The global digital ecosystem emits 4% of carbon dioxide. To create a greener ecosystem, we must reduce our environmental impact with sustainable marketing.
Digital marketing has become popular in recent years. Its advantages over traditional marketing and advertising include greater reach and precision of marketing efforts at a lower cost.
Digital marketing, in addition to being profitable, is also presented as a sustainable alternative for companies and, to a certain extent, it is. Thus, for example, the amount of paper previously used to print newsletters or advertising pieces has decreased dramatically.
But how sustainable is digital marketing? And, more importantly, what strategies can a company adopt to make its marketing efforts more environmentally friendly?
Digital pollution: a silent enemy
Digital pollution
Digital pollution is the term given to the greenhouse gases emitted by digital actions. Consumers often ignore this negative aspect of new technologies, but the digital world does have a considerable chief vp sales marketing officers email lists ecological footprint. In fact, digital activities emit 4% of greenhouse gases, according to Mike Hazas, a researcher at Lancaster University, in an interview with the BBC .
Indeed, data centres (which store and host web pages) are the largest consumers of electricity in the IT world. The energy demand of data centres is enormous, as they must provide coverage for all the servers on the planet 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. According to Hazas, the energy they consume "is similar to the amount produced by the airline industry worldwide and these emissions are expected to double by 2025."
Given this situation, it is worth asking ourselves what actions we can take to help reduce our digital carbon footprint:
Five ways to reduce your carbon footprint in the digital ecosystem
1. Reach the right audience
In the Web 2.0 generation, consumers are constantly exposed to an overabundance of digital content that is not always of interest to them and, therefore, is not very effective. Creating irrelevant content produces enormous visual pollution in the digital ecosystem and, in addition, generates a significant carbon footprint due to the energy consumption of all the machines involved in its production, storage and distribution.
To produce successful content, you need to target the right message to the right audience. And to understand your target audience better, you need data.
In this sense, an important concept is data intent, which refers to a complex set of data that, when properly processed, can be used to predict the purchasing interests of potential customers. The key is to use this data to discover topics of interest or information requirements, among other inputs that will allow the creation of valuable content that will be useful for customers to more quickly find the solution they are looking for. Their conversion process into active customers will also be more agile and reprocessing will be avoided.
Ultimately, this efficiency translates into fewer ads, less server usage, fewer emails, and even less cloud space, ultimately reducing carbon emissions and enabling more effective marketing with fewer resources.
There are several tools (Bombora, Zoom Info or True Content, among others) that use data technology. True Content , for example, is a technology that uses data and artificial intelligence to identify the behavior, trends and interests of an audience and, based on them, design effective content marketing campaigns.
Audience analysis
2. Reduce the energy impact of equipment
Design effective email marketing campaigns
If you want to minimize the impact of your emails, it is important to create accurate email marketing campaigns and thus avoid unnecessary data storage.
One of the best options to reduce your digital footprint is to avoid sending large attachments to many recipients at the same time. If you need to send large files, you can do so using a download link on platforms such as WeTransfer , which delete the data a week after sending it. This way, you reduce the weight of the emails and the number of recipients.
Prioritize calls to action in your content strategy
Call to action
The faster you convert your users into customers, the less energy you'll use. All content should have a purpose: to drive readers to take a specific action. To do this, include effective calls to action ("Buy now," "Request more information," "Get a consultation").
Delete unnecessary content
From time to time, audit your digital platforms to remove duplicate, old, or non-purpose content. Any action can help to avoid cloud computing when it comes to digital sustainability.
Reduce images
Images are one of the elements that emit the most polluting gases in a digital ecosystem. For your content, avoid using heavy images or those that do not add value.
There are free tools (such as TinyPNG ) that reduce the size of photos without affecting their quality. This good digital practice means that users will have to download fewer bytes, which equals less carbon emissions. In the case of videos, gifs or any other audiovisual content, it is recommended to include them sparingly.
Clean your database
Duplicate contacts, inactive customers, outdated records or unnecessary customer information require considerable storage space, leading to higher energy consumption and more carbon dioxide emissions.
Therefore, cleaning up your database and removing waste will help create a more energy-efficient digital ecosystem.
Also, use green, environmentally friendly technologies. It's not just your content that should be digitally sustainable. Use tools or programs that also demonstrate your responsibility to the planet, such as "green" servers for the website and data management.
3. Monitor and offset your footprint with environmental sustainability initiatives
It's not just digital initiatives that have an impact. It's also important to monitor and offset your carbon footprint.
