Pay Attention to Your Uncle Sam!

Pay Attention to Your Uncle Sam!

A Tip to Direct-Mail Advertisers

by Edith G. Hawkes

Postmaster, Fulton, California

During my several years' experience as postmaster in a small post office, the following facts have both annoyed and puzzled me. My complaint is summed up in a question: Why don't advertisers avail themselves of the assistance offered them by Uncle Sam?

In the course of a year, several hundred circulars come to this one office that cannot be delivered, either because the mail address is incorrect, or because the addressee has moved away. Where the mailing lists used by these advertisers are obtained I do not pretend to know, but I am aware that some of them are made up from telephone books. These are not always accurate for mailing purposes because frequently the telephone address and the mail address are not at all the same.

For example, there is a telephone line which has an exchange in my town, but nearly all the people on the line receive mail from rural routes going out from two different towns to the north and south of us. What happens is this: The circulars, in unsealed envelopes, with one-and-one-half cents postage on them, are received here, and a portion of them is delivered to the addressees. The others are not forwardable, like letters, but, if the advertiser has printed under his name and address in the upper left-hand corner of the envelope "Return postage guaranteed," as he is urged by the Government to do always, the addressee's address is corrected, the whole name and address crossed out, the envelope stamped "Return to sender," and the circulars go back in the next mail to the advertiser who should then have his mailing list corrected so that the same mistakes will not occur again.

If return postage is not guaranteed but the advertiser's address is on the envelope, a card notice is sent to him, advising him how many undeliverable circulars have been received, and how much postage is required for their return. If he attends to this, such matter, which is held for a reasonable length of time awaiting his reply, is returned to him promptly after postage is received, with the addressee's address corrected, if it is known.

Now one point I wish to make is this: Many advertisers, when the circulars are returned to them, pay no attention to the corrections, and when their next lot of circulars is sent out, make the same mistakes again. There should be someone in the advertising department whose business it is to keep the mailing list up to date so far as possible.

Another point is that many of the advertisers pay no attention whatever to the notice cards. For the last year or two, I have kept a record of such advertisers, and there are not on the list 186 names. When undeliverable advertising matter from such firms comes in, of course there is nothing to do but throw it in the wastebasket, along with circulars from those firms who do not even print their names on their envelopes.

When you consider that this is but one small office among many thousands of all sizes, and that in some of these envelopes there are samples, or return cards or envelopes and, in rare cases, even stamped envelopes, surely it is easy to see that there is an enormous waste going on, for which someone is paying.

Pay attention to your Uncle Sam!

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