Where I live it is impossible to not have the Yellow Pages and the phone directory delivered. Once a year you just find it on your doorstep and you have to bring it to the paper recycling yourself. Completely pointless and a waste of energy and paper.

Yellow Pages and the other organisation should use this to advertise their online service.

On their website you enter your address and you get a reply in which week you can expect to have your phone directory delivered.

Next, you can print a custom made PDF which says that you, on this address, don't want the Yellow Pages because you consult [website]. In small print it says on which days you should stick this to your front door and where you downloaded this nicely designed sign with the original logo and such. Neighbours and visitors will see this and will also download and print one.

After downloading the PDF you are asked to get the browser plugin, to subscribe to a newsletter, get a widget, add a number to your mobile and so on. A small percentage of the visitors will do it, but that is still more than without this campaign.

As an extra incentive for people to put the sign out, monthly prizes can be won if a picture of the sign is submitted to the website and you have left your e-mail address when you downloaded the personalised PDF. The guys doing the distribution are verifying if the note is still up and then hand over the prize. The announcement of the the winner is another pointer to this campaign.
-- rrr, Jul 26 2008

YellowPagesGoesGreen http://www.yellowpa...reen.org/index.html
We Will Notify the Publishers to Stop Sending Books [acemcbuller, Aug 20 2008]

Dutch opt-out initiative http://www.stopdetelefoongids.nl/
An opt-out database with thousands of individuals that will eventually be passed on to the national phone directory and Yellow Pages company in the Netherlands [rrr, Feb 24 2009]

Agreed in principle, but not having the phone directory in your house reduces their exposure. Maybe the directory is now no more than a big solid advert for yell.com, but it's not one you can easily miss.
-- david_scothern, Jul 26 2008


Other than word of mouth, all my business comes from the print version. I haven't had one enquiry from any other source or form of publicity, including yell.com, which i've just discontinued because it was a total waste of money. Do this and we would starve even more than we are already.
-- nineteenthly, Jul 26 2008


Not necessarily <19thly>. I, and probably many others would normally go to yell.com, or google to look up stuff - my computer is normally on, and I find it faster. So people like me don't ever look at the book, whether we had it or not - so it saves paper to not get it. People who prefer the book would still get it, so everyone's happy. +
-- MadnessInMyMethod, Jul 26 2008


Fair point. Maybe my client base is affected me doing little online promotion, as most are older women, and their social networks may be more limited. I have possibly inaccurate perceptions of internet users, namely that they're more likely to be male. One of my USPs is my maleness, since very few herbalists are. Against this goes "women get sick and men die."

Ironically, i was once involved in a campaign to get the Yellow Pages recycled and printed on recycled paper. They said they wanted to preserve that specific shade of yellow.

I will change my vote.
-- nineteenthly, Jul 26 2008


Meanwhile I wrote a note to customer service with this idea and a link to this page and I got a brief reply saying "You obviously don't want to receive the Yellow Pages. We noted your address which is all we need to not have it delivered to you."

I really wonder if this is going to work, since it is delivered unaddressed, thrown on everybody's doorstep, apparently no exceptions.

If you live in the Netherlands and want to do the same, write a message to distributie on the truvo.nl domain. I guess I will do the same for my neighbours who leave these blocks of paper in the hallway for weeks before they take it out for the paper recycling.

I wrote a message back to them saying they should join the national opt-out direct marketing database, infofilter.nl Although technically speaking they are not mailing to people personally.
-- rrr, Aug 20 2008


There is a website that claims to prevent delivery. See link.
-- acemcbuller, Aug 20 2008



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