The Your Choice Preference Scheme for Unaddressed Mail, which I routinely call the Your Choice Dummy Scheme, is a second industry-run opt-out service for unaddressed mail. It was launched in 2008 as part of the voluntary producer responsibility agreement between the junk mail industry and Defra. The opt-out is run by the DMA and is supposed to stop unaddressed mail items distributed by DMA members.

It is safe to say that the opt-out scheme was Defra's idea. The scheme was first mentioned in Defra's 2005 progress report, which stated that the DMA would work with other stakeholders to set up and implement a Preference Scheme for unaddressed mail. The other stakeholders were the Newspaper Society and the Incorporated Society of British Advertisers.

There are no details about any talks between the DMA and the other stakeholders, nor do we know if anyone suggested working together with Royal Mail, who already had its own opt-out scheme for unaddressed mail (if the aim was to make it easier for household to opt out then it might have been sense to combine the two schemes). It appears Your Choice was launched by the DMA without any involvement by any of these third parties.

More trouble than it's worth

I have no doubt Defra had the best intentions. However, it achieved the exact opposite of what it intended. The limited scope of Your Choice makes the service rather useless. The DMA has very few members who are leaflet distributors (you can search its membership directory — as at April 2025 there are just two entries for the category) and the door-drop companies that are members presumably try to work to a high standard regardless — they are not your average "don't give a shit" carpet bombers. It is quite likely they already respect 'no junk mail' signs, as the last thing they want is people complaining to their clients about junk mail.

More importantly, the service is also useless for junk mail haters. If you sign up you have no idea how effective the service is, for the simple reason that you have no idea whether or not any leaflet coming through the door was delivered by a member of the DMA. In fact, the introduction of Your Choice has made the junk mail landscape even more complicated than it already was. Before Your Choice, unaddressed mail was either covered by Royal Mail's Door-to-Door Opt-Out or unregulated. We now have a third possibility: unaddressed mail items distributed by DMA members are now covered by Your Choice.

Unwanted, unloved

It is also clear that the DMA isn't particularly proud of the Your Choice Dummy Scheme. Its page about the lobby group's opt-out services, which includes the Mailing and Telephone Preference Service, fails to mention Your Choice. It is also the only DMA opt-out scheme that doesn't have its own website. Instead, there is a somewhat hidden page on the website of the Mailing Preference Services that explains how you can exercise Your Choice. And, it is quite an exercise indeed! To register you first need to request the Your Choice Propaganda Opt-Out Pack™, which is then sent to you via snail mail. After you complete and return the form (no freepost addressed provided) you then need to wait twelve weeks for the service to become fully effective (it obviously takes the DMA quite a bit of time to inform both its door-drop members that you are not interested in unsolicited leaflets).

If you going to exercise Your Choice, which I don't recommend, you can download the opt-out pack from the DMA website. You wouldn't have known you can download the form if I hadn't told you, as there is no link to the form on either the DMA or MPS website. I am mainly providing the link so that you can have a look at the scare tactics the DMA deploys to discourage householders from registering. Just like Royal Mail, they suggest you will miss out on important information from government and local authorities — they have actually gone further, by adding utility companies to the list. Another interestingly novelty is the statement that leaflet distributors may contact you to "verify" whether or not your address is really opted out.

Unsurprisingly, the opt-out scheme has never been popular with the public. As with Royal Mail's Door-to-Door Opt-Out, we got the number of registrations as at April 2009. A negligible 1,600 households had exercised Your Choice at the time. That was equal to 0.006% of all households in the UK. Worse, I am pretty sure most of those registration had come via my Junk Buster website.

Private and confidential

All official opt-out schemes in the UK are run by private businesses with no oversight by third parties. As a result, there is little information about how these schemes are run. However, we do have some information about the Your Choice Dummy Scheme, as the DMA somehow managed to publish the minutes of various Governance Committee meeting on its website. The documents are marked "Private and Confidential" and can still be found on archive.org. I think it is in the public interest to publish them. The DMA's opt-out schemes are supposedly run for the people, so it seems fair for the people to have an insight into how these schemes are governed.

The Your Choice scheme was first discussed at a meeting on 30th March 2010. They mulled over a Preference Services Report, and one of the issues raised was Your Choice's abysmal opt-out rate:

• The DMA's Your Choice file currently has a low level of registrations. Concerns were raised that should the number of registrations on the file not increase, DEFRA may push for a change in legislation. It is likely that this change in legislation would impact the Direct Mail as well as Door Drop sectors.
• It was decided that a review of the current publicity strategy for the Your Choice file is urgently needed. Responsibility for the Your Choice file currently falls under the remit of the Door Drop Council.
• Additionally it was suggested that the DMA should approach Royal Mail regarding this issue, as they hold a similar opt-out file for unaddressed mail.
  • Action: John Price to raise concerns regarding Your Choice at the next Advisory Council meeting.
  • Action: Mike Lordan to include Your Choice file size figures in future Preference Services reports presented to the Committee.

