Email Marketing: The “GREENER” Choice

Posted on July 9, 2010 by lindsaymvp

Happy Friday, blog readers!

San Francisco is in the midst of a cold, gray, foggy spell (sorry East Coast-ers), so we thought we’d try to liven it up a bit around here and reflect on how email marketing is the “GREENER” choice for your marketing efforts. Bring on the sunshine!

Before you think about printing flyers or postcards for your next marketing initiative, consider this: on average each adult in the United States receives 41 pounds of paper junk mail per year. Not to mention, 44% of these flyers, envelopes, and postcards end up in landfills never opened. Junk mail not only effects your time by being a nuisance in your mailbox to sort through, but it is also severely impacting our environment. Every year, more than 100 million trees are cut down to produce junk mail. The pulp and paper industry is the third largest industrial greenhouse gas emitter- this is more than 2.8 million cars and greatly impacts our growing global warming problem. Our water supply is also being depreciated due to junk mail- it takes about 28 billion gallons of water to produce and recycle junk mail each year. Although it is best to recycle any junk mail you receive, the ink used for junk mail has a high concentration of heavy metals making recycling difficult. (Hate paper junk mail as much as I do? Check-out 41pounds.org to learn how you can stop all the junk coming to your mailbox as well as other important facts + tips!)

So what’s the answer? (Drumroll please….) Email marketing of course! (Come on, you knew that. ) Not only is email cheaper and allows you to track the actual actions that your subscribers performed from your message, but you won’t be contributing to the cutting down of trees or production of ink. Further, by opening an email marketing account with Topica you are contributing a tree to our nation’s forests that have been damaged due to fire, disease, or pestilence through the Arbor Day Foundation. We love email, and we love trees too.