21 pounds of Grade A junk mail!
Ben McConnell of the Church of the Customer Blog has made a habit of collecting his junk mail and weighing it at the end of each year. This year’s tally: a record 21.5 pounds! You can read his comments about it here:
. . . Until the industry seriously considers enforcing a permission-driven system, rather than its favored opt-out model, the tide against snail-mail spam will probably only get stronger.
Agree/disagree?
I agree. Consumer/citizens will tolerate all sorts of nonsense up to a point, and then if they can’t get relief from companies, they will turn to regulators or the courts. (It’s the same thing that’s going on with the airline industry’s refusal to establish a maximum time that airliners can wait on the tarmac before offering passengers some relief.)
For myself, I certainly understand it when I get offers to re-up for things I’ve done before (charitable contributions, magazine subscriptions, etc.). I don’t mind straightforward advertisements by mail when they put their value proposition plainly. (GEICO, I’ve found, is pretty good for this: I don’t use them, but I can respect straightforward messages like “You could save up to 20% on car insurance. See inside for more information.”) But I also get a lot of nonsense. Me personally, I just open it all while standing over the recycling bin, and while I regret the waste of paper, I don’t let it get under my skin.
But there are surely others who take it much more seriously, as McConnell’s reference to pending legal fights against direct-marketers makes clear.
What about you? Does junk mail direct marketing mail anger you? Disgust you? Amuse you? Delight you?
Category: Advertising2 Comments so far
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No one likes junk mail, but most everyone loves good direct mail. Recall when you last went to the mailbox and nothing was there. What were your thoughts? “Is it a holiday? Is the postal carrier running late? Was there mail delivery today?” You likely found it hard to believe that YOU did not get any mail on that given day.
Postal mail and good direct mail make us feel wanted and known. If done correctly it educates us and often includes great offers about products and services that interest us.
I love direct mail.
As for 21.5 pounds of mail, I’d ask what does one year of your local paper weigh? What about your magazines? I can assure you it’s much more than 21.5 pounds.
Grant — Spoken like a seasoned direct marketer!
I don’t mind you defending your line of work. By no means would I say it’s a dihonorable field to be in. But you do beg a few questions here:
1. I’ve been mulling this over, and I can’t think of a *single* piece of “good direct mail” that I’ve loved. Maybe, in a few cases, from companies with whom I already had a relationship. (Example: AmEx sends some great — as well as some not-so-great — promotions to platinum card holders.)
2. Going to the mailbox and finding it empty would, in many cases, merely save me standing over the recycling bin and filling it with misdirected, intelligence-insulting, or simply absurd direct mail.
3. Paper mail makes me feel wanted and known when it’s something that I *want* to receive. I feel this way about Christmas cards I get from friends, letters from grandma, my favorite magazines, etc. The vast bulk (I use the word intentionally) of direct mail I receive, if it makes me feel anything, makes me feel pestered.
4. You’ve hit on it when you say “if done correctly.” I assume you’re one of the good ones who *does* it correctly — and more power to you. But many, many of the pieces I get are *not* done correctly. In some cases, direct mail makes me much *less* likely to buy.
5. The 21.5 pounds of mail is apples-to-oranges in comparison to newspapers and magazines. Okay, sure, if it’s all going into the recyling bin, the magazines and papers weigh more. But magazines and papers are things that *I* chose, not that were foisted upon me.
Again, I don’t mean to slag your whole profession. Once upon a time I worked in the nonprofit / development field, and I’m well aware of how reliant charities are on direct mail in their annual campaigns. There *are* good ways of doing direct mail. It’s just that most consumers are far *more* saturated with the bad ways of doing it.