Sustainable marketing is becoming an increasingly popular talking point among marketers.
Every business needs to look at ways it can continue to grow in a way that is sustainable. How marketing is used to promote products and services to customers can have a huge impact on the eco-friendliness of the business.
The EcoSend team have put together the following top tips to help you understand sustainable marketing, plus lower your marketing-based emissions today.
Sustainable Marketing: An Overview
Sustainable marketing uses techniques to lower the carbon emissions of your marketing campaigns. It can also be used to encourage your customers to make greener choices based on the communication you send, plus your overall business strategy.
Few businesses realise that their marketing efforts have a carbon footprint.
Physical marketing materials can generate waste in the form of paper, promotional materials and packaging. Printing and shipping marketing assets can also generate carbon emissions, as can attending events to promote your business.
Digital marketing can be just as bad for the planet. Our online activity generates CO2 as the servers which store, send and receive data also require vast amounts of water to operate.
Therefore, the idea behind sustainable marketing is to recognise and reduce the environmental impact of your marketing campaigns.
Sustainable Marketing Strategies That Every Marketer Should Know 💡
For your marketing strategy to be sustainable, it needs to consider the eco-friendliness of what is being promoted and also how.
We’re fortunate to constantly learn from other businesses in the sustainability space over on
The EcoSend Podcast. These are some ideas that have been discussed with us that you can also implement into your business and marketing strategies to become more sustainable.
🚯 Reduce Physical Waste
If your business exists in the real world, or you attend events then you will be producing physical waste. This can be in the form of paper waste, packaging waste, promotional material waste or emissions related to travel.
Auditing your physical waste is necessary to be able to reduce it. For some businesses, this is now mandatory due to CSRD.
💚 Promote Eco-Friendly Products Or Services
As a business which does any kind of marketing, you also have a huge opportunity to encourage your customers to adopt greener practices.
A great place to start is promoting eco-friendly products or services that you happen to offer. Likewise, you could also inform customers about how to extend the lifespan of their products to reduce waste.
If you make products that are better for the planet, you can also inform your customers about your efforts in your marketing, including through email newsletters.
Not following trends and instead opting for more long term or circular approaches to your products is yet another way to become a more planet-friendly business.
✉️ Sustainable Email Marketing
Over 360 billion emails are sent per day. With every email emitting up to 26g of CO2 depending on its size and the number of recipients, the carbon footprint of email is a serious problem.
As a marketer, sustainable email marketing is something you need to be actively looking into. Otherwise, the carbon footprint of your business could be higher than you realise, especially if you have a large email list and send regular emails.
EcoSend is one such option you might want to try, seeing as you know, you’re on the EcoSend website right this second.
Our systems run on renewable energy sources and we’ll plant trees based on your usage. You will also receive a special badge for your email footers to let your customers know that your emails are sent via our sustainable email platform.
Your email habits can also reduce your email carbon footprint. We recommended cleaning your list regularly to remove inactive contacts which will also boost your open rates. Plus, segmenting your email campaigns rather than sending the same message to everyone.
🖥️ Green Web Hosting
Lots of green web hosting providers now exist which can work to drastically cut the carbon emissions of your website. At EcoSend, this is something we are currently looking into ourselves.
Some of the top green web hosting platforms include Eco Hosting and GreenGeeks.
If you weren't even aware your website has a carbon footprint before reading this post, we also recommend trying the various website carbon calculators that exist.
😬 Recognise That AI Has A Terrible Carbon Footprint
Did you know that the carbon footprint of a ChatGPT prompt is TEN times that of a Google search?
Many businesses are increasingly relying on AI tools to create their marketing content. However, AI has a terrible carbon footprint due to the vast amount of energy and water needed to power the various tools that exist.
In particular, creating images, videos or even websites through AI has the worst environmental impact of all.
Marketers who want to create sustainable marketing strategies should look to limit their use of AI wherever possible. Yes, even though everyone may be talking about it.
🤏 Optimise Your Images
When was the last time you resized your images before uploading them onto your website, on social media or on an email campaign?
The larger an image, the more CO2 will be needed to store, upload or download it. Stock photography can be especially bad here, with some images in excess of 20MB each.
Reducing your image sizes and converting the file type can all help lower your digital marketing emissions. An added bonus is that smaller images also make your content load faster, which can also benefit your SEO strategy.
🏄 Prioritise Good User Experience (UX)
User experience (UX) is important for keeping users on the page to encourage sales. But having a seamless user journey that is free from complicated steps, broken pages or glitches is equally important for sustainability. That’s because poorly designed websites take more effort and ultimately energy to navigate. If users then have to leave your website and head to another to find what they are looking for, this creates even more CO2 from the digital emissions generated.
Examples Of Sustainable Marketing Agencies 👀
At EcoSend, we like supporting and promoting marketing agencies that adopt a sustainable approach. This includes businesses which lower their own carbon footprints as much as possible, plus agencies that help their clients be more environmentally friendly.
We recommend checking out the following agencies to learn how to make your marketing more sustainable:
Avery & Brown - https://www.averyandbrown.com/
Dandelion Branding - https://dandelionbranding.com/
Enviral - https://enviral.co.uk/
Flag - https://flag.co.uk/
Floom Creative - https://floomcreative.co.uk/
Giraffe Digital - https://giraffe.digital/sustainable-marketing-agency/
Orange Bird - https://orange-bird.agency/
Wholegrain Digital - https://www.wholegraindigital.com/
Do you have any other sustainable marketing agencies to add to our list? Be sure to let us know!
Lower Your Email Carbon Footprint By Switching To Our Sustainable Email Platform
👋 Do you send emails on behalf of your business?
If you also care about lowering your carbon emissions, now is the perfect time to join EcoSend.
As the world’s first sustainable email platform, we’ll give you everything you need to win at email, but in a way that also lowers the CO2 emissions of your campaigns.
👉 Simply choose your EcoSend plan to get started. We’ll also give you a free 7 day trial.
Or, do you have any questions about switching to our sustainable email platform? Please get in touch and we'll be right with you.
