a matter of minutes!
Who knew that Americans receive nearly four million tons of junk mail each year and the average consumer can be on thousands of marketing mailing lists at any time? We are flooded with unwanted advertisements, credit card offers and political propaganda, which can bury the mail we are looking for…not to mention create a drain on the environment.
Take care,
Carly VanDyke
PainePR
Posted by: Carly | January 28, 2008 11:39 AM | Permalink to Comment