6 Tips for Eco-Friendly Email Marketing: Sustainable and Carbon-Efficient
In an era where environmental consciousness is continually gaining importance and sustainable actions are becoming more crucial, digital aspects of our lives are also coming under scrutiny. Email marketing, seemingly a paperless and environmentally friendly method, also reveals ecological implications upon closer examination.
According to a Statista forecast, approximately 333.2 billion emails were sent and received globally on a daily basis in 2022, a number that is projected to steadily increase in the coming years. By 2026, it is expected to reach around 392.5 billion emails per day – nearly 49 times more than the global population.
What many are unaware of is that each individual email has a carbon footprint ranging from 0.03g to 26g CO₂, depending on its size and content, as determined by Mike Berners-Lee in his book “How Bad are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint of Everything” . In this blog article, we present 6 valuable tips for environmentally conscious and carbon-efficient email marketing.
1. Send Your Emails via a Sustainable Host
Data centers are substantial facilities that house servers and other IT infrastructure to process, store, and distribute data. The energy consumption of data centers is considerable. According to data from the German Bundestag, data centers in Germany consumed 16 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity in 2020.
The first step toward eco-friendly email marketing is choosing a sustainable host for your email delivery and website. Research providers that actively promote environmental protection and utilize renewable energy sources to power their servers. Additionally, the location of the servers can impact their energy consumption; data centers in cooler regions require less cooling compared to those in warmer climates.
Once you’ve found a suitable host, you should not only host your website but also your email marketing through their servers. With larger email marketing providers, you often don’t have full control over the delivery – hence, you need an email marketing tool that you can operate through your sustainable host.
In this regard, we recommend our “Easy Newsletter Plugin” for WordPress. It enables you to manage email delivery directly from your WordPress environment and sends all emails through your own server. Another advantage: This is also beneficial for privacy reasons.
2. Regularly Cleanse Your Email List
According to Statista data, approximately half of all emails sent can be considered spam. For the remaining emails, it’s estimated that readers spend about a minute reading the messages.
Therefore, in email marketing, it’s essential to regularly review your email list and remove inactive subscribers and invalid email addresses. This prevents your newsletter from reaching individuals uninterested in your updates and products, who may not open the emails and instead delete them outright.
This is a sensible step because, as reported by Futura-Sciences Magazine, even unopened emails consume CO₂. An unopened email generates approximately 0.3g CO₂ as email storage continues to require energy. The data stored in data centers consume, depending on their size, 200 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity annually and are responsible for 0.3% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
3. Reduce the Number of Emails
Targeted and moderate email communication can not only provide relief to your recipients but also reduce the ecological footprint of your email marketing. Instead of numerous individual emails, consolidate relevant information into a single email. This minimizes energy consumption and demonstrates that you value the time and attention of your subscribers. Carefully plan the frequency of email campaigns and consider the needs of your target audience. Additionally, offer your subscribers an easy way to unsubscribe if they no longer wish to receive emails from you.
Monitor and analyze your email marketing campaigns to continuously improve and communicate more efficiently. Regularly evaluating email campaigns helps you understand which approaches are successful and which are not. By closely monitoring and analyzing the performance of your emails, you can identify weaknesses and adjust your strategy accordingly. For instance, if you find that certain emails have particularly high open rates, you can use similar approaches for future campaigns.
4. Utilize Lightweight Email Templates
Graphically elaborate emails with numerous images and animations can increase energy consumption, as they require more resources to load and display. Larger emails with graphics and image files can emit up to 26g CO₂, as mentioned above. Therefore, compress your image files to minimize their size in kilobytes (kB) (guideline: under 200 kB). Opt for lightweight and simply designed email templates that are environmentally friendly yet maintain a professional appearance. Less file size also means shorter loading times and a better user experience for your recipients.
5. Promote Online Data Exchange
By providing digital content and abstaining from printed materials, you encourage an eco-conscious approach to resources. For instance, you can dispense with printed catalogs or flyers and instead offer digital versions through email or your website. This digital approach not only saves paper but also printing, transportation, and shipping costs. Encourage your customers to prefer electronic documents and facilitate the exchange of information online.
6. Implement a Sustainable Newsletter Strategy
Consider how you can make your email marketing campaigns even more sustainable. For example, you could plant trees or participate in offset programs to balance your CO₂ emissions. Opt for sustainable partnerships and collaborate with companies that also act in an environmentally conscious manner. Show your customers and subscribers that you actively support the environment and assume responsibility in your email marketing as well.
Transparent communication about your sustainability efforts can strengthen the trust of your target audience and inspire other companies to integrate green practices into their marketing strategies. By making sustainability an integral part of your email marketing, you contribute to making digital communication ecologically responsible and provide a positive contribution to the environment.
Our conclusion
Eco-friendly email marketing is not only good for the environment but can also strengthen your relationship with subscribers and enhance your marketing efficiency. By implementing these six carbon-friendly tips, you can make a positive impact on environmental conservation while effectively conducting email marketing.
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