Direct Marketing and the Environment- Part 2!

3) Review the format and design of your mailings

Could you mailings be simplified? It is important to review your mailings and consider whether your message is being sent in a powerful yet environmentally friendly way. Pages and pages of information are often preventable, and can actually deter the end receiver from reading the mailing. Could you reduce the amount of information in your mailings? Similarly, are you sending information that includes avoidable inserts? Regularly reviewing the content of mailings can both minimise the environmental impact and also ensure that your business is producing effective content.

4) Recycled or Recyclable?

Can your mailings be sent on recycled paper, it is important to remember that “recycled paper” can mean anything from 100% recycled to 1% recycled! If this is not something that you could consider, can your mailings be recycled? A small proportion of mailings are not recyclable. Staples are acceptable for recycling, but some glues used in binding for example, mean that the whole mailing will be rejected for recycling.

Direct marketing techniques can provide a range of benefits to your business, but you need to keep a careful eye on its environmental impact now more than ever. Don’t forget that if you are using direct marketing to either existing or potential customers, the quality and accuracy of your data needs to be up to standard, to avoid wastage and get the best possible results.