The Direct Mail Industry

The direct mail industry sends out around four billion letters a year.  Around 4% of those go to people who have moved house; 1% to people who have died and, according to a recent YouGov survey, around 70% to people who don’t want it.

The fact is direct mail is meant to be about sending the right mail to the right person at the right time. Regrettably all too often the industry fails to achieve even one of these goals.

itsmypost.com is the first real initiative to allow you to make contact directly with those companies that you DO NOT wish to get mail from.  It is also the first time that mailers have had the opportunity to hear directly from you en masse. 

On average it costs a company around 60p to send you a letter – if you are simply going to throw it in the bin then they are far better off not mailing you in the first place.  Companies know this but until now have not had an up to date and effective way of identifying individuals that did not want their specific mail.

The vast majority of companies don’t want to send you mail that you do not want.  It is a waste of money, damages the environment and also impacts on the way you perceive their company.  Of course, some companies are less responsible than we would want them to be and continue to pursue the “we know best” philosophy.  Rest assured that itsmypost.com will be working hard to show those companies the right thing to do.

Within the industry the concept of not mailing the wrong people (suppression) has been around for many years; in most cases it has been about not mailing people who have moved home or have died.  What itsmypost.com will do is allow mailers to not mail people who do not want their specific mail.