City Calls On California To Give Citizens Choice Over Junk Mail

SAN FRANCISCO, March 31 — The San Francisco Board of Supervisors today passed a resolution calling on California to create a Do Not Mail Registry giving its citizens the choice to stop receiving unwanted junk mail.

Though non-binding, the resolution represents the first time American lawmakers have withstood pressure from the direct mail industry and the U.S. Postal Service to side with the majority of Americans.

Sponsored by Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, the board approved the resolution by a 9-2 vote.

“Until now, junk mailers have stifled all efforts to give Americans what they want: an enforceable, comprehensive solution to junk mail’s waste and annoyance” said ForestEthics Executive Director Todd Paglia. “San Francisco is the first city in the United States to take political action against junk
mail, marking the beginning of a long-awaited government intervention to protect citizens from relentless and predatory junk mailers.”

Bills calling for Do Not Mail Registries have failed in more than 20 states, despite widespread frustration with junk mail. A 2007 Zogby poll revealed that 89% of Americans support the creation of a national registry.

“Reducing junk mail is in keeping with our nation’s efforts to reduce our carbon footprint and lead more sustainable lifestyles,” said Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, upon passage of his Do Not Mail Resolution. “Just as Do Not Call overcame industry opposition to become the most popular consumer rights bill in history, I hope that this resolution will empower our representatives on the state and federal level to represent their constituents on this issue.”

Supervisor Mirkarimi has a record of trailblazing leadership on a variety of issues and policies, including the nation’s first municipal ban on plastic bags, and commuter benefits requirements for San Francisco businesses.

More than 93,000 Americans have signed ForestEthics’ petition at donotmail.org calling for the creation of a national Do Not Mail Registry.

Every year 100 million trees are logged to produce the 100 billion pieces of junk mail Americans receive. Junk mail’s production generates the carbon emissions of over 9 million cars. U.S. junk mail accounts for 30% of all the mail delivered in the world, though 44% of it goes to landfills unopened.

Visit donotmail.org for more information.

SOURCE ForestEthics

William Craven of ForestEthics, +1-415-407-3426

The Postal Service doesn’t like the term “junk mail”, and for obvious reasons, neither do the people who use direct mailings to sell their products. So it might come as a surprise to find that the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) uses the term in advertisements for its “dmachoice.org” web site. One ad says “Postal service junk mail Choose Only The Catalogs You Want! Free Service Supported by the USPS”. Another reads “Stop Paper Junk Mail” Reduce Mailbox Clutter- Sign Up for DMA’s Mail Preference Service!”

Interestingly enough, the term “junk mail” doesn’t appear on the dmachoice site itself, although it is included in the keyword code for several pages. Keywords are embedded in the HTML code of web pages, and can be used by search engines, but aren’t visible to a person viewing the page.

Rochester, NY (PRWEB) December 7, 2007 — Kodak, the world’s foremost imaging innovator, announced an new arrangement between Kodak and multi-channel technology specialist Indros Group. This arrangement includes an integration between Kodak’s Darwin VI Authoring Tool and Indros Group’s Easy Personalized URLs (www.easypurl.com), a popular platform for creating personalized URLs and customized landing pages for direct mail that is used by many of the nation’s top agencies and printers.

This integration will enable users of Kodak Darwin VI Authoring Tool to add personalized URLs to their direct mail campaigns using Indros’s solution. Personalized URLs allow prospects to respond to direct mail by visiting a web page created expressly for each individual respondent.

Kodak Darwin VI Authoring Tool converts documents originated in QuarkXpress and Adobe InDesign into variable data documents in which all elements — text, graphics, colors, layout, charts, backgrounds, personalized images and even entire pages — can be dynamic. Darwin VI authoring software can create complex campaigns with many changes in variable elements without the need for scripting or programming, working with very large databases of recipients.

