Local Direct Mail Marketing Company Launches Tree Planting Program

When a company’s work substantially affects the environment, should the company offset that impact? Increasingly often, business owners across all industries are saying yes. So when direct mail marketing company DK Solutions decided to closely examine its own impact on the planet, company leadership decided to give back triple what they took.

To that end, East Brunswick, NJ-based DK Solutions recently announced the launch of an annual initiative to plant trees to replenish the number cut down to print the mailers their company sends out for their clients. According to the firm’s co-founder and chief operating officer Liran Kapoano, the initiative’s inaugural tree-planting event has resulted in 3,000 trees taking root in Montana’s Flathead National Forest.

“Sustainability is important for the future,” said Kapoano, explaining that, though the company was already prioritizing sustainability with their TargetList methodology of reducing the amount of people they target to only the ones most likely to be interested in their clients' products, he wanted to go further. “Even though we generally cut the amount of mail our clients send by about 80%,” he said, “we wanted to do our part to have a positive impact on the environment as opposed to just being not as negative as we could be.”

Kapoano noted that paper manufacturers cut down more than 15 billion trees each year to meet demand. He added that as the co-founder of a direct mail marketing company – which inherently uses a large volume of paper – he believed it was necessary to at least plant enough trees to offset his paper usage.

“Recently, when putting up solar panels we had to take down some trees that were leaning over our house," Kapoano said. "Being confronted first-hand with what it means to destroy a tree didn't really feel great.” He also noted that the idea of destroying thousands of trees felt especially potent to him since he’s visited many national forests and nature preserves across the globe, including, coincidentally Flathead.

Kapoano said that DK Solutions’ tree-planting initiative has resulted in the firm now having a net positive environmental impact. In other words, DK Solutions now gives back more to the planet than it uses. It’s a powerful position to achieve when you run a business that prints an incredible number of paper ads per month.

“Planting one tree gets us back to a net-zero impact,” Kapoano said, “but it was important for us to do better than just literally zero.”

Kapoano arrived at this year’s figure by determining the number of trees cut down to print mailers, and then tripling that number. Factors such as mailer size, cardstock, and quantity were taken into account, and then measured against the number of trees needed to produce all that paper. He determined that to get squared away for six years of ad campaigns, the number was about 1,000 trees. He then tripled the figure to arrive at 3,000 planted trees.

“We're numbers people,” Kapoano said, referring to DK Solutions’ data-driven approach to direct mail marketing, “and I wanted to be sure that the number of trees we’d plant would be accurate. By putting in three trees for every one we cut down, our goal was to leave the world twice as strong as how we found it.”

Kapoano noted that DK Solutions partnered with the 501(c)3 environmental nonprofit One Tree Planted, known for its reforestation campaigns across the globe, to jumpstart the firm’s annual tree-planting initiative.

“One Tree Planted monitors the planted trees and reports back to us on their impact, which was meaningful for us,” Kapoano said. “Crucially, what I liked about their platform is that these are actually new trees. A lot of these efforts are geared at 'saving' trees that may never have been cut down anyway.” He also shared his early excitement about the trees his firm would plant next year – and every year thereafter.

“I think it's important,” said Kapoano, “to be stewards of our planet as best we can.”

ABOUT DK SOLUTIONS

DK Solutions is a direct mail marketing company known for its TargetList program, which uses data modeling and targeting to decrease overall spend and printing for clients while increasing response and conversion rates. The firm serves companies in all verticals, including specialization in the insurance industry, home services, mortgage protection, senior needs, and more. For more information, visit www.dksmo.com.