Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Do you hate junk mail?

Like most of us, the answer is almost certainly yes.

Now there is another good reason for detesting that pile of useless paper that drops through your letter box each week. This from BusinessGreen.com suggests that junk mail, just in the USA alone, has a carbon footprint equivalent to some nine million cars!

Now that sounds like a great reason for banning unsolicited junk mail to me! (Unless you've elected to opt in to receive it.)

3 comments:

Emma said...

Devil's Advocate/Junkk Male RE:view editorial hat time again!

Actually, I don't hate junk mail. Certainly I find poorly targetted, woefully created missives that waste my time and fill up the bin in an orgy of waste a nuisance, but no more.

I also have, on more than one occasion, found stuff I am sent to be of value, resulting in purchases and/or actions I am happy with.

I am also not too keen on a 'ban', without that blanket term being more precisely defined, and more fairly related to every aspect of consumer-driven business behaviour. I don't know the numbers, but how about 'banning' sales calls or 'exhibition attendances'. Lots of folk going lots of places with no certainty of a sale. How many photocopier guys on the M4 right now?

Maybe they should be removed too, but careful what you wish for. Does your product have a brochure... packaging... etc?

I agree some restraint is required. There is of course the TPA/FPA equivalent (name escapes me), but frankly I have agreed, or not disagreed to so many related offers of info, online and off, I'd be hard pressed to know, or both with whoever may have abused my in-box.

There's also who is to police this... The Royal mail? Hardly in their interests.

Frankly I'd favour some kind of e2DM system, where by they can send me a message asking if I'd be keen on getting the pack in question. I can opt for PDF or the fully monty.

Dave said...

I forgot to include the word 'unsolicited' in the post. Now modified accordingly.

Yes, if you've opted in, I have no problem with it - you have brought the problem upon yourself. But I can personally fill half a bin-liner each month with totally unsolicited cr*p that I haven't asked for, don't want, and would never have a need for. Now that, in anybody's terms, has got to be a total waste of resources. And now having a feel for just what a significant carbon footprint junk mail has makes me even more anti it.

And yes, of course our product range has brochures, and packaging, but we would never mail our stuff to people unsolicited.

Emma said...

Hey, don't get me wrong. If I never get another of more than a dozen templates for certain predictably dire propositions (usually financial) it will be a day of celebration.

Hence my trying to figure out how one piques interest in an environmental manner, that also provokes a postive invitation to 'send more'.

And just to be clear, I was not not meaning to talk about anyone's marketing inventory specifically... more a general 'us'. Even Junkk.com has a fair share of dead tree reassembly products.