Junk Mail

I work from home. Like a dog with an attitude, one of the things I look forward to is seeing the mail carrier fill my mailbox. As soon as the carrier leaves, I head outside to get my mail. It’s a silly habit really. For one thing, hardly any of the mail I get is valuable. By valuable I mean something that provides me with a form of leisure or education, like a magazine subscription. I want packages I ordered. Even bills are okay if they’re for something I’ve already used like electricity. Bills for things like lawn fertilizer, which I can’t even see let alone use, get under my skin but it is mail, and at least they’re a valuable reminder that I can throw money away with the best of them.
The majority of my mail though, is junk mail. According to the non profit organization, ForestEthics, every year American households receive a total of 104.7 billion pieces of junk mail. That’s 848 pieces of junk mail per household, which requires 6.5 million tons of paper.
What exactly is junk mail? Anything in the form of catalogues, circulars, sales announcements and requests for charitable contributions from butterfly adoption clubs are junk mail to me. Service offers, like heating, plumbing, landscaping and roofing, qualify as junk mail too. In short, junk mail is mail I didn’t ask for. Had I been asked, I would have politely declined. Do you really want your local department store to notify you whenever they’re about to run a moonlight madness sale? I’ll bet they never called you to ask for your permission did they? It’s not like the blowout bargain extravaganza is a rare event. They run one every week.
And, I’ll bet you didn’t look through the phone book for real estate agents so you could call and ask them to remind you of their existence twice a week. Have you ever wondered how realtor marketing campaigns came about? They all do pretty much the same thing.
I have a sneaking suspicion that one day a diabolic so-and-so, bored out of his mind, contacted every real estate agent in his community. The conversation must have gone something like this:
“Thank you for taking my call. Are you a realtor?
“Why yes, I am.”
“Oh good! Some day, I have no idea when, I may decide to sell my home. Would you mind sending me a weekly reminder that you’re available to list it for me?”
“Well, sure we can do that.”
“Great! Another thing, I really want to know what you look like. So please send me a glossy photo.”
“Glad to do it. Say, would you like a cheap little calendar too?”
That one guy’s mischief probably explains why every homeowner in the USA receives correspondence from at least nine realtors a day. Maybe if we all wrote a letter back every week it might persuade them to rethink their never ending and mostly fruitless branding campaign.
It’s not just realtors. My insurance agent likes to keep in touch once or twice a week too. You would think he would want to cut down on expenses. Just last week I got my car insurance bills. Since we have two cars we received two bills in separate envelopes, of course. Along with the bills were two identical policy endorsements that said, “Please keep this endorsement with your policy.” If I actually did that every time they sent a new endorsement, I would have to rent space from a storage facility. Not that finding a storage facility would be a problem. Just yesterday I received attractive offers from six of them.
The phone company does the same thing. I have separate phone and fax lines. Naturally I get separate bills. I also get the same sales pitch in each envelope. Even mail I need is stuffed with tons of junk mail. There is no respite to be had. Get this: The back of the phone company’s envelope had an advertisement.
Junk mail exists because it works. It’s an effective sales tool. Response rates vary from two to three percent depending on the boredom and gullibility of the recipients. Since I qualify on both counts, I do what I can to keep it coming in spite of my growing irritation. Environmental groups would like to put a stop to junk mail. Fat chance: But this year I’m going green. I’m using my junk mail to insulate my attic. ForestEthics will be proud.

Copyright 2009 Len Serafino. All rights reserved.