A recent survey of 1,000 consumers revealed a gulf between the perceived eco-impact of direct mail and its actual influence.
“They wildly overestimated direct mail’s impact on the environment,” says Michael Critelli, executive chairman of Pitney Bowes Inc., which co-sponsored the 2007 DMNews/Pitney Bowes Survey of Consumer Attitudes. Critelli says he expected a disparity between perception and reality “but not nearly as much as we saw.”
For instance, asked to estimate the amount of municipal waste created nationwide by advertising mail:
- 48 percent of respondents thought direct mail accounted for more than half
- 36 percent said it accounted for more than one-third
- 12 percent thought it generated 9 percent
In fact, direct mail generates just 2 percent of all U.S. municipal waste, according to a DMNews article about the survey. (Two percent chose this answer.)
Asked to rank select activities by the amount of carbon dioxide they generate, 16.8 percent chose the delivery of direct mail as third most harmful, ahead of using a year’s worth of electricity for select refrigerators and running a clothes dryer 10 times a week for a year. (Running the dryer creates the most CO2, according to a chart accompanying the DMNews article on the poll.)
Experts trace these skewed perceptions to the fact that the typical mailing attracts only a tiny percentage of responses, leading others to view unsolicited material as wasteful. “[Mail] is something people see and handle every single day,” Critelli says. “Unfortunately, a lot of it doesn’t get a response.”
The good news? More than two-thirds said they’d view direct mail more positively if senders recycled cardboard or planted new trees.
Of course, the reality is that many marketers are already ahead of them on this.
