Just in time for Mother's Day, direct marketers have swamped my mailbox.

In the last week or so junk mail targeting Mom has piled up. There's a Costco Wholesale Corp.'s (NASDAQ: COST) magazine with a story titled Mom Inc. on the cover. Tiffany & Co. (NYSE: TIF) is selling some lovely trinkets between baby blue covers. 1-800-flowers.com, Inc.(NASDAQ: FLWS) has a catalog full of roses, chocolate and other things that "Mom wants." The local taxidermist even sent me a coupon for a deal on moose stuffing (this is Alaska) for the special day.

Is it my imagination or has the amount of junk mail increased?

It's up. In 2006 companies sent more than 114 billion direct -mail pieces. That's about 15% more than five years earlier, according to the United States Postal Service. The Postal Service and I don't see eye to eye when it comes to credit card offers, coupons and bulky catalogs. The federal agency loves direct mailers because they generate big bucks for the service. It even has a magazine, Deliver, whose mission is to help direct mailers find faster, better ways to my mailbox, and wallet. In 2006, for the first time ever, the volume of bulk mail, which is another name for direct mail, exceeded all first class.

But there is a fledging company taking on the Postal Service and the giants of direct marketing. Hollywood celebrity Matt Damon sits on its board Greendimes.com will take your name off direct mail lists, unwanted credit card solicitations, and the dozens or hundreds of catalogs that arrive yearly. It will keep tabs on direct marketers to keep you off the lists and even plant a tree for you every month, but not on your property. The cost: $36 a year.

Sounds like a good gift for Mom. It's a lot less than diamonds from Tiffany's. Or a stuffed moose.

Bertelsmann AG, via its DirectGroup, is buying the other 50% stake of Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) Bookspan. Bookspan owns roughly 40 book clubs, including the "Book of the Month Club." Financial terms were not disclosed.

Time Warner and Bertelsmann formed the partnership in 2000. This also includes the Doubleday Book Club and Literary Guild. Bertelsmann will reel in Bookspan into its BMG Columbia House.

BMG will now be the clear leader, with no real competitors in book, music and DVD mail order clubs in North America. This is all part of Time Warner's strategic changes after it closed Life and sold off 18 magazines earlier. It appears that even if an industry is shrinking, there at least may be some perceived value in being a virtual sole-supplier.

Jon Ogg is a partner in 24/7 Wall St., LLC; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.

Email marketing is big business.

From spammers to political action groups, the past five years have witnessed the rise of electronic correspondence as the most popular way for businesses and organizations to reach the public. This change is due to the fact that, unlike the ancestors of the digital marketing revolution (direct mail campaigns or phone calls), email is free and fast.

At least it was until AOL, the largest U.S. Internet service provider, announced plans to charge for guaranteed delivery on certain types of bulk e-mail messages. By charging for "certified" email messages, AOL hoped to curb the amount of spam customers were receiving in their inboxes. With this new technology developed by Goodmail, mass mailers must pay a fee to ensure that their email was "stamped" by the ISP as a certified piece of correspondence.

AOL's new bulk email fee -- which boils down to a fraction of a cent per message -- took effect two weeks ago. So far the program has had a mixed reception – consumers seem to love it, but businesses and non-profits, small and large alike, have begun to worry about what this fee will mean for them.

As much as my heart goes out to small business owners who are just trying to make it, I can't say I'm sorry to no longer receive messages, cryptically entitled, "Buy L3vitr^! Ch3^p P!lls!"