Our vision

Summary

Without a current incentive to do so, and without any directive from the Federal Government for the USPS to create a Do-not-Mail registry from the top down, we can all effectively encourage the USPS to establishing such a registry from the bottom up.

We can do so by simply exercising our right to refuse mail we do not wish to receive. The US Supreme Court, the US Congress, and even the USPS itself, have all empowered addresses to exercise the right to refuse mail.

If millions of citizens refuse marketing mail, the USPS would effectively be burdened to deal with all that mail and recycle it. This will hopefully result in an incentive to combat the onslaught of refused mail by creating a national Do-not-Mail registry.

The USPS can monetize the registry and make it's entries available to bulk mailers, allowing them to now only mail those who do wish to receive marketing mail thereby reducing their own advertising cost and targeting only those who are interested in receiving solicitations.

Introduction

A) With an ever increasing amount of advertising mail, homeowners spend ever more time sorting and discarding this mail, with many left fearing for identity theft or outright fraud. Add in the pandemic of 2020 which have many people scared of even touching anything which was handled by someone else.

B) The pressure on cities and towns is mounting too, having to deal with weekly trash-, and recycle collections of large and increasing amounts of paper waste all having to be recycled and ending up in local landfills. What a waste!

C) Additionally, natural ecosystems are under pressure: From the huge numbers of trees needed to produce pulp, to moving and transporting and processing it into printable paper requires vasts amounts of power, chemicals and fresh water. What a waste!

D) Next, all this paper is printed with color inks, then trucked around the nation, where the courageous men and women of the USPS haul all this weight to your mailbox, where it most likely will be immediately discard by you. What a total waste!

E) The irony is that, while online marketeers have perfected the art of 'tailored advertisements' to an almost scary extent, traditional mail marketeers still use a fire hose to literally 'flood' their advertisement door-to-door along postal routes (specifically EDDM). When marketeers reach a 'conversion rate' of 2-3% (meaning a 2-3% response rate) that is considered a successful mailing campaign. It is also an outright admission that 98% was totally useless, and simply ends up being discarded. What a waste!

F) As the USPS' own annual 'Household Diary Study' (HDS) shows, only 11% 'intends to respond' to advertising mail. Actual response rates are much lower. In fact 45% of ALL mail in the US is effectively completely 'useless' and serves no purpose at all. What a waste!

G) All marketing mail, regardless whether it has convinced a prospective buyer will either be recycled or trashed. In 2019, that was 73.2 billion pieces of advertising mail alone! What a waste!

Opting out

1. Opting out is an affirmative action to inform senders that you do not wish to participate and receive their advertising mail. It actually sits perfectly perched between the the right to 'Freedom of Speech' and the 'Right to Privacy'.

2. Mailers are welcome to send you advertising mail, 'unless & until' you indicate that you no longer wish to receive it. This really works equally like the well known 'No Soliciting' and 'Do not Trespass' signs.

3. Opting Out has become very tedious and time consuming however, given that your information is bought and sold, shared and traded to other companies (see Opting Out). Opting out of one, does not opt one out of others! Opting out can become costly as well, as some mailers allow you to opt out for a fee, and only for a given duration.

4. There has never been a way to 'categorically' opt out of all advertising mail, until now.

5. Intuitively this leads many to say that there is a need for 'top level' way of opting out. Such a way has actually been created for the telephony industry and is called 'Do-not-Call-Registry' as instituted by the FTC and is immensely popular. It takes an affirmative action to be placed on that registry, but once on it, you should no longer receive marketing and sales calls.

Do-Not-Mail registry

I. Several calls for a Do-not-Mail registry are currently underway (change.org) and even from an industry insider in the mailing business themselves are calling for such a list (here). While we think a true 'Do-Not-Mail registry' would be the most ideal situation, we're far from it.

II. There are certain existing laws allowing all of us to refuse mail, from the Supreme Court Case Rowan vs US Postal Department:

"In effect, Congress has erected a wall -- or, more accurately, permits a citizen to erect a wall -- that no advertiser may penetrate without his acquiescence."

III. Rather then waiting for a top-down creating of a Do-not-Mail registry, anyone can take the affirmative action of informing the USPS carrier to stop receiving advertising mail by placing our sticker on the mailbox.

