A carbon footprint is the amount of greenhouse gas created through our everyday tasks.According to Statista, “the sending of one email is estimated to produce 0.000001 tonnes of CO2.” While this seems small, it's important to note that over 306 billion emails are sent each day. For decades, email has been an essential part of how we communicate for decades. It serves as a way to connect with people from all over the world and has become an integral part of how businesses communicate internally and externally. So, could we really reduce our email carbon footprint when it is such an essential part of our everyday communication? And if so, what small steps make a difference?
How Does Email Have A Carbon Footprint?
The process of creating an email requires electricity. The electricity comes from burning coal, gas, and oil. The burning of this fuel then emits large amounts of carbon dioxide, causing climate change.According to SEDNA, when compared to daily activities, email only accounts for 0.3% of the world’s carbon footprint. Although this is not a lot in the grand scheme of things, by building better email habits this number can be decreased.A research by Ovo Energy shows that “even just sending one less ‘thank you’ email a day would save over 16,433 tons of carbon a year, which is the equivalent of taking 3,3343 diesel cars off the road.”
Good Email Habits That Benefit The Planet:
Here are some small steps you can take to make a difference.
Ask your audience to delete your emails once they’ve read them.
Saving emails requires electricity. If your email isn’t informational or offers tips your audience can look back on, suggest they delete it! It’s a small way to show your audience your sustainability efforts and may encourage them to make this an email habit of their own.You can easily do this inside of BEE Pro with our saved row feature.
Send emails to only a few segments
Email marketing is all about sending the right message to the right people at the right time. Not everyone in your email wants or needs to hear about every campaign. Your ESP should offer the option for you to organize your email list by where they might be in the buyers’ journey.You may also provide the option for your readers to opt-out of campaigns they’re not interested in. Here is how One6Creative offered subscribers to opt-out of her latest offer
Send one less email
As stated earlier, even one less email makes a difference. Next time you want to send a “thank you” email, try combining it with other offers. Take this email template by Martin Nikolchev, for example. This is a “thank you for signing up email” paired with more information about the product, shopping recommendations, and a discount code.
Use a Design Tool That Makes Creating Emails Quicker.
The less time you spend creating an email, the less electricity consumed. BEE Pro allows everyone to create and send emails all within the platform quickly. The multi-user support also makes it possible for teams to co-edit in real-time.
How We Are Taking Actions at BEE
Environmental impact of delivering our services: All BEE services are hosted on Amazon Web Service (AWS), which has made a substantial commitment to running sustainably. AWS ensures that our activities are being carried out most efficiently and ecologically. And have set a goal to power all operations with 100% renewable energy by 2025. Net Zero Website:This smart label also automatically compensated for all the CO2 emissions our website generates. Our system plants trees to offset the calculated emission by tracking the website usage. So far, we have planted 1,642 trees, capturing 558.72 tonnes of CO2.HTML Generator: BEE's HTML generator creates lighter and more compact HTML which results in a 50% decrease in a standard email's carbon footprint.
Should We Stop Emailing Altogether?
The short answer is no. Email is still the most effective and sustainable way of communicating across a distance. However, even the smallest of efforts make a difference so why not start building better email habits?
In preparation for Earth Day, we’ve curated a few emails templates to inspire your audience to take action. View them here
