Boxbe Blog

Now here’s a company after my own heart.

Last week, Greendimes landed $20 million in venture capital funding to expand their business.

Greendimes claims to be able to reduce junk mail landing in your snail mail box by 90%. They contact credit card, catalog and other direct mailers on your behalf to get them to stop sending you unwanted mail.

I haven’t signed up for the service yet, but I can tell you that if it works, at $36 a year, it’s probably worth it. I posted a series about reclaiming your physical mailbox back in March. My attempts to decrease junk mail at home have been only somewhat successful and I’ve spent many hours on the phone and filling out forms. While it does seem like I’m receiving less mail overall, it certainly hasn’t stopped altogether.

Having someone like Greendimes watching your back might be just the trick.

Others talking about Greendimes
GigaOm
Earth2Tech
Brian Berliner

Check out their blog for other green tips.

Do you get too much (snail) mail? I do. If you would like to receive less mail, I’ve collected a few ways that can help you decrease the amount of postal mail you receive.

Unsolicited Mail

The Direct Marketing Association of America has set up a service that for $1, they will add your name and address to their “Mail Preference Service.” What does your $1 get you? The site claims that it “will substantially decrease the amount of national advertising mail you receive,” but “not all commercial mail will stop.” It does take a 30-90 days for this service to become effective, but it sounds like a good way to cut back on marketing messages being delivered to your home.

Catalogs

If you’re like me, you receive a number of catalogs in the mail every month. If you have conducted business with any of the catalogs you receive, the above DMA Mail Preference Service may not decrease the number of catalogs you receive.

To remove yourself from catalog mail lists, you’ll probably have to call the catalog company directly, as through my research, their doesn’t seem to be any quick, free way to do this online. To speed the process along, make sure that you have your customer number with you. Customer numbers are near the mailing address on the front or back of the catalog.

Services

I’ve found two services (41 Pounds and Green Dimes) that claim to do all the work for you. I’ve not used them, but using a service might be easier than what I’ve suggested.

Last, here are a couple links with more detailed information about how to shut off specific kinds of postal mail you might not want.

• How to Get Less Junk Mail – CPSR
• Do-it-yourself – Stop junk mail, email and phone calls

I’ve used a few of these techniques personally so I’ll report back as I start to see results. I’m curious to hear if about any other tips you might have. If you have other tips, please share them below.

photo by Flickr user Casey Serin

In a previous post, we talked about how much time it takes to get rid of unwanted mail. Unlike email marketing, direct marketing via postal mail is expensive as they have printing and postage costs.

Email marketers still have to pay to acquire a list of email addresses and to design the email, but largely, the cost of email marketing is carried by the recipients (READ: you and me) in evaluating that email’s value. By charging marketers for your time, many marketers will refine the messages that they send.

But what makes us think marketers will pay? We think they will pay for your attention because they already do.

US Postal Service

I get a lot of mail in my (snail mail) mailbox every day. Usually, our small mailbox is stuffed full of mail. And most of that mail I didn’t request.

Typically, I get 3 kinds of unwanted mail:

• Grocery store inserts
• Catalogs
• Letters/Fliers

I was curious about how much marketers spend to reach me, so I started doing a little research online. Poking around a bit on the USPS website, I discovered their rate calculator for sending commercial mail. They divide commercial mail into several categories.

Standard Mail

Standard mail is the mail that doesn’t seem like mail at all. Standard mail is typically composed of loose fliers from grocery and other local stores, letters sent to “Resident” or any piece of mail that you receive that isn’t addressed to a person. Standard mail is big business for the USPS as it made up almost half of their revenue last year.

Using the USPS’ handy bulk postage calculator, I determined that it costs about $.16 for a 1.7 oz grocery store flyer via standard mail. Naturally, this doesn’t include printing costs, so this isn’t a total cost, but it is a good basis to work from.

Standard mail indiscriminately targets neighborhoods, cities and regions and isn’t targeted beyond the geographic boundaries.

Catalogs

By comparison to standard mail, catalogs are very expensive. By using the same calculator, I calculated my recently received catalogs of 6, 10 and 14 oz in weight, cost $.44, $.51 and $.57 respectively to send. Again, this doesn’t include printing, but where the grocery store flyer was printed on newsprint and unbound, the catalog from the furniture store was printed on high quality glossy paper, which is substantially more expensive.

Catalogs are more targeted, so in theory, the recipient might buy more from that retailer.

So, how much are you worth?

So, what does all this mean? By calculating one cost, bulk rates for direct mail marketing, we’ve established that marketers are willing to pay to get some of your attention. From my own non-scientific study of my mailbox, those marketers are paying somewhere in between $.16 and $.57 for each piece of mail sent.

While we aren’t planning on opening a direct mail division any time soon, we think some of that money ought to be going to you.

We’ve talked about the cost of unwanted email in previous posts, but what about unwanted paper or snail mail?

US Postal Service

In a given week, it’s safe to say that my household receives at least 3-5 credit card offers, 5 catalogs, 4 or 5 grocery fliers and scads of other mail that we never asked for. A very small percentage of the stack of mail is something that I either asked for or actually care about.

I know that I’m not alone in this. The US Postal Service, in their 2006 annual report, states that they send over 102 billion pieces of “Standard Mail” each year. Standard mail, by the way, is composed of loose fliers from grocery and other local stores, letters sent to “Resident” or any piece of mail that you receive that isn’t addressed to someone.

This number doesn’t include the 90 billion pieces of first class mail that is sent each year. First class mail is the regular addressed messages that you receive which could include hand written notes from your aunt or pictures of your 3 year old niece. Sadly, I don’t receive many of those kinds of messages, so most first class mail is unrequested as well.

The cost of uninvited mail

Unlike email, most postal mail must be closely inspected before you dispose of it. The dozens of credit card and mortgage offers I receive monthly contain sensitive information about me or my family. That information offers up an opportunity for identity theft. All of these messages need to be shredded. G

In a previous post about the cost to my time, I established some figures for the wages of the average American, I spend another 5 minutes a day disposing of postal mail and another 15 minutes a week at the shredder.

$18.50 an hour x 21 hours per year = $388.50.  

plus

15 minutes a week x 52 weeks * $18.50 = $240

Added together, unwanted mail costs you about $628 or 34 hours per year in lost time. Ouch.

Identity Theft?

Now, you could argue that I’m overly paranoid when it comes to shredding financial documents, but the cost of having your identity stolen is considerably higher. According to a study by the Identity Theft Resource Center, it takes on average about 330 hours to recover from identity theft.

330 hours x $18.50 = $6,105

There are about 10 million victims of identity theft per year in the US and according to the U.S. Department of Justice Statistics, identity theft is now passing up drug trafficking as the number one crime in the nation.

Long story short, buy a shredder folks.

What’s next?

I’ve looked at the costs of unwanted mail for individuals, but what about the companies that send it? Finally, I’ll end with some tips on how to lower the amount of unwanted mail you receive and help regain some of the your lost time and productivity.

photo by Flickr user MrBG