I am developing a new email service that will incorporate many of the postal mail characteristics and usage rationale to the email medium – with emphasis on direct marketing and B2C CRM mail - ultimately in order to enable the email to take on many of their respective responsibilities. The trend, I believe, is inexorably to digital communication. In few decades, at least in advanced digital societies – from economic pressures to reserve postal mail for essentials, to increasing consumer preference for digital communication, to being mindful of wastes associated with physical mail - the postal mail could be substantially reserved for specialize situations.

Under current practices, Direct mail’s singular advantage over email is that it is: based on the most accurate psychodemographic profiling available (up to 200 data points are being tracked on average US household) and as you mention, mail is not intrusive – i.e. it does not land in their personal inbox, opened, in vivid graphics and language – and thus, it is need not be permission based, which is costly and inefficient. However, in email, the marketer does not have guaranteed delivery or the targetable email addresses that are comparable to the postal addresses (to which the demographic data are appended).

With B2C mails, including financial notices and statements from my service providers, now due to the ability for latest online account access, I am hardly giving more than cursory glance at them, before discarding them – and even this is becoming a slight nuisance and is wasteful. So then, how to migrate?

The question then being, what changes and improvements does the email need, in order to take on more and more of the responsibilities that the society asks of direct marketing and B2C mail.

A solution could be to create a proprietary and controlled access channel, with various optional special handling and delivery services, for select B2C emails that will be trusted and easy to access by the consumers, and for the unsolicited direct marketing email, giving the consumer the choice and ability to engage with the delivery channel at their choosing while, for the marketer, providing guaranteed access and targeting.

Many people, consumers, are unaware of the size of the Graphic Arts Industry and the impact that this industry has on the economy. Pitny Bowes is an example of a company that supports this industry and would be impacted by radical changes in the Direct Mail Industry. However, I also recognize that change is necessary and will occur and I hope that the changes will be a compromise that eases the comsumers burdens but continues to make direct mail a viable advertising channel.

I would be very interested in re-connecting with those that are charged with the internal and customer focused printing at Pitney Bowes as my original contacts have either changed positions or retired. I look forward to your future blog updates on this issue.

Louise

Louise,

I agree completely with your sentiments about unwanted mail. The Direct Marketing Association is moving toward a set of guidelines for its members, which include virtually all of the major mailers, including credit card mailers, that would require them to give you a contact point to get off a solicitation mailing list. You should go to their web site and get linked to their registry — it’s http://www.dmaconsumers.org/cgi/offmailing

Our industry is trying to create mechanisms for selective use of “Do Not Mail” registries. We believe that you are typical in your views: you want the remote control that shuts off individual channels, not one that has just an “On/Off” switch. People want control and choice. We need to deliver that, or our medium will lose relevance and credibility.

- mike

I whole-heartedly support your view on consumers’ freedom to make choices. In that regard, the “Do Not Phone” approach has worked wonderfully for us - much fewer needless interruptions which were numbering 6 per day and now we get a couple a week. My e-mail options also allow me to control, to some degree, minimizing the junk e-mails and again I am the one who makes those decisions.

I hope technology delivers a similar ability for junk mail. I receive on average 6 pieces of junk mail a day. I would like to stop certain pieces that appear month after month with no end in sight. The real bad thing about this junk mail is that you should not just discard it. It needs to be shredded to ensure any of the data does not reach reach the wrong hands if you discard it without shredding. That is an inconvenience greater than hanging up the phone or deleting an e-mail.