With high (and growing) emphasis on environmental sustainability, print marketing often gets a bad rap. But savvy marketers know that those tangible materials audiences can touch and feel and keep are critical drivers of brand awareness, reputation, and trust.
And, fortunately, print marketing and environmental sustainability are not mutually exclusive at all. Responsible sourcing and production choices can maximize your print marketing’s impact on customers while minimizing its impact on the environment.
Strategies for Sustainable Print Marketing
Just-in-Time Printing
A significant source of materials waste in print marketing comes from overprinting materials—whether your printing partner has high minimums, or whether you overestimate your quantity needs in order to provide a little buffer.
But partnering with a marketing execution vendor that offers flexible run rates and print-on-demand services means you no longer need to deal with minimums or print extras “just in case.” Whether you need 2,500 pieces a month from now or 5 pieces next week, printing exactly what you need, when you need it means minimizing wasted materials—and wasted storage space.
Inventory Insights & Management
And speaking of storage space, do you know what’s in your warehouse? Are all of your materials making your way to your audiences, or are there assets that local distributors and sales reps have stopped using? Are you printing new brochures when you’ve got boxes of them on the shelf already?
Lack of clear insights into inventory — what you have, what you need, what’s working and what’s not — can lead to waste as you continue printing assets that aren’t being used or that you already have excess of. But when you’ve got access to real-time inventory levels, production status, and ordering patterns, you can make more informed inventory management decisions, reducing waste and minimizing your carbon footprint.
Strategic Production & Shipping
Depending on where your assets are headed, it may not make sense to ship them all from headquarters—or even from the same offsite production facility. When your audience is in New England, shipping materials from your printer in California may not be the most efficient — or environmentally friendly—option. But on the flip side, utilizing multiple independent printers across the country to minimize the shipping impact may put your brand integrity at risk. After all, how can you ensure consistent quality and service?
But what if you could find one print marketing partner who offered that geographic flexibility and brand consistency? At OneTouchPoint, we have printing and fulfillment centers located across the country, so we can ensure your marketing products’ distribution journey is efficient, cost-effective and environmentally friendly.
Sustainable Print Marketing Practices Can Save Your Budget, Too
In all these efforts to minimize waste, you’ll also start to see expenses shrinking as you capture economies of scale in production and postage, minimize shipping costs and stop printing (and paying for) more materials than you need.
And these savings come just in time, too, if you are looking for ways to optimize your marketing dollars and new ways to streamline budgets and prove marketing ROI.
OneTouchPoint’s Commitment to Sustainable Print Marketing
Here at OneTouchPoint, we offer our clients a one-stop-shop for their print marketing production, shipping and inventory management needs, and we also pride ourselves on maintaining sustainable practices. After all, we believe protecting our environment is good for both our business and our community.
Our Environmental Management System helps measure and improve our processes, from energy and water use to source materials and waste stream reduction to recycling and reuse. You can read more about our green initiatives here, and we’re always happy to answer further questions.
To learn more about how OneTouchPoint can help your organization streamline print marketing initiatives while reducing their environmental impact, we invite you to contact us today or request a quote on your next project. Our experts will provide insight and ideas to deliver phenomenal results at a great price.