Welcome back to our green enterprise checklist for retailers. In my previous posts, I described how to create a vision for sustainability, how to evaluate your operations, your merchandise and your supplies. The next area on our checklist is to evaluate your advertising and marketing.

Your Advertising and Marketing

1. Reduce printed material:
   • Think about reducing marketing materials using printed flyers and catalogues. You can do this by defining target markets and striving for efficiency in delivering advertising materials will save money and trees.
2. Optimize outbound communications:
   • Business analytics technology can improve customer relationship management outcomes by making the most of each individual customer communication.
   • Retailer can increase marketing return on investment by determining the best offers for individual customers, and reduce the amount of print advertising through more targeted and specific offers.
3. Promotion price and optimization:
   • Forecasting software enables retailers to maximize revenue and / or profit for a time-specific event as well as model alternative promotional scenarios and assesses their impact on revenue and profitability.
   • Analytics solutions can predict the best combination of promotional vehicles and determine potential halo and cannibalization effects of a campaign.
4. Eco-friendly paper and ink:
   • The Forest Stewardship Council can help you source printers that use recycled or low-impact paper and vegetable-based inks.
   • Visit www.fsccanada.org for more information.
5. Customer communication:
   • Make your sustainability vision a core element of how and what you communicate to customers.
   • Use existing collateral types such as flyers, in-store signage and advertising to promote your company’s green story.
   • Create a webpage to promote your sustainability message and educate customers about how your corporate vision is achieving tangible results.
   • Consider social media efforts including blogs, wikis, email newsletters, and tweets as a means of disseminating your messages.
6. Green products:
   • Showcase your eco-friendly products in a consistent way by using racks and displays made from recycled or sustainable materials.

Check back next week as we conclude this series. The full list of posts is after the jump. The Green Retail Checklist

Step 1: Create the vision

Step 2: Evaluate your operations

Step 3: Evaluate your merchandise

Step 4: Evaluate your supplies

Step 5: Evaluate your Advertising and Marketing

Step 6: Evaluate your People