mdolla: How to Handle your Mailboxes Efficiently

Despite email being widely used, traditional mail still holds its importance. Most of your credit card and utility bill statements, along with other promotional material, still come in the physical mail. Discount coupons and offers, too, are a few of the common material which you receive along with your personal post and parcels.

Managing your physical mailbox can be a challenge, especially if you are traveling or find little time to actually read it in a timely manner. Here are some tips on how to manage your physical mailboxes efficiently:

1. Talk to Direct Marketing Association.

If you are fed up with the amount of marketing material (junk mail) you receive, you can simply request Direct Marketing Association or DMA to strike off your name from its database. DMA has a comprehensive database as it supports multilateral marketing by its members. However, it has a comprehensive program in place allowing anyone to request the removal of a name from its database. This virtually ensures that you will stop receiving most of the promotional material.

2. Convert postal mail to digital email.

You can easily convert your postal mail to digital email by using virtual mailboxes. Virtual mailbox suppliers collect mail on your behalf and inform you via email if you have received any mail, along with its description. All you have to do is to pick and choose which postal mail you want to receive and same will be delivered to you easily.

3. Put your mail on “vacation hold”.

If you are traveling or on a vacation, it is possible to ask for a hold on your postal mail. However, this service is not available in every country. Further, the U.S. Postal Service allows vacation hold for 30 days only. Though this time is brief, you can use it to at least limit the inflow of mail for 30 days.

4. Post “Addressed Mail Only” on your mailbox.

Though this method may not work perfectly, if you place the sign on your mailbox chances are that your overall postal mail will lessen. Writing on the mailbox “addressed mail only”, or “former resident does not live here”, or “no tenants are living here” can ensure that the postman will not drop the unnecessary mail into your postbox.

5. Avoid magazine subscriptions.

Magazine subscriptions are not only expensive, but magazines often sell your information to third parties. Magazines actually cross-sell your information to third parties and large magazines do it on a regular basis. It is often the case that you can opt out of giving your information to third parties but some magazines still sell out your information to third parties.

6. Hire third party services to get you off lists.

Besides hiring third party mailboxes, you can use third party services to call subscription and other third party multilateral agencies to strike your name off their records. For a small fee, they will take over this task and call all the agencies which are on their record. Though this service is fee-based, it can be effective to get you “off the grid”.

If you are a small business owner and want to go on a long vacation, you can even consider selling a business to others so that you can avoid receiving piles of junk mail upon your return.

You can also hire locksmith services to properly lock-in your mailboxes, doors, and windows so that no junk mail is dropped inside your business premises or home.

You can easily manage your physical mailboxes and above are some of the options available to you. Some are paid but with proper planning and careful handling of the junk mail, you can permanently resolve this issue and receive only the mail which is important.

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