The interactive marketing industry is a great place to be on so many levels. It’s great for marketers because we are still very much at the dawn of this digital age and it’s not only gaining tremendous traction (we just beat out radio for overall market share of advertising budgets- hooray!) but we are seeing innovations everyday. It’s great for advertisers because the quantifiable data garnered as a result of their marketing efforts allow them to meet their goals whether it be sales, lead generation, etc. These are just one of many tremendous benefits in working within this medium, but I am not writing this to blow sunshine on the .com for no reason- I want to bring another tremendous benefit to light that really hasn’t gotten the awareness it deserves. Interactive media is green.

I know everyone seems to be throwing this term around like it’s the latest trend- and personally I think it’s amazing that trends can be philanthropic (if only it can be “hot” to save Darfur but that’s another post on another blog) but seriously this medium is truly green. For example, an advertiser can reap all the benefits from an email drop rather than using Direct Mail, and more I might add, while saving millions of pounds of paper in doing so. This is also fiscally beneficial to their bottom line because a catalog or mailer is far more costly to produce than the nimble HTML code needed for email outreach. In addition to those points (and there are many more but you’ll have to retain us for the full monty , there is a company called Green Dimes that is fighting against the proliferation of unsolicited or “junk” mail, which should have an interesting effect on this type of outreach.

Morpheus just recently partnered with Green Dimes this past holiday season and in lieu of corporate gifts we purchased memberships to their service for our business contacts. The basic rundown of their service is that once you sign up they will reach out on your behalf and opt you out of 90% of your junk mail and plant 5 trees in your name (they provide a clean user interface to manage catalogs you do want to receive and automatically keep subscriptions to magazines). Encouraging consumers to “give a dime and shop online” was obviously in-line with our company message, but additionally we felt that empowering the consumer to opt out of unsolicited mailers would only provide those advertisers with a mailing base that actually wanted to receive their deliverables, again in-line with our marketing strategy for our clients. So, I was really surprised when I got an email from Green Dimes bringing up an issue they are facing with the DMA (Direct Marketing Association):

“The DMA (Direct Marketing Association) continues to be a thorn in our side. They refer to companies like ours as “third party suppression” services and sent a scathing letter to DMA members on November 30, 2007. This letter urged all of their members to ignore our requests, which thankfully hasn’t happened. They rant on about how they’ve been protecting this industry for 36 years and tout their new service, which made it even HARDER for consumers to get off of lists. These people have no interest in consumer rights. They are paid by their members, work for their members and will do anything possible to make sure it is difficult for anyone championing consumer rights to succeed. Please visit http://www.greendimes.com/user/petition and sign the petition. We need your voice to affect change.”

I not only encourage you join Green Dimes as a member, but to sign their petition or at least support it through the authority you have as a marketer.

But most importantly… Give a dime and shop online!!!

(Currently Green Dimes has over 80,000 members, have stopped over 3.5 million tons of junk mail and have planted/saved over 700,000 trees)