From One Liberal to Another, Shame on You: 10 Flaws in the Latest Do-Not-Mail Initiative

OK, that may be a stretch, but it’s all consistent with the frequent hypocrisy and absurdity of this endeavor.

A Positive ‘Epilogue’
Finally, let’s shift over to one of the other groups targeting catalogers. Here’s an example of catalogers taking action based on the Catalog Choice initiative: Peter Grebus, who heads Williams-Sonoma’s customer information management group, said in a session during the NEMOA Conference on March 13 in Cambridge, Mass., that the multichannel home furnishings marketer “wants to be ‘the person’ our customers talk to, to develop the right marketing channels” and contacts, he said. “We want to allow them to go to the channels they’re interested in.”

Working off of opt-outs Williams-Sonoma received from Catalog Choice’s Do-Not-Mail effort, Grebus noted that 77 percent of those who opted out of Pottery Barn purchased from Pottery Barn at some point, spending upwards of $18 million. (Uh, Kramer?) What’s more, 53 percent of them had purchased from Pottery Barn over the past two years, spending $4.6 million. The average Pottery Barn opt-out received 9.8 contacts from the company last year.

Also indicative of catalogers investigating consumers’ true objectives — and their lack of understanding just what they’re doing — when opting out, Elizabeth Pearce, director of marketing at Country Casual, pointed out during Grebus’ session that many consumers “have real misperceptions of what they’re opting out of” when using Catalog Choice. “They don’t realize they won’t get any catalogs when they do this. They’re on a site to opt out and sometimes they wind up requesting our catalog.”

Country Casual has received 40 catalog requests from people who logged onto Catalog Choice over the past eight to 10 weeks. Further proof that many consumers don’t truly understand what Catalog Choice and ForestEthics are doing.