Most businesses rely heavily on mailboxes as a major form of communication. This means that mail that’s delivered to your business can often be an important part of a follow-up to a conversation held on the phone or in person. Therefore, there is a lot of urgency for you and your business to receive such mail as soon as it is sent to you.
Unfortunately, part of the mail most people and businesses receive end up being promotional messages from unwanted senders. Such correspondence falls under the category of junk mail. To access the priority mail, you need to sort through all the mail you’ve received and eliminate the junk mail.
Since mail is delivered on a set interval, it can accumulate, making sorting it hard. Here are some of the ways you can cut down on junk mail.
Track your mail
In this technological era, it is easy to accomplish a lot from the comfort of your office. It is possible to track your mail without using the physical mailbox. You can track it using a virtual address which you can easily acquire.
A virtual address allows you to receive your mail through your computer. You choose an address owned by a virtual address service, where your mail undergoes scans. This mail is uploaded to the cloud and sent to your computer.
This way, you can receive mail without walking to the mailbox.
Demand to be off the mail list
To get rid of unwanted mail, you can contact the senders directly, demanding they remove you from their mailing lists. However, this is only effective when you have few perpetrators because you have to find contacts for your junk mail sources.
If you have a lot of junk mail, contacting all mailing sources demanding they stop sending you mail might be challenging. However, you could turn to other ways of stopping unwanted spam from filling up your inbox.
Reach out to third-party organizations
Some organizations provide mailing lists to these junk mail-sending companies. To get your business off their mailing list, you need to contact them and have them remove it for you. You can either write them an email or visit their offices.
The Direct Mailing Association (DMA) is the largest mailing list provider. They can remove your business mailing addresses from most, if not all, of the promotional mailing sources. However, you have to pay them to process your request.
The DMA works on a ten-year subscription; if you don’t renew the registration, you will go back to receiving promotional mail.
Redirect former employees’ mail
Part of what forms junk mail in your mailbox is directed to some of your former employees. Since these employees are no longer in your business, their emails are irrelevant to you. In that case, you ought to redirect their mail to their new addresses. This is a key step in eliminating excess mail from your inbox.
Return mail to the sender
Most of the promotional emails sent have return addresses. You can send back the mail with a note to remove your mail from their mailing list. Since the aim is to eliminate all types of unwanted mail, you need to group the mail according to its senders.
Also, you might be on the lookout for mail printed “Return service requested.” With such pieces of mail, you can cross out your name and write ‘refused.’ Once sent back to the source company, they will have to remove your name from their mailing list.
Cut down on catalogs
Since catalogs contain a general list of what a sender provides, you may need to create a preference. You may want to keep some while getting rid of others. In that case, you must sort out all the catalog mail while keeping the beneficial ones.
Some promotional catalogs may align with your line of business, while others may be unnecessary. From there, you can contact the useless catalog senders and instruct them to remove you from their mailing lists.
You can also draft terms for receiving catalog mail from helpful catalog senders. You cannot only receive the catalogs via mail, but you can also subscribe to their online catalogs. The online catalog will significantly drop the amount of mail received.
Cut out all the credit card offers
You could start receiving junk mail by agreeing to receive offers after a credit card sale. Providing your business address for an online purchase delivery can be the start of many junk mails.
However, it is easy to stop credit card promotional offers. You can refrain from accepting promotional messages when prompted. If they continue, you can call the sender’s address and demand they stop.
You can also have your data kept private by the credit card company. This data protection will prevent other firms from getting your mailing address.
Block the major sources of junk mail
Some firms may not heed your request despite efforts to stop receiving junk mail. When that prolongs, you can block them through your mailbox service. Any correspondence from a blocked source will not reach your mailbox.
While blocking online sources of junk mail can be easy, such as email verification programs, there has never been the physical equivalent. Therefore it requires much more time and effort to block all of the unnecessary mail that you and your business receive. Luckily, once you are done doing so, sorting through the mail will become much easier to handle.
Wrapping up
Junk mail can cause a lot of harm to a business. Due to the accumulation of promotional ads from different firms, you can miss priority mail in the mess. It’s also a security risk. To avoid the repercussions of misplacing priority mail, you can take action to cut down on junk mail.
The best way to stop receiving junk mail is to contact the senders to remove you from their mailing lists. However, if that does not work, you can always use other ways, as listed above.