The EcoLogical Mail Coalition launched yesterday with Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, MCI and Tyson Foods Inc. as charter members.
The organization said that in a recent survey of Fortune 500 companies, half of the respondents estimated that at least one-third of the mail they receive is Standard mail — the class of mail that includes promotional mail. Of that volume, up to 30 percent is addressed to former employees, which creates an unnecessary workload for companies as well as extra costs for disposal or recycling.
“We … believe we will reduce excess mail by at least 15 percent in our first year of implementation,” Matthew Foster, manager of internal distribution for Oracle, said in a statement.
Members will contribute to the coalition's Red Flag Database, a business-to-business industry database that identifies outdated contacts. Marketers will pay a fee per match against the coalition's database. It contains information on individuals at nearly 6,000 businesses nationwide, including more than 200 of the Fortune 1000.
“It's been a flawed system all around: for the recipient companies who have to process the excess materials, for the marketers wasting money on mail that never reaches its intended recipient and for the environment, which suffers from millions of pounds of waste generated annually,” coalition founder Chuck Moxley said in the statement. “Everyone wants to fix it, but there's never been a practical solution, until now.”
Moxley has spent nearly 20 years in various marketing roles and helped create marketing programs for brands such as Lee Jeans, Sears, Sprint PCS, Cellular One, Citgo Petroleum, BellSouth and Scientific-Atlanta.
The coalition is offering charter memberships for a limited time with membership fees waived for the life of the membership. For more information and to learn about charter memberships, visit www.ecologicalmail.org/charter or call 800/620-3975.
