10 best green marketing ebooks!

We're back again with our weekly ten recommendations on green ebooks!

This week I prepared a list that is inspired by the Joel Makower's excellent article Green Marketing Is Over. Let’s Move On and the heated debate that followed it. So this week I present you with my 10 recommendations on green marketing books that are available in an electronic version.

This list is based on my personal preferences as well as on the books I use on the course I teach at University of Delaware's Business School on sustainability and green business. Therefore, some of them are relatively old, but I still find them relevant and valuable.

The links of these ebooks are to Amazon.com and I apologize in advance to all the Nook, iPad, Kobo and Sony Reader owners. I hope you can easily find an ebook you'll like on other ebookstores. This is also the place to disclose that we're taking part in Amazon's affiliate program and therefore will receive a small percentage of every purchase made using these links. We hope you don't mind! You can find all the lists published so far on our recommended green ebooks webpage.

Without further ado, here's this week's list of 10 recommended green marketing e-books:

1.The New Rules of Green Marketing: Strategies, Tools, and Inspiration for Sustainable Branding by Jacquelyn Ottman - Berrett-Koehler Publishers (February 14, 2011)

2. The Green Marketing Manifesto by John Grant - Wiley (August 31, 2009)

3. Strategies for the Green Economy : Opportunities and Challenges in the New World of Business by Joel Makower - McGraw-Hill (October 5, 2008)

4. Ethical Marketing and The New Consumer by Chris Arnold - Wiley (November 3, 2009)

5. The Gort Cloud: The Invisible Force Powering Today's Most Visible Green Brands by Richard Seireeni - Chelsea Green Publishing (February 17, 2009)

6. Sustainable Marketing by Diane Martin and John Schouten - Prentice Hall (April 28, 2011)

7. Understanding Green Consumer Behaviour by Sigmund Wagner - Taylor & Francis (April 16, 2007)

8. Fostering Sustainable Behavior: An Introduction to Community-Based Social Marketing by Doug McKenzie-Mohr - New Society Publishers (March 1, 2011)

9. New Frontiers in Environmental and Social Labeling by Ulrike Grote - Physica-Verlag HD (December 28, 2006)

10. Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough and Michael Braungart - North Point Press (April 1, 2010)

See you next week!

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

Are men from Mars and women from Venus when it comes to green marketing?

Apparently yes! Green marketing to women takes a different approach than green marketing to men.

Check out this interesting video where Bill Roth, who partners with Eco-Libris to plant trees for his books THE SECRET GREEN SAUCE and "On Empty (Out of Time), interviews Mike Dodge, President of Atomic Online, during OMMA Video Conference in San Francisco. They discuss best practices concerning women seeking green products vs. men seeking to buy green products.



(source: Environmental Leader)

I found it very interesting and learned couple of differences that are gender based like the fact that women are looking for advice and tips and are value focused whereas men likes facts and let them make the decision, or at least feel they're making it.. You'll find many more of these interesting differences in this interview so check it out.

You're are also invited to visit Bill Roth's website - Earth 2017, where you will find more interesting articles he wrote and other great green business materials. You can also find there you can get at no cost the first chapter of The Secret Green Sauce: Best practices used by actual companies successfully growing green revenues.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

Green printing tip no. 35: Is Direct Mail Dead?

We are back today with a new tip on our weekly series of green printing tips, where we bring you information on green printing in collaboration with Greg Barber, an experienced eco-friendly printer.

Today Greg is presenting us with a column he found while researching research the internet for new Green Tips. This column is dealing with direct mail and how to make it more efficient and successful, and it's written by Leslie Tane. Now, if you're asking what's so green about making direct mail more efficient, the answer is that greater efficiency will reduce the waste involved in it.

If after reading Tane's tips, you're still looking for further green guidance on direct mail, you're welcome to check out our tip no. 26 about this issue, as well as Jennifer Kaplan's excellent column "9 Ways to Eliminate Direct Mail Waste". We hope all of these resources will get you a better idea on how to make your next direct mail campaign more eco-friendly.

Is Direct Mail Dead?

Tip #35

It's the age of the Internet - e-mail marketing, social networking and blogs. So why would you do printed, direct mail marketing? No one reads that stuff...do they?

Well, you might be surprised. According to the USPS, advertising mail represented 63% of all mail received by households in 2008. Of that, 79% of households either read or scan advertising mail sent to their household and 11% respond and take action.

Compare this to e-mail marketing: Mail Chimp's research indicates the average open-rate for marketing e-mail is about 25% and the click-through/take-action rate is only 4.28%. I'm not a numbers person (is there a graphic designer who is?), but it's pretty clear that direct mail is
far from finished.

There are some things to keep in mind when designing direct mail to increase the chances of your potential customer following through:

1. Take advantage of variable data printing. When I started out, there was one main option for printing in color: offset printing. How times have changed. Not only is it affordable to digitally print short-runs of your printing projects, it's possible to customize your projects using variable data printing (VDP).

For example, say you're designing for an organization's annual fundraiser. If the organization has a database of past donors, including their names, and the years and amounts they've previously donated, it's easy to print that information right in the body of your piece. It personalizes the experience and can make a call for cash less of an intrusion and more of an appeal.

2. Have a clear call to action. A few years ago, I got a letter asking me to support the Fourth of July fireworks display in my town. I take my kids to that event every year and was ready, pen in hand, to write a check. I scoured the letter only to find that there was no return address, no phone number and no way to easily send the money. Sure, I could have looked up the number and contacted them, but expecting your recipients to do that is expecting too much. I never sent the check.

