Junk mail. Piles of it. In your mailbox, every day. You don't want it. Most of the time, you didn't ask for it. But when it arrives, you have to "do" something with it: Shred it. Trash it. Recycle it.You'll probably never eliminate "all" the mail you don't want. But with a little effort, you can remove your name from enough mailing lists and databases to cut down some of the clutter.We've rounded up some of the best tips for opting out of the direct-mail deluge. Follow these steps and you're bound to lessen your mail carrier's load.Remember: You won't see results right away, because a lot of direct mail is prepared and addressed in advance. So wait at least two or three months before you throw up your hands in disgust.It's a painstaking process -- but so is handling all that junk mail, right?Credit card offersIf you're not shopping for a new credit card, opt out of those pre-approved offers.

Putting a stop to spam!

It's proving to be a good year for consumers who are fed up with being hit from all sides by spam - marketing messages they neither asked for nor want. The latest "leave me alone" tool to come our way are new regulations - effective from Wednesday - which make it compulsory for companies which send SMSes within South Africa to give consumers an easy opt-out. All you have to do is hit reply, enter the word "Stop" and then send. Standard SMS rates will apply. The regulations have been introduced by industry regulator the Wireless Applications Service Provider Association (Waspa), to spare consumers having to go through the process of lodging complaints on the Waspa website. .

Restaurantpartner.com Provides Restaurants and Foodservice Professionals the Future to On-Demand Marketing Solutions

Restaurantpartner.com, a new membership based website launched June 25th, offers restaurants and foodservice professionals a one-of-a-kind, self serve marketing office and resource center.

The Restaurantpartner.com Marketing Office brings the power of a professional marketing department right to a member's computer. It allows members to create their own custom direct marketing campaigns through an online Direct Mail Center and Email Builder.

Harte-Hanks Launches New Web Platform www.citdb.com to Make Tech Contacts Easily Available to Emerging Marketers

Harte-Hanks, Inc. (NYSE: HHS), a worldwide direct and targeted marketing company, announced today the release of an e-commerce platform designed to provide small and emerging technology marketers and sellers easy access to technology contacts across North America, Europe and South America. The new site, http://www.citdb.com, allows technology companies with small marketing budgets to search and select contacts from the Harte-Hanks Ci Technology Database (CiTDB), a source of rich installed technology content from 700,000 business sites on three continents.

CiTDB.com users can focus their search on a very specific geographical area or market sector, and rent a list of contacts they want, entirely online by credit card. The data made available are name, company, mailing address and telephone number based on the user's query, but without the location's technology profile information that is only associated with a full CiTDB subscription.

'ASR Records Adds to Team

'ASR Records formally announced the addition of Roxann Stout and Jahmal Brown to the label staff. Ms. Stout will direct and develop initiatives related to the label's Booking Department. Mr. Brown will provide the label with specialized Internet Technologies skills related to the label's online portal.

Roxann Stout will be working with qualified talent buyers toward booking 'ASR Records Artists at festivals and events worldwide. She is a trained musician, studying classical piano for 12 years, classical voice, and saxophone for 7 years. She was a state champion vocalist and won the Women's Federated Competition for 2 straight years. Her promise as a vocalist was so impressive that Ms. Stout was awarded a vocal scholarship from the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Customer Surveys: A Powerful Link Building Tool

One of the most effective link building tools I use is a customer survey. Surveys are usually written from a customer service standpoint: companies want to know the opinions of the people who buy from them and crave feedback on how they're doing. Honorable intentions for sure but in today's link marketing, it's less about where customers stand and more about where they're going.

In the past, I provided a general questionnaire to the company that contracted my linking services, then pulled demographic information from the site's web logs. Using web logs is still a viable tactic but I've come to understand that today's Internet is different and I need to adapt what I do along with it. The explosion of Web 2.0 and social media type sites is changing the way we work and the way I market for links.