Dialogue Marketing: Ecological Sustainability of Letter and E-Mail in Comparison in Germany

Authors

Atilla Wohllebe, University of Kaposvár, HungaryFollow

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

With the spread of the Internet, e-mail has also steadily gained in relevance over the past years and decades. Especially in the form of newsletters, e-mail marketing is probably the most important channel of digital dialogue marketing today. This paper examines the carbon dioxide emissions of advertising e-mails in Germany on the basis of existing sources and compares them with the emissions caused by sending letters by post. Despite significantly lower CO2 emissions per piece compared to a letter, e-mails seem to be a much greater burden on the environment due to their practically unlimited scalability in terms of cost. The author suggests that the introduction of a fee for sending or reading e-mails should be considered.

Recommended Citation

Wohllebe, Atilla (2019) "Dialogue Marketing: Ecological Sustainability of Letter and E-Mail in Comparison in Germany," Journal of Environmental Sustainability: Vol. 7: Iss. 1, Article 4.
Available at: https://repository.rit.edu/jes/vol7/iss1/4