Make sure you provide a clear way to respond to your direct mail. Is there a number to call? A Web site to visit? Make it obvious.

3. Speaking of Web sites, use yours to track the results of your direct mail campaign. Personalized URLs or Web addresses that incorporate the recipient's name are becoming more and more widely used. At the very least, each direct mail piece that goes out should have a dedicated phone extension or Web landing page, so that you can track your results.

4. Design something different. I often save a few weeks worth of direct mail I receive, so that I can have a base of real-world samples. I'll spread them out on my desk to look at them. Then, I'll design something that looks different. If I'm seeing a lot of close crops of faces, I'll pick and image with a person far away, or, even more likely, avoid a picture of a face at all.

Lots of primary colors? I'll go for an off-shade of green. Not many large fields of color? Maybe, that would work for my design. You can't steer clear of all existing designs, but you want to make your direct mailing stand out. The best way to get a feel for what's out there is to look at some of it with a critical eye.

One of the best things about direct mail is that even on a smaller budget, you can get great results.

For additional information on greening your next direct mail campaign, please call Greg Barber at (973) 224-1132, or email greg@gregbarberco.com.

Also, if you have any questions you would like us to address in future tips please email us to info@ecolibris.net .

Latest tips:

Green Printing Tip #34 - What should we look for in buying copier paper?

Green Printing Tip #33 - Do I have a Green Marketing Give Away for Trade Shows?

Green Printing Tip #32 - Is Tree Free Hemp Paper still available?

You can find links to all the tips we published so far on our green printing tips page, which is part of our green printing tools & resources.

You can also find further valuable information on Greg Barber Company's website - http://www.gregbarberco.com.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting green printing!

Monday's green book: The Green Marketing Manifesto

Today on our Monday's green book series we're talking about green marketing. Our book for today is:

The Green Marketing Manifesto

Author: John Grant

John Grant co-founded St Luke’s the innovative and socially aware London ad agency. Working with clients such as the Body Shop as well as mainstream brands, St Luke’s pioneered the view of a company’s “Total Role in Society” and operated as an employee shareholder democracy. Since leaving in 1999 he has worked as an independent consultant.

John’s previous books which all deal with ‘what’s new?’ have earned widespread praise, popularity and critical acclaim, and include 'The New Marketing Manifesto' (1999), 'After Image' (2002) and 'Brand Innovation Manifesto' (2006). John is also a prolific blogger and writer of articles and reports. His current thoughts on green marketing can be found at http://greenormal.blogspot.com/ and he is also the official blogger for the Green Awards.

Publisher: Wiley

Published in: November 2007 (Hardcover)

What it is about: According to the book description, the Green Marketing Manifesto provides a roadmap on how to organize green marketing effectively and sustainably. It offers a fresh start for green marketing, one that provides a practical and ingenious approach.

The book offers many examples from companies and brands who are making headway in this difficult arena, such as Marks & Spencer, Sky, Virgin, Toyota, Tesco, O2 to give an indication of the potential of this route.

John Grant creates a ‘Green Matrix’ as a tool for examining current practice and the practice that the future needs to embrace.

In an interview to psfk.com, he explained where it all started: "I wrote the book (originally it started as a paper for a potential client project) to try to make sense of the torrent of recent green marketing initiatives. I wanted to sift out what was greenwash and what had substance – and also try to get to what was actually working, and why; and to map out the terrain a bit."

This book is intended to assist marketers, by means of clear and practical guidance, through a complex transition towards meaningful green marketing.

Why you should get it:
1. Marketing is not everything, but it is critical for the success of every green product or service.

2. The book is eco-friendly - printed on FSC certified paper and using vegetable-based ink. It's also written on its cover: Please don't put this book in a plastic shopping bag. It may sounds obvious, but it's the first book where I see such a text on the cover.

3. I like the way Grant defined it in another interview as a book "about a sustainable economy and making green normal as opposed to ‘green-washing’, which is making normal look green. "

What others say on the book: "brilliant book...that will forever change the way you look at green marketing." (psfk.com, Nov 27, 2007)

"outlines how environmentalism increasingly informs business strategy" (Reuters, Nov 29, 2007)

"...the book casts new insight into green marketing" (naturalchoice.co.uk, Tuesday 18th December 2007)

If you want to get to know better the author, John Grant, and what he has to say on green marketing, you can check his interesting blog, greenormal. Here are also few bits of him talking on the book launch in London (Nov 2007):



Enjoy the book, and if you're looking for the full list of green books reviewed and presented on our blog, check out our green books page.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: plant a tree for every book you read!

Green marketing: past, present and future

There aren't many people who knows and understands green business as Joel Makower do. For me, he's an endless source of green wisdom, and I'm always waiting for Monday to receive his weekly post in his blog, 'Two Steps Forward'.

This week, Makower writes about green marketing (Green Marketing 2.0: This Time It's Serious). As someone who is involved and follows the field for some time, he has a perspective that only few have, and it's fascinating to read his descriptions about the beginning of green marketing (or green marketing 1.0) more than a decade ago.

Though many are skeptic about the direction of green marketing and green consumerism, Makower is optimistic and writes that "Now, after years of false starts, a growing number of mainstream success stories suggest that green marketing finally is more than an environmentalist's pipe dream. "

For those who are interested to learn more on green marketing, Makower gives recommendations on upcoming four significant green marketing conferences, which are themselves a sign for the change in this field - last year there were none.

Raz

btw - the picture attached is the logo of one of these conferences - Green Marketing Forum on November 28-30 in London.

Eco-Libris: Plant a tree for every book you read!