Zero-Footprint = Green Marketing

The environmental impact of Paperless Marketing

During my travels with GO Paperless!, I get asked the question at least once a day, “How are you replacing Paper? I never offered “take-home” Paper on my billboards before. I don’t understand how you are going to save the environment.

There are two ways you can use Paperless Paper™. Both ways are completely eco-friendly.

• As a replacement to your existing Paper-based marketing.
  
  
• As an addition to your existing marketing channels.

As a replacement to paper, we will see ‘tree-savings’ by consuming less trees for our paper resources. This is important if we are going to start reducing the impact we have on our planet.

As an addition, Paperless Paper™ is a way to increase the value of traditional marketing channels without increasing the carbon footprint of the company.

This is important to remember because all of our projects must have a sustainability component to our decision making process. We already have a problem with how much we consume, we need to be smarter in the decisions that we make.

The Environmental Impact of Marketing Communications

What is the environmentally impact of different marketing vehicles:

• DIRECT MAIL – the #1 culprit of natural resource consumption and it provides less than 1% engagement rate. This is the planet destroying marketing vehicle.
  
  
• Newspaper Insert – Imagine a circulation of 500,000, 7 days a week in every city, town and country around the world. That’s a lot of inserts.
  
  
• Business Card –Remember all those business cards you threw out because you changed titles. Multiply that by everyone.
  
  
• Catalogue – They’re big, they’re glossy and I’d rather go to the website.
  
  
• Booklet –The standard for B2B marketing. Everyone has them, no one likes using them and they are usually outdated anyway.
  
  
• Brochure - Every company uses at least one, but many have reams of them. And at the pace that business changes today, most of them are thrown out.
  

Greening your Marketing Budget

There are 2 channels of marketing that are environmentally friendly, one-to-one direct sales, and engaging with online media. Other channels have a significant carbon footprint with a consumption of natural resources, human resources, energy and the byproduct of GHG emissions and waste.

Every choice that marketers make comes with a dollar cost, but there is a carbon cost that is an important factor to developing a green marketing budget. It is up to markterers to start making the right choices and be the champions for the environment.

Definition of Paperless Marketing

Paperless Marketing is a sub-discipline and type of Direct Marketing. There are three main characteristics which distinguish it from other types of marketing or advertising.

1. The first characteristic is it must provide Paperless Paper™ to consumers and businesses by using a mobile phone. This engagement is done using a text message to request Paperless Paper™ from a Paperless Slot and have it sent to a specific email address.
   
   
2. The second characteristic is that Paperless Paper™ must focus on driving brand value. This focus provides a consumer driven on-demand engagement with a rich targeted customer experience.
   
   
3. The third characteristic is to increase the value of both traditional marketing assets ( Out-of-home, mass-media, PR) and online assets (Websites, Blogs, Video) by bridging the gap between the offline and online world.

These last two aspects of paperless marketing involve an emphasis on trackable, measureable results. (known as “engagement” in the industry)

History

The term “Paperless Marketing” was first used in a presentation by Haris Hassan in 2007, who founded Paperless Marketing. His company (http://www.gopaperless.ca/), was founded on the principles of Paperless Marketing and was the first to make Paperless Paper™ a commercially viable, environmentally friendly option for global brands.

Overview of Benefits and Drawbacks to Paperless Marketing

Paperless Marketing is attractive to many marketers, because in all cases it’s effectiveness can be measured directly. For example, if a marketer provides paperless advertising on their existing media, they can see a customer engagement rate with how many pages were requested. By contrast, measurement of traditional marketing must often be indirect, since there is no direct response from the customer.

While many marketers like this form of advertising, some paperless marketing efforts are ineffective because some consumers do not have a mobile phone to request Paperless Paper™.

Paperless Marketing

Basics

Any medium that can be used to deliver a message to an audience can be used to offer Paperless Marketing. Probably the most commonly used medium for Paperless Marketing is paperless push, in which 1-1 direct marketing is used to replace printed material with Paperless Paper™.

Types of Paperless Marketing

• Paperless Push
  The most common form of Paperless Marketing is paperless push, where marketers use Paperless Paper™ instead of printed paper to provide messages to customers in a 1-1 direct engagement.
  
  
• Paperless Pull
  The second most common form of Paperless Marketing is paperless pull, where marketers place Paperless Paper™ on existing advertising mediums (door hangers, package inserts, magazines, newspapers, radio, television, billboards, etc.)

Examples of Paperless Marketing
Paperless Marketing permits marketers to design marketing pieces in PDF formats. There is a subsector of the industry that produces PDF interactive documents and other materials for Paperless Marketing.

Some of the most common forms of Paperless Paper™ include:

• Catalogs
• User Guides
• Campaign Guides
• Sales Brochures
• Exclusive Content

Advantages and Disadvantages of Paperless Marketing
Some people respond positively to Paperless Marketing and find useful and relevant information about goods and services.

Advantages for marketers include the following:

• Targeting
• Personalization
• Optimization
• Analysis
• Accumulation

Disadvantages include:

• Technology access
• Customer Cost

Opting Out
Paperless Marketing makes it easy to opt-out of sharing consumer information with organizations by clicking on a link embedded in the email that was sent.

Founder of Paperless Marketing

Hello, My name is Haris Hassan and I am the founder of the next generation of eco-friendly marketing, Paperless Marketing.

It’s a revolutionary new concept of customer marketing, where the value of relevant, informative brand messages is used to engage an audience.

Instead of trying to out ‘shine’ a brand, we can build brand loyalty based on tangible benefits of a product or company by offering Paperless Paper™.

Paperless Marketing uses mobile phones to request information be sent to an email address. This simple concept allows people to take valuable information away from brand messages on out-of-home, mass-media and POS.

GO Paperless! Is a Paperless Marketing service based on the principles of green marketing and offers people a unique engagement with brands, companies and governments.

Do you want to GO Paperless!

I certainly do!

Cheers

HH

PAPER OR PAPERLESS™ WHICH WOULD YOU CHOOSE?

http://www.gopaperless.ca/