There are no less than six opt out schemes for junk mail and unsolicited paper directories - and that number excludes 'specialised' services for stopping baby related mailings and junk mail sent to the deceased. This plethora of opt-out 'services' indicates the junk mail industry hasn't quite made stopping junk mail easy and effective.

Would opt-out schemes really look that much different if they would be run in co-operation with its users (and consumer and environmental groups)? And is making it easier to register with various opt-out schemes really as straightforward as I suggest? Well, YES!

Junk mail opt-out schemes

To start with, here are some suggestions for the three opt-out schemes for junk mail. After that I'll discuss how opting out in general could be simplified (see Working together below).

Mailing Preference Service

The Mailing Preference Service is the Direct Marketing Association's opt-out scheme for addressed junk mail. It's the most well-known opt-out scheme, and beyond doubt the most popular one. Yet, it's not very effective.

1. Broaden the opt-out scheme's scope

   The Mailing Preference Service only stops unsolicited advertisements from members of the Direct Marketing Association. In other words, only members of the industry lobby group will check to see if you are opted out. This makes the Mailing Preference Service a rather ineffective opt-out scheme compared with two of its cousins; the Telephone Preference Service and Facsimile Preference Service. Any organisation wanting to sell you something via telephone of fax is legally obliged to check if you are opted out, regardless of whether the organisation is a member of the Direct Marketing Association.

   The reason the opt-out schemes for sales calls and faxes are more effective is that they are governed not by self-regulation but by the Privacy and Electronic (EC Directive) Regulations 2003. If the Direct Marketing Association feels strongly about making the Mailing Preference Service more effective it should lobby government to introduce similar legislation for 'cold mailing'. Needless to say, the organisation is lobbying for the opposite.

2. Close the 'To the Occupier' loophole

   The Mailing Preference Service doesn't stop addressed junk mail with a generic addressee, such as 'To the Occupier'. There's no reason to assume people registered with the Mailing Preference Service somehow want to receive such mail items. It's a loophole that has been invented to ensure junk mailers can bypass the Mailing Preference Service, simple as that. The 'To the Occupier' loophole should be closed.

3. Encourage people to re-register

   When a registration with the Mailing Preference Service expires (which happens after five years) people are not send a reminder or new registration form. To illustrate just how bizarre this is, imagine your broadband provider disconnecting you - without warning - because it assumes customers are unlikely to be willing to renew their contract.

There's plenty to add to the list, but this should suffice to show that the Mailing Preference Service could do with some input from the people who use the service.

Door-to-Door Opt-Out

The Door-to-Door Opt-Out is Royal Mail's opt-out scheme for unaddressed mail distributed by the company. Although signing up to the scheme stops more junk mail than the Mailing Preference Service only 0.7 per cent of households was registered as at April 2009. There are plenty of reasons why the scheme is so unloved:

1. Advertise the existence of the scheme

   That so few householders are registered with Royal Mail's opt-out scheme is first and foremost the result of the company's failure to advertise its existence. Royal Mail's website contains some information about the Door-to-Door Opt-Out but it's hard to find. Ask Sarah, Royal Mail's online assistant, how to register and you'll get some surprising answers. To get the opt-out rate for the scheme to a normal level Royal Mail could deliver a leaflet with information about the scheme to all households in the country.

2. Allow people to opt out online

   Registering with the Door-to-Door Opt-Out is a two-step process. First you need to request a registration form, which you then need to sign and return. Officially, this is because Royal Mail wants to verify that the person asking to be opted out has indeed made that request himself (in other words, Royal Mail is worried people might opt out their neighbours). However, since March 2010 people contacting the Door-to-Door Opt-Out have been sent the opt-out form via e-mail. There really is no excuse anymore for not allowing people to register with the Door-to-Door Opt-out online.

