I agree that the model that CatalogChoice uses is based on timing. I am not at all faulting your approach which has been helping people for a long time. Stopthejunkmail was, for a long time, the only viable option for controlling your direct marketing choices. This change in the market is going to affect a great number of companies, including direct marketers. People’s expectations about what they should pay for, and how much they should pay, are changing dramatically. That means new opportunities for some, and hard times for others. I certainly don’t see the new “free” market as a solution for everything. Someone has to pay for goods and services, even if it is not initially obvious who that someone is.

Dave

We are hoping that we can remain in business because we offer a complete solution, we are a one stop shop. We offer our members a service to opt out of catalogs and all the other types of direct mail companies out there today. We have all the information a consumer could want about how to opt out of junk mail all in one place. If a consumer were to use catalogchoice.org for catalogs they would also have to go to about 15-20 other services to reduce the other types of junk mail.

I definitely see why stopthejunkmail took the approach that it did. But I still think that CatalogChoice is the better model today. Free to consumers is the right way to do business if you want to attract a huge market. This article from last month’s Wired does a good job of explaining the rationale: http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free.

The 98% statistic is based on my understanding of how direct marketers measure success. It is my understanding that if a direct mailing (catalogs in particular) result in a 2% response rate (meaning 2% of people buy something), that is considered very successful. There are many ways to interpret this statistic, but one is that 98% of the other catalogs are wasted. I understand that direct marketers also look for other “soft” benefits of direct marketing, so a catalog that does not deliver a sale might still be considered useful. But in my view it is a marketing method that has gone past its useful life, mainly because of scale. Chris Jordan’s piece “Toothpicks” does a good job of visually explaining the size of the waste involved in direct marketing: http://popsci.typepad.com/popsci/2007/12/index.html

I do see a risk with CatalogChoice getting exclusive rights for opt-outs with catalog companies. It has nothing to do with their non (or not-for) profit status, or shutting down competitors, which is just part of business (non-profits are businesses too). But there is a risk that they will be co-opted to the direct marketers because of the relationship. Whether this happens or not depends on the character of the people running CatalogChoice and how they react to the pressure they will definitely get from direct marketers. But clearly it is better than the DMA, which is just a lobby group for the industry.

I think it is likely that the risks of exclusive opt-outs for CatalogChoice are out-weighed by the benefits. The main benefit being that Direct Marketers will realize they no longer have full control over consumers’ marketing choices. And free is definitely the right price for that control.

I am not sure where your 98% statistic comes from but if you want statistics on why direct marketing is the most effective way of marketing try this website minethatdata.blogspot.com by Kevin Hillstrom.