At around the same time OptOut UK and It's my post were launched another commercial service appeared on the scene: Choose Your Mail (which they spelled "Chooseyourmail"). The website was run by Howse Jackson Marketing (nowadays known as HJ Marketing) and was first indexed by the Wayback Machine in October 2007. I learnt about the service in February 2008 after spotting an advertorial in Real Wire.

Business model

The Real Wire advertorial sums up the company's business model as follows:

Currently, consumers have to decide between either opting-out (sic) of receiving direct mail altogether or else opting-in (sic) and receiving hundreds of mail pieces from companies that are of no interest. However, because the opt-out solution (the Mailing Preference Service run by the Direct Marketing Association) prevents consumers from getting mail from companies that would be of interest, consumers are often unsure over whether to register with that service.

The FAQs on the website elaborated on the idea. Choose Your Mail recommended that people register with both the MPS and TPS, which they claimed would stop all unsolicited junk letters and spam calls. They could then register with Choose Your Mail to opt in to receiving specific types of adverts.

Misunderstanding

According to the advertorial, this innovative solution was based on the company's own research. The company's study had revealed that consumers do not want to receive mailings from companies in which they have no interest. This research sent shock waves around the world — until Choose Your Mail shared its findings experts in the field of unsolicited marketing didn't have the slightest inkling that consumers didn't want to receive unsolicited mail they weren't interested in. It would be Choose Your Mail's seminal contribution to the field of junk research. However, its innovative solution to the problem it had uncovered didn't fly.

The reason Choose Your Mail didn't become a hit is that they misunderstood the adjective "unsolicited". It is simply not true that the MPS prevents consumers from getting mail from companies that would be of interest. The MSP (and TPS) can only stop unsolicited advertising mail and sales calls (and, in the case of the MPS, it only stops unsolicited mail sent by DMA members). In other words, if you opt in to receiving adverts from an advertiser then they can (and will) target you, regardless of whether or not you are registered with the opt-out schemes.

Opting in was already as easy as it gets in the noughties — whenever you bought a product or service you could bet your life that you would be opted in unless you hunted down the invariably carefully hidden opt-out box (the GDPR has somewhat changed this). So, unless you were a hardcore junk mail addict there was no need to explicitly opt in to specific types of adverts. Plus, if you fell into that category then you were already pretty well catered for, as companies would routinely sell your personal data to "carefully selected third parties" (something the GDPR hasn't fundamentally changed).

Slow death

In other words, the "opt in / opt out" concept is flawed. Running such as service simply makes no sense, as it is how unsolicited marketing is already regulated. Effectively, Choose Your Mail offered an enhanced version of the option to let companies sell your personal details to the mysterious "carefully selected third parties". There was zero demand for such a service, and without customers Choose Your Mail couldn't sell personal data to advertisers.

The Choose Your Mail website never got any updates but somehow survived until 2015. As is customary for commercial opt-out schemes, it is unknown what happened with the personal data of the website's users (if there were any).