I keep reading articles in newspapers, magazines and so forth about the displeasure of junk mail, and the web companies that are offering companies a supposed way to opt out of receiving junk mail. Yet, I haven’t heard of any relevant response from the USPS – and such silence is eerily surprising – especially since the USPS gets a nice portion of its revenue through the mailing of junk mail.

The USPS should take the lead in the race to eliminate junk mail, and the best way to get rid of junk mail is to replace it with meaningful mail adverts, my initial random thoughts on how the USPS could transform junk mail into relevant/ useful adverts are as following:

(1) I would create a link on the home page of the USPS website, in which individuals could opt in to receive relevant offers of their choosing to their email address, and/ or to their home address.

They would be able to use such a link to fill out a survey in which they’d select what kind of offers they’re looking for, the maximum amount of offers to be sent within certain time frames and so forth.

In order to make sure everyone receives notification of the opt in/ opt out mailing strategy, I would create a mailing census/ survey, and send such to every household.

The census/ surveys would notify the household residents of the purpose of the opt in/ opt out mailing strategy, which would be to replace junk mail with relevant mailing adverts, in order to stop unwanted mail being sent while simultaneously creating a replacement revenue stream for the USPS.

The mailing census/ survey packet would have sections in which the head(s) of the household would fill out in regards to how many residents live in the house and their descriptions (age, gender, etc.), and all relevant info pertaining to the types of adverts they wouldn’t mind receiving.

(2) I would than create a system that would initially allow companies to send adverts to individuals in the system via email and/ or direct mail, and to allow such companies to tag such virtual and/ or physical mail with a special USPS stamp, which would notify the recipient of such mailing(s) that the contents of such a mailing is in response to their opt in input.

Any company that uses such a tagging/ stamping system in a fraudulent way would risk loosing access to the opt in/ opt out data…

Since it’s getting late (2:16 A.M.), and I’m starting to lose my train of thought, I’ll close on the following note:

The USPS should create the opt in/ opt out mailing strategy as honest and open as possible, and I’m pretty sure that most people would respect such an attempt to replace junk mail with meaningful mail, that they’d be more than willing to opt in to start receiving relevant adverts.