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Winter Knitwear for Kitties >^..^<

Mail-Order CATalogs Posted Oct-30-2005
Direct-Tail Tales
My cat gets her own mail. It's true. Just the other day I received an L.L.Bean catalog with her name on it. How did that happen?

Oh, now I remember. Back in the late '90s I was curious to see how much junk mail kitty would receive if she "requested" a catalog or two from different companies or meowed for one of those "Got Milk" club certificates. I didn't test my theory on just any old thing either. I only got her what she asked for (she's purrsistent, you know).

The truth is, some advertisers don't care who they send their direct-mail pieces to. You can make up a fake name when you request a catalog, and you'll still get it. In this case, I didn't make up a fake name, and my kitty really likes L.L.Bean's winter collection.

Interesting that even after kitty changed her address, she still gets the catalog. But now it includes the disclaimer after her name "or current resident." See, I told you that advertisers don't care who gets their mail. "Current resident" might as well be the mice in the wall.

I chuckle every time I see kitty's name and address printed neatly in the subscriber's area of a catalog, years after the fact. And you think you're only requesting ONE catalog, don't you. Anyway, she's pleased as pie when I tell her someone was thinking of her. And yes, she shares her catalogs with me, so the advertiser wins after all.

I once worked at a catalog-based business and learned some interesting things about catalogs and mailing lists. I also worked at a place that had major kinks in their mailing list database and sent out an obscene number of duplicate direct-mail pieces to the same people in the same week. A few were nice enough to call us about it. Yes, marketing is an interesting world. (© 2005 Chris Dunmire)

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