Junking the junk mail

Sick of having catalogs, and coupons and all sorts of paper junk mail stuffed in your mail box, but have no clue how to stop it?

ProQuo has a service for you. The La Jolla, Calif.-based start-up has established a new, free online service that it claims can help people eliminate up to 90% of their paper junk mail while allowing them to choose the direct mail they do want to continue receiving.

According to its CEO Steven Gal, users simply create a ProQuo account with their full names and addresses at www.proquo.com. (ProQuo makes a promise never ever to misuse that data). Once registered, users are presented with an electronic dashboard containing (for now) 16 marketing lists that are most likely to have their name on file. The lists include coupon and weekly circular lists, telemarketer lists and data brokers.

If you breathe, chances are your name is on at least one of those lists, according to Gal, who's a former executive at identity risk management company ID Analytics Inc. "If you haven't taken your name off, then its on those lists," Gal asserted.The ProQuo service which is in beta right now, allows registered users to simply indicate the lists from which they want their names removed and ProQuo will electronically forward that request to the list owners and ask them to remove those names. For companies that don't accept electronic requests, ProQuo will help consumers to print out forms for mailing or will direct consumers to third party web sites where they can initiate the request themselves.

So how effective is it really? It's too soon to tell since the company just launched a couple of week sago. But Gal swears his company can help most consumers stop between 50% and 90% of the mail they don't want.

So if the service is free, how does ProQuo makes its money? Simple, avers Gal. When users sign in to unsubscribe from lists they'll be also asked if there are any companies or lists they wouldn't mind getting promotional mail from. ProQuo hopes to soon build a list of such customers, which it will sell to marketing companies who are going to love it because the list will be far more targeted than the massive and unfocused junk sold by most data brokers, according to Gal.

Users will not obligated to choose anything, Gal assured me. If someone chooses to use ProQuo purely to remove their names from multiple marketing lists, that's just fine Gal insisted. But he's betting that many users wouldn't mind receiving targeted offers from companies they choose on their own.

Jay Foley, executive director of the Identity Theft Resource Center, a San Diego based non-profit Jay thinks the approach works to the benefit of both consumers and marketers. If it really works as billed, consumers will have a pretty straightforward way to try and reduce the junk mail they receive, while marketers will be able to buy more effective lists of consumers who really are interested in their products.

I'm not sure how many other companies are out there that do this sort of thing. Foley thinks ProQuo is pretty much the first one out with a service like this. Maybe, but I did read something in the Chicago Tribune the other day about another start-up called Catalog Choice that also purports to help folks reduce or eliminate the unwanted mailings they get every day. It seems to work pretty much the same way as ProQuo does but appeared focused purely on catalogs as far as I could tell.

I realize most folks these days are probably more concerned about spam email than the junk they get in their snail mail boxes. But if you are like me you hate both equally much. As far as I'm concerned both are unwarranted intrusions into my privacy. That's why I'll be keeping an eye on how the public responds to these two companies for sure.