Customized Multi-channel Marketing - hosted by L2

In reference to article featured in Techcrunch

A startup launching today, will help its subscribers kill off the junk mail that arrive in their mailboxes. A large chunk of it comes from credit card companies offering you more credit cards, whether you qualify for them at all. It seems mass marketing, even if its personalized, is the poison of choice for credit card companies.

Is that the best solution? Households get chunks of credit card spam, I’ve heard of some people using the paper credit cards they receive in their mail to train their dogs to "pay" for food.

Credit card companies incur large marketing costs, create adverse reactions in their potential customers and kill tonnes of trees for no particular reason. The situation has come to the point, where most people are able to at one glance know they’re not interested in the offer and the envelopes hit the trash even before they are opened.

Isn’t there another way to do this?  Personalization on a paper credit card may have been quite impressive before, but its become too common and frankly, useless to the customer. How about accumulating the money that would have been spent through the 2-3 mailings a month, and sending prospective customers something useful, that they can keep till the time they decide to actually sign up for one.

A calendar, a fridge magnet, an informational sheet about the branches in their area, with their addresses, a personal letter from their would-be bank manager, a complimentary movie poster, a christmas (or any other occasion) card, anything different.