Kermit was wrong. Despite the emerald Muppet’s protests to the contrary, it can be easy being green. With the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol in 2005, Britain has to reduce its carbon emissions by eight per cent before 2012.
There is a fantastic opportunity for companies to strengthen their image by demonstrating a strong commitment to the environment and leading by example, but they need to act quickly. By optimising the way it handles its marketing, an organisation can significantly reduce its environmental impact, save money, and hopefully turn its competitors green with envy.
At first glance, green’ marketing could seem to be something of an oxymoron; marketing is traditionally one of the more resource-hungry parts of a business. Nevertheless, it is possible to optimise resources and minimise waste, and intelligent marketing can go a long way towards reducing the environmental impact of the organisation.
Every business has to find some way to convey its message to potential customers. Direct mail is a tried and tested communications channel, but it also raises legitimate concerns about wastage. If a person receives a message that has no relevance, then that message very likely goes straight in the bin. The company that sent it receives no benefit – sending out this junk mail could even be detrimental to the firm’s image. The campaign also has an unnecessary impact on the environment through the manufacturing process and through the litter that is created as people discard what they perceive as a nuisance.
But direct mail is only junk’ mail when it is not targeted. Using an intelligent marketing solution, marketers can analyse an individual’s behaviour, including buying habits, and target only the customers who will have use for the message. This cuts the amount of physical material that is sent out, whilst improving the return on investment for the campaign.
The more specific the targeting, the more effective the campaign is likely to be. For example, a new mother is likely to be interested in baby products and services, whereas the mother of a university student will not be. It doesn’t matter that they share very general similarities (they’re both mothers, and their kids do nothing but sleep all day), their interests and priorities will be completely different, and in-depth marketing analysis is essential to distinguish these differences.
The Direct Marketing Association (DMA) reports that the amount of direct mail being sent out is down to 88 per cent of what it was three years ago, as a result of targeting. As more and more businesses embrace targeting, the DMA expects that figure to drop even further.
Even with targeting, direct mail campaigns still generate physical material. The DMA also reports that 95 per cent of paper used in direct mail campaigns is recycled or comes from managed sources, a very encouraging figure. It is possible to reduce the environmental impact even further, however. Sending out material made from recycled material is all well and good, but if a business can encourage the recipient to recycle the correspondence, this is even better. In 2003, research showed that only around 13 per cent of direct mail was being recycled, and the DMA committed to increasing this to 55 per cent by 2009, and 70 per cent by 2013. By putting a message encouraging people to recycle on the documents it sends out, an organisation can help these targets be reached.
To ensure that customers do not receive several copies of the same mailing, a single customer view is essential. Many large organisations have customer databases dedicated to different divisions or product lines, which is why you sometimes have to phone around different departments at your bank or utilities provider to find someone who can help you. Consolidating customer data from across the enterprise enables you to eliminate duplicate mailings. Where communications are impersonal (such as product catalogues), it might be possible to cut waste further by only sending one copy per household.
Greater use of email campaigns can also help an organisation to reduce its environmental impact. The immediate advantage of electronic campaigns is that there is no physical material sent out, reducing the carbon that is released through printing and manufacturing processes, and reducing the amount of material that needs to be disposed of or recycled. Digital distribution means costs are significantly reduced too. Of course, email campaigns do still have an environmental impact, as all human activity does. But the environmental cost of a single email message is likely to be smaller than that of a comparable print mailer in most cases. For business to business campaigns in particular, the recipient’s computer will already be switched on, so the environmental cost is limited to the power consumed by systems used for email delivery.
Just as with direct mail, blanket email campaigns can be detrimental to your image – to some people spam is a greater annoyance than junk mail. You can’t just switch your print campaigns to email without asking for permission from recipients first. Email marketing solutions, such as Email Reaction, allow businesses to target specific users, reducing the possibility of sending an unwanted message to those who will react negatively to it. By tracking open and clickthrough rates, you can identify those who respond warmly to your email messages and those who never open them. Where your email seems unwelcome, you can try reactivating the customer using other channels.
Perhaps most importantly, companies need to ensure that every message they send has value for the recipient. It’s a waste of money and resources to send out messages saying we’re great’. It’s only when you engage recipients, that you truly communicate.
By making sure all physical material is recycled and all messages are relevant, and by targeting the right people through the right channel, a business can significantly reduce its environmental impact while increasing the return on investment for marketing campaigns.
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