Saving the USPS, even if it means to save it from itself.

Without a 'Do-Not-Mail registry' in place, and current opt-out mechanisms arcane and cumbersome, the best option for now it to place one of our stickers (here) on your mailbox indicating that you do not wish to receive advertising mail any longer.

This really comes down to the last line of defense since trees have already been felt, paper has already been processed and printed, advertising pieces have been shipped, sorted and carried for miles by a USPS carrier only to be refused just when the carrier attempted to deliver.

But the marketing company paid for delivery? While certainly so, and with insanely low mailing rates offered by the USPS to make it super attractive to do so, the same USPS has empowered you, the addressee, to refuse it. In effect, the USPS has sold the marketeer a 'best effort' delivery option, and not some ironclad guaranteed delivery, let alone a guarantee that you will actually read every word of it.

But the USPS would lose tons of money without this advertising mail income? That is not the case in fact, as mentioned above. Whether I read, discard this mail immediately, or simply refuse it, the USPS would have been paid for it.

But now the USPS has to deal with that refused marking mail? That is correct, and that is our point. All these brave USPS carriers all over the country have been toiling to deliver these pieces, only to be informed that they do not wish to receive these pieces.

In turn, these poor carriers are now obliged to take the refused pieces back to the station where they will have to be sorted and inspected and ultimately discarded as Undeliverable Bulk Business Mail (UBBM). All this will create a ton of extra work for the USPS.

Keep in mind that the USPS got paid for it though... and hopefully kept a scenario in mind where millions refused delivery?

A new way forward, compatible with the future

The USPS offers somewhat 'precarious' programs (USPS Marketing Mail and EDDM). On the one hand it offers marketeers extremely attractive prices and easy-to-use tools to flood entire postal routes with advertising mail, while on the other hand the same USPS pledges to addressees that they can refuse delivery. If even a small percentage of people would actively refuse to receive these mailing, it would create a tremendous headache for the USPS.

At NoNoNoYes we therefor advocate and urge the USPS to MONETIZE on such pressures. Rather than wait from a Governmental/Congressional directive to do so, the USPS should immediately establish a 'Do-Not-Mail' registry on its own.

Our proposal:

  • USPS to fully endorse the NoNoNoYes campaign to allow addressees signal to carriers their advertising mail delivery preference.
  • USPS to establish a Do-Not-Mail registry.
  • USPS carriers to inspect each mailbox daily for mailing preference and update the registry accordingly.
  • USPS to augment its master address registry to include addressees advertising mail preferences.
  • USPS to hold and discard marketing mail at the station, preventing mail carrier to take it on their routes, thereby speeding up delivery of other mail considerably.
  • USPS to sell access to these augmented address lists to marketeers, who could now deliver more accurate numbers at the USPS for distribution, thereby saving on overall mail piece count resulting in lower costs.

How it would work, practically:

- USPS mail carriers are out on their routes 6 days a week and can therefor easily record any addressee's advertising mail preference (and change) by inspecting the mailbox for the presence of an opt-out sticker.

- This information can then be used to update a Do-Not-Mail registry which becomes valuable to the USPS itself, since it can prevent large numbers of mail pieces hitting carrier routes in the first place. By doing so, the USPS unburdens mail carriers by speeding up delivery simply by having to make fewer stops, as many addressees will have days where only advertising mail would have been delivered. (Keep in mind that advertising mail represents 63% of all household mail, 73.2 billion pieces in 2019 alone). Even a few % points drop in that number would translate is tremendous cost savings for the USPS.

- But why stop there? The USPS can additionally monetize addressee's preferences by given marketeers access to these preferences. The USPS could for instance offer an option to either pay a certain base price per piece, but without knowing how many addressees on a given route would actively refuse the piece, OR, offer access to an augmented list for an additional fee, which consist of only addressees who actually want to receive advertisement mail.

The fewer amount of pieces which will have to be printed and prepared by a mailer could easily offset the additional cost for this access. This could be a great deal for marketeers too: Mailers will know that pieces will go to people who actually want them!

All of this results in less frustrations for addressees, lowered pressure on cities and towns recycle systems, less overall waste all the while leading to cost savings for the USPS and marketeers alike.

What is not to like?