Direct mail marketers want to force junk mail on us.

The Direct Mail Association is lobbying Congress to reject any do-not-mail legislation that comes before them. The DMA is claiming that giving U.S. citizens the right to opt out of direct mail marketing will lead to catastrophic losses in business revenue that will cripple the American economy and lead to the downfall of businesses. These are scare tactics that don’t make any sense. People who will choose to opt out are the ones that never respond to direct marketing campaigns anyway, but rather have such impatience for the solicitations that they toss them, unopened, into the first bin they can find! Companies can actually save money when honoring opt out requests, because they’ll be less likely to send mail to people who don’t want it.

The reason legislation is so important is that the means available for opting out of junk mail now are disjointed, non-inclusive and sometimes ineffective. They include:

1. Contacting a business and asking to be removed from their mailing list. This method is time consuming and the least effective. (I’ve called Qwest Communications four times this year already, and I’m still receiving junk mail from them!)
2. Opting out of DMA member mailings at dmachoice.org. This will remove you only from mailing lists produced by DMA members.
3. Opting out of insurance and credit offers from major credit agencies (Equifax, Experian, Innovis, TransUnion) at optoutprescreen.com This won’t completely stop unsolicited credit offers since not all credit issuers use the opt out lists compiled by these four credit bureaus.
4. Opting out of catalogs from Abacus Cooperatives at abacusoptout.com The Abacus Cooperative is only a partial list of catalog and retail companies.
5. Opting out of specific catalogs at catalogchoice.org
6. Signing up with a company that will do all of the above for you, for example: Mailstopper or 41pounds.

The holes in the current mail opt-out “system” permits the waste of tens of millions of trees each year to produce unsolicited and unwanted mail. National do-not-mail legislation is really the only way to make the direct mail industry efficient and stop the colossal waste.

The DMA is working hard to turn Congress against national do-not-mail legislation. Please go to DoNotMail.org to show your support for do-not-mail legislation.

Share and Enjoy: