How to Avoid Unwanted Mailings
Jennifer Watkins
Everyone has experienced this at one point or another. You donate to a charity and suddenly your mail box is filling up…not just with the charity you donated to but others as well! Maybe some of those charities pique your interest but not all of them, so what do you do to stop the incoming mailings?
Here are a few things you can do to trim down all that direct mail:
- Contact the charity in question, in writing, and request to be taken off their mailing list. It’s sometimes easier if you send them the mailing label, or the envelope, that was originally sent to you and they’ll process your request off of that.
- When making your donation to the charity, request that your contact information not be given out to other mailing lists.
- Perhaps give larger gifts to a few charities instead of smaller ones to more numbers. This will decrease the numbers of charities that will be sending you mail as a donor.
- Sign up with the Direct Marketing Association’s Mail Preference Service. You can get your information placed on a do-no-mail list that’ll be good for up to five years. They’re located at http://www.dmaconsumers.org . According to their website, you’ll notice a decrease in mailings in three months.
- If you receive duplicate mailings—at your home address and your work address, for example—contact the charity in question. Let them know the situation and tell them which address would be more appropriate. Not only is this irritating for you, but it’s a drain on the charity as well so it’s in everyone’s best interest to know.
