Pro-Choice

The theme of John Greco's opening address at DMA07 last month was “choice” — choice for consumers.

Good topic. But it did give rise to a heretical thought: Maybe DMA members should have a choice of trade associations, too.

Sorry to sound so negative, but a couple of things Greco said don't yet add up. (We're writing this the morning of the speech.)

Yes, there's strength in numbers, and that's why companies gather under the DMA's big tent. But what good did that do catalog mailers? They suffered more than anyone during the recent postal rate case. Is the tent too big?

The DMA can't be blamed for every vagary of the ratemaking process. But it's a measure of how desperate mailers feel that a whole new trade group has sprung up — the American Catalog Mailers Association.

Another quibble is with Greco's unveiling of the DMA's Commitment to Consumer Choice initiative. It's a great idea, and only scam artists could oppose it. But why did we wait until 2007?

Yeah, we know — the DMA is codifying and mandating guidelines it's had in place for years. And there's a need to educate new DMers on best practices.

But what's really new?

The DMA wants to enable consumers to “modify or eliminate future mailings” from individual companies, Greco said. And it's developed language that firms can use to do all this.

That's hardly breakthrough thinking. In 1995, long before widespread use of e-mail, Ernan Roman wrote an article for Direct on customer preference databases. As he reported, IBM asked customers when, where and how they wanted to receive communications, and blended their answers with other data. And it honored those preferences.

Granted, not every DMA member wants to stop mailing names and risk losing business, and that may explain some of the lag here. And where do you put that information these days, when print order forms are not as prevalent as they once were?

But if the threat is as serious as John says it is, direct marketers should get out front and not wait for events to unfold.