Diamonds in the Junk (Mail)
OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS: If you live anywhere in the United States, then you know exactly what I am talking about. Junk Mail is the bane of modern existence. And no, I am not talking about junk email, but I am talking about junk mail, of the old fashioned snail mail variety.
It is quite frustrating to come home after a long day to find your mailbox stuffed with credit card offers, slick marketing messages to buy a house or auto insurance and notices of sales taking place in your city. And then there are those catalogues, which are getting bigger and bigger everyday.
They are actually fun – nice photos of objects/things you can’t really afford, but wish you could. Anyway I think the problems start when companies start sending you catalogs that really don’t have anything to do with your interests, your shopping history or even your gender.
Take for example JCrew, which continues to send me a women’s wear catalog, even though I have bought more Khakis from them than any man should ever be allowed to. Same goes for socks and other personals. JCrew must have my sales history somewhere on their online store which could help them more accurately define me as a customer. And yet, JCrew is gender confused. I am guessing I am not the only one who is getting the real junk catalogues.
The mistakes are in sharp contrast to say, Amazon’s recommendation engine, which despite being less than accurate does a pretty good job of identifying things we are most likely to be interested in acquiring.
In the past, there have been stories about how TiVo confused someone for being either too young or too old, but at least that’s based on viewing patterns. But catalog companies tend to make mistakes despite having all the demographic and personal information.
Why is that? Why is a company that thrives on catalog sales making these mistakes? I am assuming they have a pretty sophisticated computing infrastructure, and have pretty well defined databases, and yet the mistakes – which given the escalating costs of paper, printing and postage are only going to go up.
It seems what these guys need is a better analytical tool, a more sophisticated data mining utility, that reduces waste and is more accurate. Sort of like what Google did for web search! The current generation of tools – I frankly don’t have a clue which ones – are clearly not doing the job. Opportunity?
I don’t want to pick on Jcrew — I should be harder instead on the auto insurance folks who send blind flyers. I guess they could use help in identifying the fact that I don’t own a car, and never have. I mean these companies are buying up leads and spending millions on acquiring names to send junk mail to – they are likely to spend less on a tool that actually works and helps them cut costs and monetize their efforts better.
I hope someone does build a better tool, because I am sick and tired of Urban Outfitters sending me their catalog, and reminding me that I am now in the middle age, and can’t really fit into cool clothes the kids are wearing these days!
Update: Opportunity grabbed. My good buddy Pankaj Shah has started a company, Green Dimes to save all of us from Junk Mail. And on top of that the company is actually doing something good. Check it out.
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Yeah, it should be so easy to analyze that data. Weird stuff.
Agreed.
I signed up for Green Dimes, a startup which claims they can reduce your junk mail and will plant a tree every month for every person who uses their service.
http://www.greendimes.com/
I still get junk mail, though it does seem like I get less.
The unique thing about the Green Dimes service (aside from the tree planting) is that they periodically ask for you to be removed from all the major junk mailers. Most services are a one-time removal, and you then find your way back on a few months later.
ian
I could be giving JCrew way too much credit here, but is there any chance they are sending you a women’s wear catalogue because they know you’re a man who already buys the items he actually needs (khakis), the items suggest you are middle age, and the combination of the previous data suggests it is a good idea to send you a catalogue that would encourage you to spend money on your wife?
N.C
That would be fine if there was a single item for women that was bought by me. In other words I have been a shopper with them for about 5 years, and not a single piece of women’s clothing – doesn’t that kinda say: dude’s single.
Better yet, wouldn’t real spam filtering be nice. Even if mail took say an extra day or two to reach my house… USPO should consider filtering services. Where you can white-list all of your bills and blacklist certain categories of junk. Any service doing that would make a ton of money. Perhaps could even sell opt-out information back to the originators of the spam.
The problem doesn’t seem that bad to me. It take me just a few seconds to sift through the mail and get the unwanted wood products into the recycle bin. You need a to develop a personal image recognition algorithm to identify quickly thing you need to throw away and those that you want to throw away (e.g., bills) but are forced to keep.
BTW, did you notice that rebate checks are packaged like junk mail? Save the rebaters some money.
Finally, it looks like you try to project your own behavioral targeting rules on jcrew. Who knows, maybe they have data that shows that relentless sending of catalogs has some benefits, e.g., brand recognition.
This may give catalog retailers too much credit, but the fact that they are still in business means that they are doing something right.
Sure you can recycle the stuff but we got so many catalogs this past holiday season we could have heated Maine by burning them all. What gets me is that if you order something online, you immediately start getting catalogs — talk about not responding to customer preferences!
And then don’t forget affiliates — hey, if they ordered sweaters well then they will love boots. And don’t get me started on kids’ stuff. I’d bet the first major retailer that makes a point of not printing catalogs will get a lot of sales from folks who don’t want to contribute to the waste.
GEICO thinks I have a fleet of cars apparently. Victoria’s Secret thinks I have a secret. BellSouth can’t get over our breakup.
The biggest hassle is a mailbox packed to the point of absurdity.
My first naive idea is that mailboxes should have a “flip the card” concept just like a Brazilian steakhouse.
Of course, this would likely translate as a pile up at final distribution of the offending materials. So, perhaps it would have to be something slightly more elegant at the postmaster initial routing level.
You mention auto insurance companies blindly sending you stuff when you don’t have a car…
How about when your own auto insurance company keep sending you mail (addressed to you, not “resident”), asking you to switch to them? Geico does this.
I second the mention of Green Dimes above: http://www.greendimes.com/
They seem to be reducing our junkmail weight.
Junk mail can be real problem for some – particularly for those living in planned communities with small clustered mailboxes. I know.
More than once, I found my mailbox empty upon returning home from a 2 or 3 day business trip.
The post office had actually put a stop on my mail service because my box had become full – mostly with junk mail! And most of this junk wasn’t even address to me or my g/f. It was addressed to ‘resident’ at?
And rather than leave what had accumulated up to the overflow, they pulled all the mail and placed a temporary stop on the service.
Their reasoning? The USPS assumed that we had moved or had gone on a long vacation.
Naturally, I asked if I could fill out a form which would block any mail not addressed specifically to us. No can do! Irrespective of the recipient name, businesses have paid postage to have the mail delivered to a specific address and the USPS is obligated the follow through on that service.
But in doing so, this generic mail was actually blocking real mail. Go figure…