Direct Mail vs Digital Marketing Stats May Surprise You. Both digital marketing and direct mail have their place in the world and come with their own advantages and disadvantages. But painting digital marketing as more ecologically friendly is actually a misconception.
Here’s what you should know about direct mail:
- A study from the U.S. Postal Service recorded that only 1.8% of household waste is from advertising direct mail messages and catalogues.
- Direct-mail accounts for only 2.4 percent of landfill waste
- 54.7 percent of all paper in the U.S. is currently recycled.
- The printing industry – and direct mail – actually saves trees. 60% of America’s forested lands are in private hands. Growing trees is an INCENTIVE to keep the land rather than to sell it for development.
Here’s what you should know about digital marketing:
- A single e-mail contributes 9 grams of CO2
- 95 trillion spam emails were sent in 2010
- Spam alone requires an energy use of 33 billion kilo-watt hours which is equivalent to:
- The electricity used in 2.4 million homes in the U.S.
- GHG emissions of 3.1 million passenger cars
- Use of 2 billion U.S. gallons of gasoline
- In 2005, the amount of electricity consumed by data centers globally was equivalent to the production of 14 coal-fired 1,000-megawatt power plants
- A single web server can produce more tons of CO2 (Carbon dioxide) in a year than a car
- The net effect of running all of the servers in the United States is equal to that of five nuclear power plants
Everything effects the environment … digital marketing is certainly fast, convenient and cheap. And as a firm that specializes in, believes in, and uses Inbound Marketing we can help almost any company drive top line revenue and improve marketing ROI through its use. But it is not as “green” as some people would like you to think it is.
