Big direct marketing companies are “greening up” their direct mail. Here’s how you can, too

It’s incontrovertible: Consumers are going green. In a recent poll by Global Market Insite, close to 70 percent of respondents said that they had used lower-energy bulbs in the last 12 months. The same poll found that 40 percent had avoided buying products whose packaging might harm wildlife when disposed of. In 2006, about 250,000 new hybrid vehicles were registered – a 28-percent increase over 2005.

And those numbers barely scratch the surface of the new consumer commitment to all things green. Consumers expect the businesses they buy from to go green right along with them. The problem? Direct marketing – the very thing that keeps customers coming in the door – is very resource-heavy, requiring trees (paper), petroleum (ink) and oil (delivery). Not only that, but the printing process contributes to problems.

To find out how companies can cater to green consumers and help protect the environment while still meeting their business objectives, we spoke with large catalogers and mass mailers who have been creating eco-friendly solutions of their own.

Paper power

Brochures, catalogs, letters, envelopes: The one thing that direct mailers use a lot of is paper. For example, Consumers Union, the nonprofit organization that publishes Consumer Reports, sends out more than 200 million pieces of mail annually. When you consider that many mailings contain multiple sheets of paper, you can see what a huge impact smart paper choices, even at just one company, can make on the environment.

Opting for recycled papers is an obvious choice, but many mailers are going further and rethinking other aspects of paper use. For example, Norm Thompson Outfitters, a cataloger that sells clothing, accessories, food and gifts, is experimenting with decreasing the thickness of the paper in their mailings and in the 77 million catalogs they’ll be mailing this year.

Re-evaluate what’s necessary

Another tactic is to eliminate some elements of a package altogether. Norm Thompson Outfitters did away with the bind-in order form in their catalogs, printing the form on a page inside the book instead. This saves not just paper, but money as well: “Eliminating the order forms eliminates $750,000 per year in the cost of the order form and incremental postage,” says John Snyder, Norm Thompson Outfitters’ print and production director. “Testing showed us that moving the tip-in order form to one page had no significant negative impact, especially considering the vast majority of orders are placed online or by phone.”

Another way to save paper is to cut down the physical size of the piece. A few years ago, Consumers Union shaved one-quarter inch off the trim size of a self-mailer. “Each time we’ve rolled out with this piece in the last few years we have saved about 3 percent on the quantity of paper required,” says Meta Brophy, director of publishing operations at Consumers Union and a member of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) Committee on Environmental and Social Responsibility. “Over three years and seven rollouts we have saved more than $250,000 on paper.” Norm Thompson Outfitters took their catalogs from 10 1/2 inches to 10 1/4 inches, a move that saved trees and saved the company well over a million dollars per year in paper and postage.

Some eco-savvy mailers are opting for groundwood paper, which contains a high percentage of fiber that was mechanically pulped instead of chemically pulped, resulting in less waste. Brophy experimented with moving from a mailer that consists of a single sheet of paper folded in half from a sheet of virgin (non-recycled) paper to a thinner, groundwood sheet. Not only is the new mailer better for the environment, but it also garners the same response as the old one. “When we tested the new mailer against a control of the old mailer, the response held,” Brophy says.