Back in my misspent youth, I worked for a major provider of health insurance and clinic/hospital care. One year, early in the Intarweb era, we offered a program in which instead of sending out the provider directory to all the renewing members in our government groups, we sent them a one-page business reply card that let them request one if they wanted a new one. The card took up only a bit of the 8.5″ x 11″ format, so the remainder of the card discussed the two options they had to learn about the clinic network. The first, naturally, was getting a directory, but the text pointed out that if they HAD a doctor and LIKED the doctor and they hadn’t received a letter that the clinic was leaving the network, maybe it didn’t matter so much for them. The second option was the then-new online directory, which instead of being printed twice a year, was updated weekly and had doctor pictures and bios too.
We saved a ton of money with this program. We printed fewer directories, we only mailed them to people who wanted them (and directories are HEAVY), and the world was jellybeans and songbirds. I won an internal award for making the pilot work.
I mention this anecdote because today’s Star-Tribune has an article about that dinosaur of all directories, the phone book. Apparently, 85% of phone directories in Minnesota go in the trash – which is illegal. They have to be recycled.
Telephone companies spun off their publishing businesses in the late 1990s, setting off competition among firms selling yellow page ads and distributing their own phone books. Hickle estimates that homes, apartments and businesses received an average 13 pounds of telephone directories last year.
“There are more publishers delivering more products because it works,” said Maggie Stonecipher, associate vice president of paper, print and delivery services for R. H. Donnelley, publisher of DEX Yellow Pages for Qwest.
Really? 85% of them go to the can, and they ‘work?’ I would love to see the performance metrics on work. I know most people getting 3-4 directories dump either all of them, or all but one. (Quote a friend: “What if the power is out? I can’t get online then!”)
The gist of the article is that advocates and legislators are now talking about allowing opt-out for phone books, although some of the more activist advocates would prefer an opt-in system. The directory publishers don’t want legislation, of course, because they plan a voluntary, non-legislated system to handle it – that probably would lack enforcement teeth when the directory delivery people ignore the lists.
I’d like to see opt-in, just like I prefer for e-mail programs. And I feel slightly smug that I started dealing with directory opt-out – albeit a different KIND of directory – 10 YEARS AGO. Ha.