Going Green in Marketing Communications

The future of business has a big streak of green. Leading companies know that adopting green business practices makes sense not only for the environment. Being environmentally responsible is an important component of a positive image and value proposition in today’s marketplace—one that must be promoted to customers, employees, local communities and business partners.

Incorporating green practices provides real economic benefits to an organization. Reducing the amount of generated waste, instituting recycling programs, and becoming more energy efficient can save a company a considerable amount of money. They can also give a company an advantage with customers over competitors. People increasingly want to do business with businesses that care about the environment and embrace actions that protect it.

According to a survey conducted by Panel Intelligence LLC, Cambridge, MA, 80% of corporate sustainability executives in Fortune 500 companies across North America were planning to maintain or increase levels of sustainability-related spending in 2009, despite economic conditions. The survey revealed that cost savings, revenue generation and brand strength were the most important drivers of environmental and clean technology initiatives.

“Our study clearly illustrates that sustainability and clean technology initiatives have achieved a tipping point and are no longer perceived by U.S. organizations as an optional expense,” said Scott Packard, vice president of quantitative research for Panel Intelligence. “Rather, sustainability is an opportunity to achieve a greater competitive advantage and higher efficiency, even in a down economy. Similar to competitive pricing, technology and product quality, sustainability is starting to be required by customers and supply chain partners.”

How Can Marketing Go Green?
Marketers wondering how to implement green practices in communications and operations have a number of easy yet effective tactics at their disposal.

§ Replace printed collateral with electronic collateral wherever possible. This saves trees, water and electricity from paper production processes—and reduces pollution. Today most customers are comfortable with digital documents such as PDFs, and many even prefer them. This is not only a responsible practice, but it is responsive to current customer needs and preferences.

§ Replace paper forms with online, Web-based forms. Many marketing departments still rely on paper forms to initiate new projects, request materials, and approve marketing and sales assets. Implementing these forms as Web-based entries to database systems reduces use of paper and streamlines internal workflows.

§ When printing is necessary, print the minimum needed and no more. This results in less paper consumption, less waste, and also reduces the print budget. A key objective for printing and fulfillment operations should be eliminating wasted materials. Also, mass distribution of new literature (“please send 50 copies to each office”) should be replaced with electronic notification.

§ Use e-fulfillment. Enable your users to download and/or e-mail marketing assets directly from an online repository. This eliminates the need to transport print materials by truck from a warehouse or fulfillment center and reduces harmful emissions to the environment.

§ Stop creating marketing materials that are ineffective. Check with your sales force and ask what is working for them and what is not being used. Usage reports from your marketing intranet or sales extranet provide the intelligence marketers need about which materials are popular and which are rarely used. If you also give sales members the ability to rate marketing/sales items, then you can determine what materials are most effective for customer purposes. This avoids printing and throwing out materials no one wants to use.

§ Eliminate overnight shipments to and from agencies and printers. Instead, send large files electronically via secure Web services designed for this purpose.

A Web-based marketing portal offers an excellent way for marketers to execute these tactics and to become a greener operation. With it, you can effectively switch most—if not all—of your printed marketing and sales assets to an electronic format and deliver them via the Web.

Marketing portals are designed for marketers who need to deliver more marketing/sales programs, more leads, and more sales tools in the face of reduced headcounts and tight discretionary budgets. A marketing portal helps marketers create and maintain a searchable, online repository, which promptly communicates mission-critical materials and information to salespeople, sales channels, marketing partners, customers, and others. It helps manage the ever-growing volume of a company’s information assets and keeps them current.

A portal also simplifies and improves the process of communicating marketing/sales assets to internal and external audiences, promotes collaboration and information-sharing, and meets the demand for quick responses to requests from sales and partners. At the same time, marketing portals cut overhead, waste, inventory, and fulfillment costs.

Other benefits of a marketing portal, in addition to those that are “green,” include:

Reduced cost in managing/distributing marketing assets
§ Reduction in staff time managing, e-mailing, shipping materials to the field
§ Increase in accuracy/quality/timeliness of information distributed to the field
§ Reduction in inquiries from the field for electronic files

Increased ability to serve multiple sales channels
§ Increase in number of supported sales execs and sales reps, with same (or less) staff
§ Different Web sites/applications addressed by one system — instead of multiple, isolated systems
§ Reduction in cost of lead processing and/or cost of follow up

Reduced cost of print literature fulfillment and shipping costs
§ Reduction in staff time spent fulfilling print inquiries
§ Savings in shipping costs, as many more items can now be accessed, downloaded electronically

In addition to green changes that marketers can make in the way they manage their departments, they also may want to promote other green or “sustainable development” initiatives to their management to be implemented company-wide. Every bit helps in conserving natural resources and helping sustain the environment. Marketers must do their part within their own operations, which sets an example for others in their organizations.

Here’s a few links that will help you go green:
Business.Gov: http://www.business.gov
New Voice of Business: http://www.newvoiceofbusiness.org/
GreenBiz.com: http://www.greenbiz.com

Scott Richardson ([email protected]) is CEO and president of Longwood Software.