3. Stop using scare tactics

   The Door-to-Door Opt-Out registration form warns people that they may miss "important information from local and national government" if they opt out. This warning is complete and utter nonsense, yet the scare tactics work. According to its own figures, about half the people who request a registration form do not opt out (Direct Marketing Waste Prevention Report 2009, p. 23). If Royal Mail want to make sure people make an 'informed decision' about opting out they should clarity exactly what type of items are distributed via it door-to-door scheme. I've made a start with this myself; the Royal Junk Mail catablog lists all door-drops I'm getting from my postman.

Again, this list is by no means exhaustive.

Your Choice Preference Scheme Preference Scheme for Unaddressed Mail

Compared with the Your Choice Preference Scheme, Royal Mail's Door-to-Door Opt-Out is hugely popular. As at April 2009 0.006 per cent of households was registered with the Direct Marketing Assocation's opt-out scheme for unaddressed mail items delivered by members of the Direct Marketing Association.

1. Allow people to judge how (in)effective Your Choice is

   An opt-out scheme for unaddressed mail items distributed by companies that are members of the Direct Marketing Association is, frankly as useless as it sounds. To start with, there aren't many such distribution companies. And even if you are lucky enough to receive leaflets distributed by a company that is a member of the Direct Marketing Association, you're unable to tell because information about who distributed a particular door-drop is rarely included on junk mail. In short, you got no way of telling how effective registering will be.

2. Give people a right to complain

   Your Choice is the first, and hopefully last, opt-out scheme that will never ever attract even a single complaint. After all, if you don't know which company distributed a leaflet you don't know whether or not it should have been prevented by the Your Choice scheme.

3. At least pretend to be an opt-out scheme

   To register with Your Choice you first need to request an opt-out pack which shamelessly glorifies unaddressed, unsolicited mail ("the communications they carry are usually valued and informative") and which is stuffed with warnings about the consequences of opting out (you may miss "important items of information from the government, local authorities and utility companies"). There is nothing in the pack that actually encourages people to cut back on unwanted door-drops. Even a freepost address or reply envelope is not provided…

I've mentioned the opt-out schemes for junk mail here. The opt-out schemes for the Yellow Pages, Thomson Local directory and the BT Phone Book are even more problematic. The existence of the schemes is not advertised at all, and opt-out request are more often than not ignored. It's not even clear if the opt-out schemes really do exist.

Working together

If people would have a say in how opt-out schemes function they would be a lot more effective and customer friendly. At the very least it would mean issues such as those raised here could be discussed. At the moment opt-out schemes aren't in any way held to account. This should change.

People shouldn't 'just' be able to make suggestions for improvements to how opt-out schemes work; they'll no doubt have some sensible ideas about how opting out in general could be made easier and more effective as well. One thing I'd like to put on the agenda in a meeting with the Direct Marketing Association is the one-point-stop for signing up to opt-out schemes.

The Direct Marketing Association runs seven different opt-out schemes that can help reduce unsolicited marketing. Apart from Mailing Preference Service and Your Choice these are:

• Baby Mailing Preference Service - to prevent baby related junk mail;
• Telephone Preference Service - to stop unsolicited sales calls;
• Corporate Telephone Preference Service - to stop unsolicited sales calls to business numbers;
• Facsimile Preference Service - to stop unsolicited sales faxes; and
• Email Preference Service - to stop unsolicited sales e-mails (best to avoid this one!).

People registering with the Mailing Preference Service are likely to be interested in the Telephone Preference Service as well, and visa versa. It would make sense, therefore, to have a one-point-stop for registering with opt-out schemes run by the Direct Marketing Association. There's no need to register with opt-out schemes separately; they're all run by the same organisation and it would be easy enough to set up a central website for signing up to any of the seven services.

Similarly, it would make sense to have a single place where people can register with the Door-to-Door Opt-Out, Your Choice, and the three opt-out schemes for paper directories. This has in fact been suggested to the Direct Marketing Association by Defra, but the junk mail lobby group even refused to look into the feasibility of setting up such a scheme. It's another example that illustrates people should have a say in how the industry is regulating opting out. It's easy for the Direct Marketing Association to ignore Defra behind closed doors; it would be much more difficult to act in such an obstructive manner if it sat around the table with consumer groups and environmental organisations.