10 Easy Steps to Being More Green
Summary: So, is Postmaster General Jack Potter’s call to reduce UAA mail by 50 percent by 2010 a green initiative designed to decrease global warming and unnecessary environmental waste? Absolutely. But it’s also a common sense business initiative that will save both the USPS and mailers a tremendous amount of money – money better spent on job creation, product development, and effective marketing.
Doc is sometimes surprised at what lengths organizations will go to be more green, often while ignoring some of the most obvious steps. If you do a lot of direct mail, for instance, one of the most obvious things you can do is cut back on undeliverable mail. Here’s what Greg Brown over at Melissa Data has to say:
Over six million trees and more than 300 million pounds of paper are wasted each year on undeliverable-as-addressed (UAA) Standard class mail, as reported by UAA Clearinghouse. It costs the Post Office over 2 billion dollars annually to process this true “junk mail”. And the cost to mailers is even more dramatic – undeliverable mail costs direct mailers over $6 billion dollars a year.
So, is Postmaster General Jack Potter’s call to reduce UAA mail by 50 percent by 2010 a green initiative designed to decrease global warming and unnecessary environmental waste? Absolutely. But it’s also a common sense business initiative that will save both the USPS and mailers a tremendous amount of money – money better spent on job creation, product development, and effective marketing.
Here are 10 steps you can easily implement to save money as you green your mailings – reducing waste, while improving deliverability, effectiveness and response to ensure you stay in the black, even as the economy sees red:
1. Correct your mailing
2. Update your mailing
3. De-dupe your mailing
4. Suppress your mailing
5. Target your mailing
6. TransPromo your mailing
7. Connect your mailing
8. Downsize your mailing
9. Sustain your mailing
10. Recycle your mailing
So before you go to all sorts of trouble to make sure your printing methods and paper choices are as green as possible, get your mailing lists together and cut back on that undeliverable mail!
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ZDNet introduces Doc (The DocuMentor), sponsored by RICOH. Through his blog, Doc will educate you about Document Management. So who is Doc? Doc is something of an enigma. He was born to a Russian ballerina and a German electrical engineer who some believe was running covert operations for shadowy corporate interests. Doc grew up in various locations in the United States, although no one seems to know precisely where, least of all Doc. His early schooling was unremarkable except for the time he was caught trying to replace all the mimeograph machines with high-tech color copiers that had mysteriously disappeared from a shipment to Albania. At MIT, he made a name for himself by transforming a large printer into a robot that hunts and eats Roombas. Professionally, he reportedly has seen the insides of more brands, versions, and generations of printer and printer-related hardware than almost anyone. Some say his obsession with paper, printing, and mechanical movement was either started by, or evidenced by, a traumatic childhood episode when he crawled inside an old Xerox 2400 and tried to print himself.
Anyway, Doc has hands on experience with stuff like printer maintenance and fleet management, but his mastery of document management leaves no stone unturned. Important issues like sustainability, security, and regulatory compliance are top of mind for Doc, as are other business technology needs like networking and IT services, making him a true blue IT renaissance man.
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