At the end of this article titled “DMA, Forest Ethics trade jibes Over SF Do Not Mail Resolution” (the article’s actually not that exciting), the writer asks a “lobbyist” for his/her take on how to continue to beat down Do Not Mail and consumer choice:
The Lobbyist’s Take: Consumers are not just price-sensitive, in today’s economy they’re price-driven. If this resolution ever threatens to be put to public vote, individual mailers should use mass media to showcase examples of bargains available only to through-the-mail shoppers…and then point out that any consumer electing to be on the do-not-mail list is going to pay more. Note the wording there, folks: It ain’t about missing out: it’s about paying more. We’re in hard-sell times. And an interesting note: Postmaster general Jack Potter has commented that when standard mail volume drops, per-piece standard mail prices rise. Any local SF merchants, who use direct mail to generate foot traffic, care to weigh in?
I’ll weigh in!
The whole logic behind this strikes me as weird. Let me see if I understand this right:
- Marketers know that large numbers of Americans would prefer not to be advertised to through the mail;
- This lobbyist is suggesting that instead of taking this information to heart and adapting to give customers what they want, direct marketers should reject their customers’ wishes and instead try to limit their customers’ options only to the thing that they don’t want, in the hopes of convincing them that what they don’t want is actually something that they do want.
Like, doesn’t this violate some pretty basic tenets of marketing? This is like NBC or CBS taking their worst rated show and, instead of canceling it, putting it on 24 hours a day: “Then they’ll have no choice but to like it!”
[...] them, junk mail must continue to be sent to people who don’t want it. A while back we covered this lobbyist’s advice that companies should give customers special offers via junk mail that aren’t available [...]