“Darwin VI Authoring Tool users will (now) be able to add URLs for personalized landing pages to direct mail pieces, providing an immediate response mechanism for recipients. Adding this web function drives better conversion of prospects, increased response, profiling and more effective tracking of campaign results,” noted Gershon Alon, Director, On-Demand Applications, Kodak’s Print On Demand Solutions. “The cross-media capabilities enabled means commercial printers can now offer their customers the opportunity to increase responses to their mailings while shortening response time, using the web to offer prospects the ability to visit a personalized website.”

“We are excited about this integration,” explained Tej Kohli, Executive Vice President at Indros Group. “Darwin VDP software customers can now gain access to our Personalized URL technology in a streamlined manner, allowing for an integrated campaign workflow. Additional, our robust reporting interface will provide users of Darwin VI detailed analytics in real-time. For agencies and printers, creating personalized multi-channel direct mail campaigns has never been easier.”

The Indros Group solution works with the Windows version of Darwin software (v.2.0). To test the latest version of the Darwin VI authoring tool, visit

www.graphics.kodak.com/darwin.

Volume and revenue numbers for the fiscal year that ended September 30 were released at the last BOG meeting, but you can get a better picture of the changes facing the USPS by taking a look at the RPW numbers that were posted last week. RPW stands for Revenue, Pieces and Weights, and the RPW reports contain the basic numbers used to calculate postal budgets, and to set postal rates.

Here are some of the more interesting items in this year’s data:

• First class single piece volume fell by 3%, or 1.3 billion pieces.  Total first class volume was only down by 0.5%, but that’s because volume actually increased in the discounted Automation Presort category. Consider this- the average revenue from each first class single piece item was 47 cents. Average revenue from each Automation Presort piece was less than 32 cents.
• Standard mail was up by 1.5%, or 1.5 billion pieces, and once again there was more standard mail than first class overall. Average revenue for each piece of standard mail was 19.4 cents.
• Priority mail volume was up by 4.1%. Priority is one of the highest profit margin services the USPS offers, but is still represents a relatively small piece of the pie, at about seven percent of total mail revenue.

What it all boils down to is this- like it or not, the high revenue, monopoly-status volume is continuing to decline. The lower revenue, less stable advertising volume will continue to increase. (Less stable? Yes- bank statements have to be mailed every month- catalogs can be cancelled if the economy suddenly turns sour) Right now the conventional wisdom seems to be that hard copy, mailed ads and catalogs can drive both mail order and online sales. That’s an equation that’s subject to change, however, as the web mindset matures- given the cost difference between electronic and postal ad delivery, it might not take much to arrive at a tipping point where electronic delivery of advertising sweeps hard copy delivery away.

Meanwhile, package and expedited delivery services continue to show healthy growth, but not enough to entirely make up for the loss of first class revenue. 

And in the background, the likelihood of arbitrated labor agreements and the dimly seen shape of postal reform add to the suspense…

Revenue, Pieces and Weight (RPW) reports

A lot has been written the lasy year or so about ‘web 2.0′, ‘the long tail’, and the changes in the ways people interact with what they see online. What does that have to do with advertising mailers? Quite a bit, according to this series on Marigold Technologies’ Direct Marketing blog:

Direct mail meets Web 2.0

Jim Logan explains the difference.

Jim Logan – 10 Tips To Improve Your B-B and B-G Direct Mail Campaigns

Seth Godin makes a good point how a seemingly small difference in the return address of an envelope can alter your perception of the piece. I didn’t throw away my Google check the first time it arrived in one of those non-descript ‘Buffalo NY’ envelopes, but I remember opening it over the wastebasket, assuming it was another credit card offer.

What made me open it a little more carefully was the fact that it wasn’t standard (’bulk’) mail. A standard piece that tries to look like a confidential communication (i.e. no company or agency name in the return address, plain formatting), is an ad for sure, and likely to get tossed unopened. The same envelope sent first class is pretty likely to be either good news or bad news- either way you gotta open it.

The other piece in Seth’s picture actually is first class, but it’s just a higher level ad- the phony endorsement gives it away- “Business Mail- Penalty for Tampering”. (So personal letters are fair game for ‘tampering’? And even if there were, would anyone mistake this for a personal letter?)

The return address