To paraphrase what I hear often on Marketing Over Coffee, you are only as good as your house list. Maybe more people should be listening to that podcast.

As the year draws to the end, it is catalog season – that time of the year when our collective mailboxes are jammed with catalogs from companies you have and never have heard of and will most likely never buy from. But that doesn’t stop them from sending me catalogs, sometimes multiple copies, both to my home and work addresses. In what has become almost a mindless ritual, I rip off the back cover and inside order form, shred them, and put the catalog in the recycle bin. I had thought of creating a YouTube video of me doing this, but it doesn’t take much imagination to know what I do on a daily basis.

Some catalogs have a message on the back saying you can unsubscribe to the catalog by calling them or visiting their Web site. As this is not usually worth my time, I haven’t bothered. My mindset changed the other day when Lands’ End, who is already sending catalogs to myself and my wife at both my home and work address, sent one to my daughter. Did I mention my daughter is a baby? Sure she got some very nice presents by friends and family from Lands’ End, but was that an invitation to add her to their catalog mailing list?

I have since sent emails to Lands’ End asking to remove her from their database, and pointing out her age and general inability to shop from them, let alone read the catalog. I got back a generic message, indicating that since catalogs are pre-printed, they may continue arriving. This means I will be getting them pretty much every other day through February of next year.

Lands’ End is being singled out as an evil-doer as they sent my infant daughter a catalog. I happen to like their merchandise and have several items from them. I am fully aware the nature of the catalog business, but in these times of a tight economy, identity theft and overall environmental consciousness, maybe do an address de-dupe on your database and just send us one. Not that we’ll buy anymore from them, but for sure you won’t have me calling them evil on my blog!

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Comments

I’d have to say that the worst offender in my mailbox is Penny Saver. For catalogs, B&H;sends me a book of their entire inventory every quarter or so. An office supply company sends me a substantial tome on a regular basis too. Their name eludes me at the moment. Oh yeah, does the Yellow Book that piles up on my doorstep count?

Comment by btn
on 11/18/08 at 07:33 PM
 

Tome - excellent word choice!

As for Yellow Books… back in the dot-com days my office was in the same building as Yellow Book.  One day they dropped off 2 pallets of books by the elevators.  Later that day I looked around the low-cubicle office I was in and everybody’s monitor was a little higher, thanks to a few Yellow Books!

mp/m

Comment by Mike Maddaloni
on 11/18/08 at 08:22 PM
 

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