Business Junk Mail Reduction Project

Mentor Graphics is a large software company in Portland, Oregon. Several years ago, Mentor identified the oldest 16,000 names on one of its mailing lists. It hired two "temps" at $10/hour for two months each to try to "clean up" this segment of the mailing list. The temps would use the computer to sort and print names by location - sometimes 100 or 200 names would all be at the same business address, for example. The response was very positive. Mail room managers in these customer companies were ecstatic about the opportunity to get a single list from Mentor Graphics and cross off the names of everyone who had moved or left. After 2 months, Mentor Graphics learned that 12,000 of the 16,000 names/addresses were incorrect!!! This effort cost $6,928. It saves Mentor Graphics $13,920 every year in printing, postage, and handling costs ($1.16 per brochure). It also prevents 3,225 pounds of waste.

Mentor Graphics also: Labels all direct mail as "Return Postage Guaranteed"; buys return postage for Standard Class (formerly Third-Class) mailings that are returned as undeliverable; maintains a system for deleting these names from databases (as well as undeliverable, returned First-Class mail); and has consolidated what used to be several separate mailing lists into one computer database, which allows the company to more selectively target its audiences for different mailings, resulting in less waste.

Source: David Allaway, Harding Lawson Associates, Portland, Oregon, November 1999. E-mail: dallaway@harding.com

Example of Opt-Out Format: Quill Corp.

The Quill Corporation, based in Lincolnshire, Illinois, sells discount office products to businesses and government offices. The back page of its July, 2000, catalog has a great example of how a company can make it easy for its customers to "opt out" of mailings. Just above the mailing label is a little box that says "MODIFY" and has these check-off boxes:
__ Change as shown
__ Remove individual from list
__ Remove company from list
__ Individual left company

The customer can check off one of those boxes, than send in this information and the mailing label to Quill, at a special address. Quill also provides a toll-free fax number, if the customer wants to send it to them that way.

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