Is Your Direct Mail Pack Compliant

We have seen a slow but steady increase in activity around Direct Mail for customer recruitment campaigns maybe due to the fact we don’t get allot of DM anymore. A friend of mine who works for a leading Direct Response Consumer Brand told me over a pint recently that for the first time in 7 years the words Direct Mail were actually used in a Brain Storming session in quarter one, (that’s corporate speak!) There are many reasons for this but it appears that the 18 to 30 market don’t get letters so its unique for them and the lifespan of a digital ad or email is about a day but a DM piece can be around the house for over two weeks before the dog eats it or the kids use it to draw on or the consumer decides to respond be it triggered by a follow up telephone call or email. We decided to ask the Data Protection commissioners office in Ireland for an update on there view on the use of Direct Mail and it centred around consent so our interpretation of there response is as follows: When using Direct mail a brand would normally insert an opt out statement such as: ‘If you do not wish to receive further marketing material from XYZ please tick this box’. The ODPC would like to see some additional words which clarify the source of the data so for example ‘ We sourced your data from XYZ. If you do not wish to receive further marketing materials from us XYZ please tick this box. Please treat this as only our view on the subject but it is an interesting position and one you should consider given the impending EU wide legislation due out in 2017 If you have any questions on this or other data related facts contact us at datacompliance@dataxcel.ie