It is worth noting that the only reason the low level of registration was a deemed to be a problem was that Defra might impose legislation. This also confirms that Defra had some leverage over the junk mail industry. It is also interesting that there might have been talk about merging the Your Choice scheme with Royal Mail's Door-to-Door Opt-Out (although it is unclear exactly what they wanted to chat about with Royal Mail).

The next meeting took place on 25th May 2010. The urgently needed review was still urgently needed:

• Preference Services Report — Your Choice file size figures have been added to the Governance report. The DMA’s Advisory Council have agreed that a review of the current publicity strategy for the Your Choice file is urgently needed.
  • Action: Alex Walsh to raise this issue with the Door Drop Council and report back at the next Committee meeting.

The last minutes the Direct Marketing Association kindly put on its website is dated 28th September 2010. The meeting was still awaiting the "urgently needed" review and the committee now voiced deep concerns regarding the Door Drop Council’s handling of the Your Choice preference scheme. They didn't like the complex two-stop registration process in particular. However, the Door Drop Council insisted the process was needed to prevent people opt out their entire neighbourhood. This is exactly the reason Royal Mail adopted its two-step opt-out process.

• During recent meetings, the Committee has voice deep concerns regarding the Door Drop Council's handling of the Your Choice preference scheme; particularly regarding the complex two-step registration process and the effect that this may have on registration volumes.
• The Door Drop Council have defended the two-step registration process, stating that it is necessary in order to verify the address of the household that wishes to register with Your Choice, and in order to prevent block-registrations, where one individual attempts to register all households in a given area.
• It was agreed that in order to prevent restrictive legislation being passed, the industry must be able to show DEFRA that a proactive approach is being taken to limit the environmental impact of marketing in this sector, and that steps have been taken towards to creation of a viable preference scheme for door drop marketing.
• It was suggested that a better approach might be to focus on combining Your Choice with a similar scheme in this sector operated by Royal Mail, in order to create a more effective opt-out scheme across the industry. The National Newspapers network may also be approached to seek collaboration.
• The Direct Marketing Commission is due to begin conducting in-depth reviews of the key issues faced in particular sectors of the Direct Marketing industry. It was suggested that the Commission could focus on the door to door sector in the first of these reviews.
• The Door Drop Council have submitted several best practice documents for approval by the Committee, as well as a paper outlining a request to change certain sections of the DM Code of Practice. The Council have so far declined to send a representative to a Committee meeting to explain these documents and answer questions that the Committee may have. It was felt that in light of current concerns, these documents could not be approved until a member of the Council has attended a Committee meeting, or until the Commission have undertaken an investigation into this sector.
  • Action: George Kidd to raise this matter with the Commission, and propose that a review of the issues arising in the Door to Door sector is undertaken.
  • Action: Alex Walsh to keep the Committee updated on any developments in discussions between the DMA and otherstakeholders concerning the creation of a more effective opt-out scheme for door drop marketing.

There is one other interesting titbit in the minutes. Under the heading "Minutes of Previous Meeting" it mentions that registrations with Royal Mail's opt-out scheme expire after two years. Initially, registrations with the Your Choice Dummy Scheme didn't expire — if you opted out your address would be opted out forever. That was changed to two years in November 2011 (so it took them well over a year to implement that change).

What happened next?

The meeting notes appear to be the prelude to a major stand-off between the DMA's Governance Committee and Door Drop Council. Alas, other than the introduction of the expiry date for registrations nothing has changed since the meeting in September 2010. The Your Choice Dummy Scheme still uses a two-step registration process that involves requesting and completing a paper opt-out form. The service still doesn't have its own website, and it still takes a whopping three months before opt-out registrations become effective. The scheme is, by any definition, a complete joke.

It does beg the question how they get away with running an opt-out scheme that, by its own admission, is ineffective. The answer is that Your Choice was supposed to be replaced by the Door-Drop Preference Service and that, when that scheme failed to materialise, the responsibility deal between Defra and the junk mail industry was scrapped. The Door-Drop Preference Service was announced on 1st November 2011, so it is quite likely the concerns about Your Choice became a moot point shortly after the Governance Committee meeting in September 2010. And once both the Door-Drop Preference Service and the responsibility deal had been quietly killed off the DMA no longer had to worry about government intervention. There no longer was anybody to hold them to account.