Southern Beale is drowning…

We’re drowning in catalogs at the Beale household. There’s a whiff of panic in this daily retail blitzkrieg: where in the past I may have received two or three catalogs from a particular retailer, now we’re getting dozens from each one.

But she’s not gonna take it them anymore. See what she’s planning to do to reduce the number of dead trees that show up in her mailbox.

I send direct mail for a living and lemme tell ya, we really don’t want to send anything to people that don’t want it…for the most part. Because it reduces our ROI (return on investment), which is a key measurement of success (and job performance). The good ones among us track every piece we send to see if one cover or image or type of correspondence worked better than another and overall, we want to get the highest response rate we can from every postcard/letter/catalog. And if it’s going directly in the recycle bin, it’s not doing anyone any good. If there’s a particular mailer out there that’s been sending you unwanted dead trees, in addition to what Southern Beale is doing, I suggest simply calling them and asking to be removed from the mailing list. Most of them are more than willing (and even happy) to oblige.* It saves money and hassle.

 Which reminds me…I really need to call L.L. Bean and ask them to stop sending catalogs…

*Financial institutions notwithstanding. They don’t care and will send you junk all the live-long day.