Link This | Email this | Blog This | Comments (0)

Environmentally Friendly Print
December 13, 2007

Earlier this year, a study released by Edelman Public Relations found that, when it comes to consumers’ purchases, world stewardship matters. According to the survey, 88% of global consumers feel it is their duty to contribute to a better society and environment and 85% say they are willing “to change the brands they buy or their consumption habits to make tomorrow’s world a better place.” (We wonder what percentage of these consumers live in the United States, but that’s another story.) More than half—55%—say they would help a brand “promote” a product if there was a good cause behind it.

Edelman calls this trend “mutual social responsibility,” in which consumers seek companies that prioritize corporate social responsibility.

A related story, released about the same time, points one of the many fingers of poor environmental stewardship, not at the products themselves, but at the marketing of those products through direct mail. Justin Basini, vice president and head of brand marketing at Capital One Europe, told attendees of Marketing Direct’s Profiting from Green Policies conference that the direct marketing industry needs to “to clean up its act and improve its impact on the environment, or risk being legislated against and facing a heightened consumer backlash.”

For its part, Capital One Europe plans to reduce its use of direct mail and increase its use of Internet-based marketing—not entirely, but in part—due to environmental concerns. (Of course, the fact that it’s cheaper to produce and distribute is a nice plus!)

What direct mail applications are “greener” than others? Capital One Europe didn’t say which ones it plans to target, but from our perspective, they are the applications we’ve been discussing here – customization, personalization, and segmentation. Why? 

    1. They reduce postal waste. High percentages of junk mail never reach their destination because the focus is on cheap, not accurate. This wastes astonishing numbers of trees (even if they are sustainable resources from tree farms) and, perhaps more importantly, massive amounts of fossil fuels used to produce the paper, produce the envelopes, produce the ink and coating, run the presses used to print everything, and distribute the documents to the, uh, trash can.

    2. They reduce trash can waste. Even if documents reach their destinations, most direct mail is thrown away before it’s opened. So the result is the same – wasting precious environmental resources, especially fossil fuels. By personalizing or customizing a document, you are increasing the relevance of the document to the recipient, increasing the chance that it will be opened. Sure, it still uses up resources, but at least it is for a purpose, not just to be thrown into the trash can.

    3. They reduce volume. Smart, effective use of customization, personalization, and segmentation starts with culling the database for the most likely respondents at the outset. (For example, if you are sending out mailings to customers, you might choose the customers who have purchased from you in the past several months, rather than those who haven’t purchased in a year or more; or you might focus only on customers who purchased once but not a second time, tailoring communications to encourage them to become active customers again.) Thus, instead of the “throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks” approach, in which you send out massive amounts of direct mailing knowing that most of it will be throw away, you send out smaller, more environmentally friendly volumes of targeted or personalized mailings.  Not only are you helping the environment by reducing the use of environmental resources, but you are increasing the effectiveness of those programs at the same time.

Maybe you’d never thought of direct mail as being green before, but maybe it’s time that you started.

Posted by Heidi Tolliver Nigro on December 13, 2007 | Comments (0)