Save your confederate money, boys.

Direct mail will rise again. I know at this point many publishers have experienced diminished returns from traditional DM.

Yet, there are signs of traditional DM making a comeback--as is evident from the lead story in this issue ("Stephen Leeb: 20,000 subs in nine months"). A marketer of financial advisory newsletters also told us recently that his clients are beginning to enjoy more vigorous responses.

But with Do Not Call, Do Not Fax and Do Not E-Mail regulations working their way into existence, it may soon be that the only alternative to mail may be for me to stand alongside Route 81 wearing a sandwich board reading:

Marketing Information For Newsletter Publishers Call 1-845-876-5222

Thinking, though, about the "resurgence" of DM led me somehow to consider the problem of "nixies" and other miscellaneous returns.

My first newsletter boss, Ken Callaway at the old Capital Publications (1968) taught me, "If you send folks postage-paid return envelopes, they're gonna send stuff back to you in them."

* Nixies Type 1. I expect everyone reading this has received their BREs containing torn-up promo packages (label removed, of course), hate mail, porn, cartoons, etc. Those you toss into the round file without a second thought.

I did meet a publisher who dealt with this problem by printing a "Registration Number" on his BREs (R331475). "It's the same number on every one, of course, but it has cut down on the problem. Those clowns must think I could trace them."

* Nixies Type 2. "Take my name off your list." If it's your own list, of course you do that. No one wants to send unwanted mail.

The problem is that most of these requests come from names on rental lists. You could send a return letter explaining that you don't own the list and can't change it and that they (the prospects) might well be interested in future mailings from the owner or other renters.

I call that "not worth the trouble," nor would I expect many would try to maintain their suppression files for the handful of these requests you receive if you were to rent that list again.

* Nixies Type 3. "No Longer Here." You get most of these from lists of Controlled Circulation publications and association member lists. Firms get those pubs and mail from the associations to which they belong and evidently don't pay much attention to the name on the address label.

But when your #10 window envelope arrives addressed to B.T. Fitch, it comes back stamped "No Longer Here." Industry guru Ed McLean suggests making two dozen phone calls to this type of list and says, "If in 50 percent of the cases, Mr. Fitch is still on the job, that's a pretty good list.

The fact of the matter is that nixies just aren't that important in list evaluation. If the list pays off, you'll use it again; if it doesn't, you won't.

(If you had some evidence that there was an unusually high number of nixies on a rental, you could argue about it with the list owner, but it's probably not worth your time.)

* Two Pet Peeves. A return on a seminar mailing said:

"Please send literature for conferences to the attention of the Human Resources Department. Only send one copy. We will not deliver to multiple names for the same seminar."

If I rent a professional association membership, Company A might have a half-dozen names on it. All good prospects I would hope. I really don't want "Human Resources" to decide who learns about my workshop.

And, practically, there are 4000+ other names on the list; am I going to request one name per company, title-slugged "Attn. Human Resources Dept."?

As one of my TV sitcom favorites Paul Buckman on "Mad About You" liked to say, "Never gonna happen, my friend."

And here's the single most annoying return I've ever received. From a subscription mailing for my direct marketing newsletter, a return from a catalog company stated, "We may make our living from DM, but please don't soil our mailroom with your marketing pieces.