How to keep mailings environmentally friendly. . .
This question came in from Chris Bullard who wanted to know how to encourage his prospects to take his letter seriously whilst asking them to recycle responsibly. . .
Dear Carol,
I’ve recently received a copy of your book ‘I Want to Buy Your Product…” and have been applying your teaching to our own direct marketing campaign.
Whilst writing the letters a question has arisen that I’m sure other people will have also asked given the pressure on businesses to consider the environment and sustainability.
As a company we do our very best to ensure we consider the environment in our day to day running (paperless office, communication via e-mail etc). The direct marketing campaign that I’m launching is specifically targeting businesses that do not have e-mail. As such we’re having to send out a printed letter as opposed to our preferred method of e-mail.
However, still trying to consider the environment, the letters are being printed/sent by ViaPost and I’d like to add a note to the bottom of the letter to ask that if the letter is disposed of it is done so via recycling. My worry is, that this is suggesting that I think the letter will end up straight in the bin.
I’d really appreciate any thoughts/suggestions you might have on this?
Many thanks,
Chris Bullard
Design Virtuality
I can understand why Chris is concerned about the perception he might give if he asks the reader to recycle. Here’s my thoughts on how to approach this:
How about saying:
P.P.S. I have sent this letter using ViaPost, which means we have reduced the carbon emissions associated with sending you this letter by up to 80%. Once you’ve read and responded to our great offer I’d really appreciate your environmental support by making sure this letter goes in your recycle bin. Thank you.
The words ‘our great offer’ can be replaced with something more specific about your promotion.
An additional advantage to adding this P.P.S. is Chris is demonstrating his company’s commitment to reducing the impact all their actions have on the environment - and that may well earn him some brownie points with his prospects if they feel strongly about it too.
Chris, thanks for agreeing to share this question on the blog.
~ Carol Bentley
25th March 2009 at 3:50 pm
Hi Carol & Chris
Interesting question (& answer!).
As for Viapost - what a concept! I just had a look at their website and service! How come I have never heard about it? Maybe it was discussed on this blog prior to my signing-up!
Just out of interest, Carol, do you (and any other blog readers) use Viapost as well? And if yes, do you recommend it for large mailshots?
Thanks
Shuaib
25th March 2009 at 3:56 pm
Question too on ViaPost.
I thought it was compulsory nowadays to have your business address on the envelop you send out. Anyone knowns more about this and how ViaPost tackles this?
Like Shuaib (hi my friend!) I never heard of the company but am intrigued by the options it seems to offer.
BTW Carol, great way to not only solve Chris’s problem, I think it even adds cachet to his message.
Karin H (Keep It Simple Sweetheart, specially in business)
25th March 2009 at 5:26 pm
Hi all,
Royal Mail are introducing a new type of post called sustainable mail - it indicates your data is clean - you are using materials that can be recycled and thus by doing so they will increase the postage discounts you can get on larger mailings…
A link is here http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/content1?mediaId=89800749&catId=50800710
Your readers need to be careful with servies like viapost - the Royal Mail have also introduced their own service as well - BUT when costs are tight you should always look at the discounts that can be achieved directly. Typically viapost will have a postage element of 19-20p in their price - if you are posting over 4000 items and you present your mail correctly you can get a price of 18p per item yourself!
All the best
Phil
25th March 2009 at 8:08 pm
Hello everyone,
I’m Chief Operating Officer at ViaPost and Carol kindly sought me out and asked me to answer your questions directly, which I am delighted to do.
Shuaib: We regularly deal with mailshots numbering in the tens of thousands. There are three ways to send a large mailshot:
1. Create a mail merge as you would normally in Word and send it through the ViaPost print driver. There is no actual limit on how large your mailing is, although more than a couple of thousand will take a few hours to process. You can keep working while the driver is processing the mailing, so it’s no big deal, just be aware that it will take a while to get your letters into our system.
You will probably want to read our help topics about sending mail merges before you start: http://help.viapost.com/search/label/mail%20merge
There is also a video tutorial for mail merges here: http://help.viapost.com/2008/08/video-send-mail-merge.html
2. Send a “bulk mailing” through the website. This is quicker, but you can only send an identical letter to every recipient. You can’t have variable information within the letter like you can with a mail merge. The difference between a bulk mailing and a mail merge is explained here:
http://help.viapost.com/2008/11/sending-bulk-mailing-using-portal.html
3. Use our API. This requires some technical expertise, but if you have that expertise, you can hook your own mailing software directly to our servers. That’s all explained here: http://www.viapost.com/api.
Karin H: The return address is ours. Undeliverable letters come back to us, we scan them (unopened) to identify who the original sender is (there is a small code printed in the address window for this) and report back to you.
Phil: You are correct in that you can reduce your postage costs by pre-sorting your mail yourself and so on. But you’d be hard pressed to get your total price (including paper, envelope etc.) down as low as ours (we are using highly mechanised, highly efficient printing and folding facilities ). If you think you can, give Quintin (our sales guy) a call (0207 836 5105), I’m sure he can offer you a better price than you can get doing it yourself.
Feel free to direct any other questions to support@viapost.com
Best regards,
Bruce Greig
Chief Operating Officer
ViaPost Ltd
26th March 2009 at 1:05 pm
Thanks for responding so quickly Bruce.
30th March 2009 at 11:42 pm
Carol,
Great to see ViaPost’s COO pop in and with a customer-aware mindset
I just tried registering for cocomment by clicking on the CO button. Alas, I get “An error occured while registering. The validation string is invalid.”
The problem appears to be with the image qs “Enter the number you see in the image”. Sometimes the image shows 1 number and sometimes two (e.g. LC2F3). Whether I put in one of the numbers, or both, or none or the whole string still gives me the error message.
Is anyone else having an issue? If not, then it must be some wacko thingamajig on my PC….
1st April 2009 at 11:36 pm
Hi Mark,
just noticed your post - are you still having problems registering? I recall I did have a few problems with interpreting the graphic image - sometimes it wasn’t clear if the characters were numbers or letters.
Please let me know if it is still an issue and I’ll raise it with my friendly coComment support guy (see the comments below my later post: ( http://www.copywriting4b2b.com/archives/229 ) about adding the CO bar.
Carol