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4 Green Reasons to Capitalize on Inbound Marketing

4 Green Reasons to Capitalize on Inbound Marketing

By Kay SmithSep 30 /2011

Inbound Marketing GreenTuesdays are junk mail day, which is why getting the mail on Tuesdays isn't very fun.  Any tree-hugger would cringe at the site of all the glossy mailers, pages of advertisements and #10 envelopes stuffed with sales letters sitting in a messy stack in the mail box.  Sure, this form of traditional marketing has its place in a well-strategized, integrated marketing campaign; but most of it is irrelevant junk mail - how wasteful!

What kind of burden does this form of outbound marketing place on our environment? Can inbound marketing help alleviate the negative outbound environmental impact? Besides all of the amazing benefits highlighted in our blog, the environment is a fantastic reason to redirect marketing budgets to inbound marketing.  Inbound marketing uses dynamic platforms to reach millions of social media and internet users who actually WANT to receive content – and usually at zero material waste.

According to the Do Not Mail Campaign, there are multiple reasons to leave this form of invasive outbound marketing behind and go green with inbound marketing. Below are a few of those reasons:

Top 4 Green Reasons to Capitalize on Inbound Marketing:

  1. Deforestation - It takes more than 100 million trees to produce the total volume of junk mail that arrives in American mailboxes each year—that's the equivalent of clear-cutting the entire Rocky Mountain National Park every four months. After visiting and hiking the Rocky Mountain National Park, anyone can tell you this is an incomprehensible amount of trees. In a world where the internet is available on every electronic device possible, inbound marketing is virtually paperless.
  2. Climate Change - The manufacturing of junk mail releases more greenhouse gas emissions per year than the emissions released by 9,372,000 million average passenger cars. Think of all the energy and natural resources it takes to clear out a forest, log the trees, paper the logs, distribute the paper, print the mailers, ship the mailers, mail the mailers, deliver the mailers, throw the mailers in the trash, transport mailers to the landfills. The distribution of inbound marketing materials is almost instantaneous. Want to reach 10,000 contacts with a new piece of advanced content? Want to meet with prospective clients though a webinar? Want to publish an ad on Facebook? It’s easy and with little-to-no natural resources spent.
  3. Landfills - It takes the equivalent of over 500,000 garbage truck loads to dump all junk mail into landfills and incinerators each year. Almost 50% of the solid mass that makes up our landfills is paper and paperboard waste. In the real world space is limited. There are only so many places you can dump waste and garbage. Luckily, in the digital world, you can publish as much content, marketing messages, webinars and valuable information as you would like with no impact on our landfills.
  4. Efficiency - A response rate of less than 0.25% is considered acceptable for the 500 million US credit card solicitations that are mailed monthly. A national poll by Zogby International found that 92% of respondents discard or recycle at least some of their junk mail without even reading it. What a waste of trees, paper, ink and your marketing dollar. Inbound marketing offers a whole toolkit of measurable results to track your ROI. With solid, attainable goals from the onset, efficiency & results are concrete realities with inbound marketing

Parting words from the great environmentalist, Jane Goodall:  "Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference." This attitude can easily be applied to business - it's time to make your marketing efforts matter because what you do does make a difference.

*Statistics provided by the Do Not Mail campaign except where noted.

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The Author

Kay Smith
