B-to-B : Green is Good

Implementing sustainable marketing practices is good for cost cutting, CRM and ROI

October 2008 By Mary N. Miller

multipage

Given these marketing tactics, the first step in the green marketing process is to rent or purchase a list of electrical engineers that meets your target audience profile. Be as selective as possible (based on geography, industry, job function, purchasing power, etc.) to ensure that you have a precisely targeted list of prospects.

We'll assume that, based on these criteria, a list of 20,000 contacts with postal and e-mail addresses was generated. At typical e-mail list pricing, for all of the available names, the average cost is $10,000. Because CAN-SPAM requires that commercial e-mails are sent only by the source to which the individuals subscribed or opted in, your e-mail message will be transmitted by the list manager. Therefore, the message and call to action of your e-mail must compel readers to give you their e-mail addresses for future contact. Promote an educational or informational piece that requires respondents to provide their e-mail addresses in return, and begin to build your lead database.

Because the original list was so well-defined, we'll project a 5 percent response rate resulting in 1,000 e-mail addresses collected. Here's the next green step: Only send direct mail to the contacts whose profiles most closely match the 1,000 responders. So, instead of printing, producing and mailing to all 20,000 contacts, use e-mail first to attract the initial leads. Work with your list provider to analyze the responders and find more contacts like them. Then mail to a subset.

On top of this, you should advertise in controlled-circulation publications that serve the target market, inviting only the respondents to your advertising and marketing programs to attend your custom events. Think of the volume of print, production and postage costs you just saved. You're all but guaranteed to see higher response rates, as well.

Going Green Saves Green
Let's assess the costs of the described program, comparing the "green" method to the traditional approach of renting the available names for multichannel use and promoting your new product to the total available market (see chart on page 61).

Advertising and the custom event series now can be directed toward the people who meet the profile of the most responsive members of the initial audience. Add to that the cost savings of using online advertising versus print vehicles, which generally is 60 percent to 70 percent. Therefore, the complete green marketing program provides significant cost savings, as well as a greater return on the marketing investment.

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