The next phase of Mel

For the past two years, Mel has made it exceptionally easy for customers to opt-out of junk mail, simply by texting a photo. The response has been largely positive, and it's difficult to quantify the amount paper waste that has been avoided thanks to the service.

Learnings

Along the way, I've learned a lot about postal mail. The biggest surprise? The breadth of mail people receive — the number of different senders — far surpassed my expectations. Just like on the Internet where we all live within our own filter bubble, each person receives mail based on their interests. Personally, I get a lot of mail from nascent consumer home goods brands like Casper, Burrow, and Backdrop. Some people receive extraordinary amounts of mail from religious missions and celebrity pastors. At a certain age, folks begin receiving endless mail from retirement homes and nursing services. The list goes on.

Another surprise is the sheer volume of mail some people receive. Even after a couple years of opting out, some customers continue to send in dozens of mailers at a time. It's not that the service is failing them—these same customers are some of Mel's top promoters because they've seen a decrease in mail. It's just that there's so many senders, and once your address is out there, it keeps getting distributed and the junk mail keeps trickling in.

Perhaps less surprising is that certain senders simply won't respect opt-out requests. It seems obvious that companies would want to reduce costs and protect their reputation by honoring requests, but the sentiment among marketers is different. A direct mail professional who I spoke to explained that marketers know junk mail is effective, even when recipients claim it goes straight to the trash. In fact, 42% of people at least read or scan junk mail. Compared to other forms of marketing, direct mail is a direct line into our homes and is difficult to ignore – and the marketers know this. Perhaps that's why healthcare providers hide their opt-out forms behind HIPAA compliance walls, and financial institutions require KYC verification simply for changing mail preferences.

Reflections

While the premise of "text a photo of junk mail and see it disappear" is enticing, the nuances among senders makes the story a bit more complicated. When a customer sends in dozens of photos of junk mail at once, it becomes unmanageable to be transparent with the customer of the status of their requests. Some senders require additional information, and others are known offenders that are unlikely to ever honor opt-out requests. Many senders will confirm an opt-out initially, yet need to be reminded several times before the opt-out is actually processed. I want to be transparent with customers about the limits of Mel, and the text message format is limiting in that regard.

Meanwhile, the waitlist for Mel continues to grow, and I am not in a position to let in more customers. Frankly, it's been challenging to keep up with the existing user base from before I turned off new signups about a year ago. I want the service to help more people, and I want to spend my time on expanding support for more senders.

Next Steps

The near-term future of Mel will be web app that allows customers to upload photos and instantly receive opt-out instructions. The biggest difference is that customers will contact brands directly, rather than Mel doing so on their behalf.

How's it work?

It’s quite neat actually. When you upload photos, you’ll instantly see them appear on your dashboard. Then, Mel will extract the sender and recipient information from the mailer. Mel checks the ever-growing database of sender information to see if there’s already a known opt-out form or customer service email address. If not, Mel searches the sender’s website. Then, a button appears giving you an easy way to contact the sender and request to be removed from the mailing list.

If you have your default mail client set up on your phone or computer, you can simply click the Email button to launch a pre-filled message. Otherwise, you can use the Copy button to copy-paste a templated message and send it manually.

If you find Mel did a poor job, or if there’s anything off, you can flag the request for review. A human will take a look and may reach out to you if we have any further questions.

Impact on existing customers

To improve Mel's coverage and get to a point where more people can use Mel, I've decided to sunset the text-message-based service. This means that as customers' subscriptions expire, there will no longer be an option to renew. As the next iteration of Mel comes to life, legacy customers will be first in line to try the new version.

Future Vision

This new approach to Mel allows for a more iterative approach — meaning I can focus on improving the experience for the most common junk mail while keeping the one-off mailers a more manual process. Eventually, I hope to automate certain unsubscribes, so that as soon as the customer uploads a photo, an opt-out request is automatically triggered. That could be an email being triggered, or a form automatically being filled out.

Mel is a project I’m passionate about – now more than ever it’s critical that we do everything we can to protect our planet. Reducing junk mail is a drop in the bucket, but we need every drop we can get. If you have ideas or feedback, I’d love to chat.