A few weeks ago, I started getting junk mail for someone who has a last name that sounds a little bit like mine. However, their first name doesn’t match anybody in my family. I’ve been returning this mail to the sender, since there’s no way it’s for me or anyone I know. Yet they keep sending more, despite clear indications that the recipient doesn’t live at my address.

This behavior suggests the offending marketer is quite desperate. Forget about list quality: these guys are sending out catalogs and mailers to people whose names merely sound like the original target. Does this actually convert to more sales? I highly doubt it, as I have nothing in common with the mystery man who has a few letters in common with my name.

How about this approach: when names vary from your list by more than a letter or two, just assume they aren’t related. Drop that record, and focus on fresher entries that have some behavioral component, like those who bought from you before. And no matter what you do, if one of those low-quality name matches generates a lot of returned mail, save your money and stop sending mail to that person. They probably don’t exist.

As we move into winter, I’ve started to see more ads for cold and flu medications. Normally, these promise to reduce symptoms so you can feel better faster. Whether or not the products are any good, they’re solving a legitimate problem: people hate feeling sick. However, one ad caught my attention. Though I can’t remember the name of the product, they were selling a different benefit: reduced coughing so that you won’t make other people sick.

I don’t know where the copywriters are from, but I’ve never seen a situation where even ten percent of people care about coughing or sneezing in the presence of others. Most people couldn’t care less about spreading disease. In fact, they’d probably be willing to cough on everyone around them if it meant their own symptoms would go away faster.

Putting this another way, the cough medicine that helps you avoid spreading your illness to others is trying to solve a problem that most people don’t realize they have. Only a small percentage of people would agree this is a concern, and even fewer would act upon it. So unless the goal of this product is to reach that small minority, they would be much better off focusing on the more selfish problems and goals that most people already can relate to.

Living in the city, you quickly realize the harsh tradeoffs involved with volume purchases. If you buy too much, carrying it home will put a serious hurting on you. You learn to adapt by bringing along bags, rolling carts, and other carrying tools. But sometimes you aren’t properly equipped for what you want to buy, and you have to decide what to leave behind on the store shelves. This scenario is bad for the retailer, but I think they can do something about it.

Here’s the idea: customers who shop at the store frequently (as evidenced by a loyalty card or just a few recent receipts) would be entitled to borrow a wheeling cart to get their purchases home. (This would be a small folding model, not an actual shopping cart.) To reduce losses on the hardware, it would be vividly branded with the store name, and perhaps they would charge a small deposit to your credit card. The next time you shop there, just bring the cart back or use it again for bringing home the next batch of items.

Sure, some of the carts would disappear over time. But the incremental sales and margins from a larger average ticket size, plus the added loyalty fostered by this huge convenience, should make the program well worth the investment.

Since going to the grocery store isn’t exactly a fun task when it’s 12 degrees out, we’ve been stocking up on certain types of food for the winter. With non-perishables, this is pretty easy: just stash them in the pantry, in a closet, etc. But with refrigerated items, it’s much trickier, since many things expire after a few weeks or months. The key question is: can you freeze the product and then thaw it out later?

With the exception of items that are sold frozen, most perishable foods don’t make any mention about freezing them. This seems like a no-brainer: if the item can be frozen, say so on the packaging. And if freezing it is a bad idea, mention that too. With this simple bit of advice, you can drastically reduce the chance that a customer ends up with frozen things that just don’t taste right later — all the while encouraging them to stockpile as much as they can fit in their freezer.

While shopping at Trader Joe’s last weekend, I noticed two things. First, the store doesn’t have any of the usual conveyor belts that pull your groceries towards the cashier. Second, despite this lack of automation, the cashiers are incredibly fast and efficient at ringing up your purchases. This makes me wonder: has the lack of automation actually increased the store’s overall efficiency?

