E-mail is green-mail

(Editor's note: This is a tongue-in-cheek look at email's most important attribute: its ability to assist in communications using less energy than previous technologies. We hope you enjoy this satirical break from our normal technical offerings.)

Touting email's continued ability to save you and your company time, energy and money is commonplace here in the Arial Software Insider Update and on the ArialSoftware.com website. But we've always stopped short of anointing email with the power to save humanity, and even the entire planet.

Now, we've lifted this self imposed ban: Email is and always has been an awesome way to save the planet. Of all the great benefits of sending email, the most important is arguably the natural resources that are saved by using email instead of more traditional communications, namely direct mail pieces, printed memos, and other wasteful means.

Here are just some of the ways sending mass email gives you a smaller carbon footprint:

Saves paper – Eliminates the need for clear-cutting forests to help get your messages out to your millions of customers. An electronic message can be posted and stored in an easy to use electronic mail depository called a computer. This computer can store thousands of messages eternally. And when you decide to eliminate these messages, there is no filling up of landfills with tons of wasted paper.

Saves stamps – Stamps are not only expensive, their production wastes a variety of natural resources, including paper, ink and glue… not to mention all the printing machines churning out millions of stamps per year, wasting precious electricity produced by coal burning power plants.

Saves space – Space is not infinite, at least not on this planet. We just don't have room in our landfills for all the wasted paper generated for communications that can be done electronically. By using mass email for marketing, shipping confirmations, product reviews, invoicing, surveys, newsletters and more, you'll not only cut down on office clutter, you will literally be saving the planet's energy.

Saves time – By sending bulk emails instead of traditional bulk mail, you can push a button to deliver, and then get on with other earth-friendly activities. There are no more all night envelope-stuffing parties to get your bulk mail out the door. Most email marketing programs worth their carbon offset allow you to schedule your bulk email to go out while you are sleeping -- and breathing out less CO2.

Saves energy – By keeping postal workers in their cubbies and not out on the streets delivering your bulk mail all over town, your efforts will save gas. Also, because email software programs like Campaign Enterprise are downloaded from the Internet, there are no freight jets or big brown delivery trucks involved in getting the program to you.

Saves the planet – Most importantly, your efforts with delivering electronic correspondence over carbon-based media go directly towards saving the planet, without having to purchase any carbon offsets. Preliminary studies have shown that electronic data transfer may create ozone, which will protect the world from harmful rays of the sun, and reduce the effects of global warming.

Conclusion
Arial Software supplies downloadable email marketing software solutions to help manage your paperless marketing in-house. Even if you don't see planet saving results right away, by using Campaign Enterprise or Email Marketing Director from Arial Software you'll save a bunch of green over other expensive hosted email services. — Arial Software

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