How does the junk mail eventually stop?

June 28, 2018 7:35 PM

My Father-in-Law passed away a dozen years ago, and my Mother a few year back. My wife and I are their respective executors. That meant changes-of-address so that we can watch paper mail for issues to deal with. And it's meant junk mail.

We've noticed along the way that there seem to be several classes of mailing lists that 'age out' on different schedules. We've also noticed that some classes of lists seem to ignore attempts to tell them that their target is deceased (political lists being the worst). And yet the junk mail does eventually stop .

My question isn't how to get off of lists, it's more one of ecology within the direct mail world. I'm hoping to find someone who is part of the direct mail world, or who knows someone who is, to answer this: How do people age off of lists? Are their estimated ages that silently accompany addresses? Are there 'date of last purchase' records?

How is it that junk mail eventually stops?

posted by dws to Grab Bag (9 answers total)

Best answer: Quick and dirty answer: my husband used to do data processing for direct mail (charitable orgs mostly). Part of how this stuff happens:

There are lists:
- DMV (vehicle owners, drivers, etc)
- “sucker” lists (you buy lots of mail order or contribute to whatever solicitors)
- charities
- property owner
- saturation (all residents in a zip code)
- political party or campaign lists
- anything you ever bought or subscribed to that you gave your address
- like casinos. Casinos have huge lists.

Anybody doing a direct mail campaign can buy access to many (not all — some lists are private for the company that compiled them) of these lists, from a list broker. Different list holders and brokers have different hygiene, so the lists might be in great shape or a total shit show. If you want a successful mailing, your mail house dp person will clean up the list by stripping out garbage fields and records, and merge-purge the lists against each other, to eliminate duplicates. Mail campaigners can maintain their lists (list hygiene) by purging ppl who didn’t buy or contribute awhile after buying/contributing, or if they got mail RTS-deceased. But some list holders don’t give a shit.

Bulk mail is pretty low expectation. A 1% response is considered good. So if you’re running a good campaign, you purge your lists frequently to not be throwing away mail pieces needlessly. But if you’re shitting money, or your mail house isn’t savvy, you don’t do that.
posted by toodleydoodley at 9:36 PM on June 28, 2018 [5 favorites]

If it’s been that long, go to the post office and fill out a form that they are deceased. It doesn’t stop 100% of the mail but it does catch most of it.
posted by tamitang at 4:40 AM on June 29, 2018 [2 favorites]

I've had more luck googling the direct mail companies and emailing their customer service departments to ask them to halt mail to my address. Returning the mail in the post has never worked for me. Not once.
posted by duffell at 5:26 AM on June 29, 2018

My mother-in-law died 17 years ago and we still get junk mail for her, mostly from charities that she supported. And my father-in-law died in the 70's and we occasionally get postcards from senior living residences for him. We've given up on getting it to stop.
posted by jenjenc at 5:44 AM on June 29, 2018

I followed the steps in this article from 2014, and I get a lot less junk mail than I did before.

It won't stop it completely, but it will help.
posted by ArgentCorvid at 6:25 AM on June 29, 2018

The Direct Marketing Association has a website where you can enter information about the deceased. This has been moderately successful for me. I still get mail for my father who died 18 months ago, but it comes with decreasing frequency.
posted by suelac at 6:59 AM on June 29, 2018

Best answer: I worked briefly for Acxiom Corporation. One of their main lines of business involves verification of address lists used for mass mailings and other business purposes. When they get a mailing list to process, they return a new list that will have the most recent address for each addressee. I suppose they cleanse the list of addressees known to have died as well.

At the other end of the spectrum are mailers who use really old lists with many errors in them. I suppose they hope that "current occupant" might read it. We got a mailing addressed to my daughter not long ago though she hasn't lived here for 15 years.
posted by SemiSalt at 7:13 AM on June 29, 2018 [1 favorite]

I rhink I fibally stopped getting junk mail for my mom about 2 years ago. She died 25 years ago.

I always write " return to sender, addressee deceased" and then a second line "Remove tjis address from your mailing list". That works, for the most part.

For the companies who just won't heed the request, I started calling some of the advertisers (like insurance and real estate agents) and telling them that they were paying for bad days. That's what got us off the last of the lists I think.
posted by vignettist at 11:52 AM on June 29, 2018

Coming back in to correct the auto-corrected "bad days", it should have been "bad data".
posted by vignettist at 7:40 PM on June 29, 2018