For publisher Dawn Codd, making direct mail magazines more eco-friendly is the right thing to do for the planet and for her business.

By: Anne Stuart

Dawn Codd firmly believes that her three direct mail lifestyle magazines all stuffed with special offers, restaurant reviews and events listings bring plenty of value to the 97,000 readers in the upscale communities that the magazines target.

But the Washington, D.C.-based publisher also knows that, in an era of ever-increasing ecological awareness, some recipients may view direct mail publications as a waste of precious natural resources. For that reason and because she and her partners personally support environmental causes Codd wanted to reduce both that perception and the size of her company’s “footprint” on the earth. “Our beliefs are why we did what we did,” she says.

What they did was adopt an aggressively conservation-oriented approach to producing the trio of publications: City Living Source, for households in D.C.; City Living Source-Baltimore, for similarly well-heeled readers in that city; and Howard County Living, for residents of an affluent suburban area in central Maryland. (Each publication goes to about 32,000 readers six times a year.)

Beginning with their January 2008 issues, all three magazines have become significantly more eco-friendly. That’s a change that involves more than simply adding green content although there’s more of that these days, too. Codd has focused on producing the magazines as cleanly and greenly as possible. “Everything about our business is about recycling and sustainability,” she says.

Specifically, the publications are printed only on Forest Stewardship Council-certified paper, meaning that it’s from timber grown and harvested according to the international forest-management association’s strict environmental standards. In addition, Codd recently switched to a new printer that uses soy-based ink, an alcohol-free press operation and a filmless, all-digital printing process that eliminates the need for silver and chemicals. “That’s all more healthful for readers and for the environment,” says Codd, who has promoted the printer’s techniques in print and online.

But what she hasn’t publicly emphasized is what those changes are costing her young business: an additional $1,000 per issue for each magazine. That’s an expense that she’s not passing on to advertisers until next year: “[Going green] was so important because of our personal beliefs that we were going to do it no matter what,” she says. “Our advertising rates will go up as our circulation goes up. And our circulation is growing pretty fast.”

That’s the case even though the publications specifically instruct readers how to get off the mailing list. Codd says that her company typically receives about one opt-out request per issue; in contrast, she says, “We’ve got people e-mailing every day asking to be put on the list.” She attributes that demand to each 24-page publication’s mix of local incentives, event listings and content that now includes advertiser advice on topics such as improving window insulation, buying organic fabrics and bicycling to work.

Codd’s publications also offer “virtual” incentives online, allowing readers to sign up to receive coupons and other offers via their cell phones. The incentives are specially formatted to fit on a mobile phone’s display screen; to redeem one, a consumer just shows the screen to a participating merchant. The process obviously eliminates the need to print, carry, redeem and recycle paper coupons.

Has anybody noticed one publisher’s efforts to tell the world that “green is good”? Codd says yes. “People have actually sent thank-you notes by e-mail, saying it’s great that we made the change,” she says. And any time a recipient of a direct mail piece personally thanks the marketer who sent it, that’s a pretty strong indicator that the message is getting across.