In this case, I would say it has. The employees don’t have the usual crutch of the conveyor belt to lean on, so they’ve just learned to own the whole process and become very speedy at it. I doubt that eschewing technology in this way would work for every aspect of store operations or even for other retailers — you’d have to test it to find out, complete with proper training and incentives for the staff members. But given the current trend to automate everything, it’s interesting to see how the opposite might sometimes be the best approach.

I don’t have many credit cards, so it’s something of a novelty when a card renews and I get a new one in the mail. Recently, I noticed what a lackluster job the credit card issuers do at recognizing the importance of this event. After all, the customer has been with you for at least a few years — perhaps even a decade or more — so shouldn’t you go out of your way to thank them?

Sure, some companies do a better job at this than others. For instance, the renewal letter from American Express is nicely designed and fairly gracious. It definitely outclasses the Visa and Mastercard letters I’ve received. But at best, it’s still a form letter. I’d like to see something a little more relevant, more personal.

For starters, the credit card company should create a series of targeted renewal letters that match up with the type of things the customer uses the card for. People who dine out a lot would get a different letter than those who spend all their money at electronics stores. That should make the first couple of renewal periods more interesting.

Then, for customers who have reached a major milestone like ten or twenty years as a cardholder, give them something really special. Perhaps a small gift that reflects the sort of things they buy, or a personalized letter or a phone call from one of the executives. These customers are probably the most loyal and most likely to say great things about the company when they’re happy. So investing the extra effort to really impress them at crucial moments in the relationship should pay off considerably.

Back in 2005, the US government passed a bill to change the start and end dates for daylight savings time. These changes took effect earlier this year. The original scheme was somehow going to save people money by giving us more hours of natural light, thus reducing electric usage. Or maybe it was the opposite, I forget. The point is, the premise was tenuous at best.

On the flipside, millions of computer products had to be changed to accomodate the new hours. Windows, Mac, Linux — everything was affected. Even Blackberries and more obscure devices (such as digital signage players) needed a software update to recognize the time changes. This was a mild annoyance for consumers and a major expense for the companies who make those products. In fact, I would guess that the overall costs on the business side alone vastly exceeded the benefits for businesses and consumers put together.

What if the year had been shortened by a day? Or what if October suddenly had 32 days? Surely those changes would screw up lots of products and services too. I’m not sure how the daylight savings time changes got passed in the first place, but hopefully people will speak up a little more actively if the government tries to save us money like that in the future.

With retail sales slumping, many retailers have been starting their holiday sales push earlier than ever before. From what I’ve read, this meant putting up Christmas decorations as early as mid-October, well before Halloween. This makes me wonder: does starting the promotion for a given holiday a few weeks earlier actually increase sales for the entire holiday period? Or does it just spread out the same sales dollars over a longer period of time?

Unfortunately, I don’t have the answers to these questions. When you ponder the issue further, it’s really a question about whether a retailer (or any business) can push and pull certain known levers to increase their sales. In this case, they’re putting up the usual markers and signals earlier than before. Will it work? I don’t know. But it will definitely be an interesting tactic to watch as the holiday season progresses.

If you’ve purchased a lot from Amazon, you probably know they do a great job of notifying you when something in your cart changes. For example, say that you place an item in your cart but don’t purchase it. Then, the price of the item changes. When you return to the site a few days later and check your cart, Amazon will show you a very clear message about that price change. The same goes for items that are no longer available.

While shopping at another online store, I came across the opposite behavior. When a product in my cart had sold out, it simply disappeared from the cart. In fact, it was removed from the entire website. I had to do a Google search to find the old product page, and only then did I see a cryptic message saying the item was no longer available. This took way more time than it should have, and certainly didn’t help my perception of the store.

Granted, Amazon’s approach isn’t perfect. From what I recall, they don’t provide relevant suggestions for a replacement product if the original one has been discontinued. But they’re certainly light years ahead of most stores in keeping customers informed of cart changes. Since placing something in the cart indicates a reasonable likelihood to buy, other retailers should revisit how they handle cart-related messaging. Chances are they’ve never given it any thought, so even a small improvement would be a welcome one.