Justin Basini, vice-president and head of brand marketing at Capital One Europe told Marketing Direct's Profiting from Green Policies conference attendees that the direct marketing industry needs to "to clean up its act and improve its impact on the environment, or risk being legislated against and facing a heightened consumer backlash."
According to Brand Republic's coverage of the event, "Basini unveiled steps Capital One is taking to develop a sustainable business model. This includes cutting its volumes of direct mail and investing heavily in internet communications for its acquisition and retention programmes."
Basini noted that Capital One will continue to use direct mail, but will investigate new applications for its use:
"We will use electronic channels to reduce our impact on the environment. We have used the internet previously for acquisition, but we will extend this channel to customer service. Direct mail still has an important role to play but we are exploring new pull models for the medium."
The transition away from paper-based communication is not only a way for Capital One Europe to transition to a more environmentally friendly business model, it allows the company to cut marketing costs as paper and distribution costs continue to increase.
The change in Capital One's marketing strategy appears to be limited to its European business at this time. But I think it's safe to speculate that if the strategy proves effective, the US business will adopt a similar strategy.
Discussion
By Bill King on Nov 14, 2007
Think about what a forest looks like that never has any trees cut from it? It is a rotted dense field of unhealthy trees where nothing can live or grow (except worms). Nature takes care of that situation by causing a fire from the spontaneous combustion of the compost rot, which quickly spreads through the dense layers of dead trees and destroys the forest.
In contrast look at a forest used for paper manufacturing. The trees are selectively cut. There is healthy plant and animal life since air, rain and sun can reach the soil.
We have more trees on the face of the earth than anytime in history.