The Sweepstakes HelpLine works with DMA member companies to help resolve situations needing individual attention. The U. S. Postal Service maintains a list of people who do not want SOA mail coming to their home, and provides the list to companies that mail such promotions. Contact your local Post Office and ask for Form 2150 to stop mail from a particular company, or Form 1500. Clearly, it makes no economic sense to send out thousands of letters to people who have no interest in your product, service or cause. Nor does it make environmental sense.
Lists are nothing more than a way to identify a market for products and services.
Direct marketing businesses succeed or fail by their ability to determine who is most likely to buy what they offer. So they rent or exchange lists of consumers whose interests have been narrowed by their earlier purchase behavior and other characteristics that might reasonably be assumed to make them likely prospects. For the direct marketing business person, lists of hundreds of thousands of names are the instruments that can create a thriving business by filling consumer needs. The by-product is the creation of jobs and healthy contributions to the American economy. Mailing lists that are supplied to renters contain names and full addresses.