The digital revolution can make it look like social media and the online marketing are replacing printed marketing materials. However, a closer look shows that the digital age has created new potential for printed marketing.

Digital marketing is growing in popularity, as email marketing statistics produced by the service providers show. Across all industries in the UK the email opening rate has grown from 21.47% in 2013 to 22.87% in August 2015. Although you might think that this is not significant, it proves that email marketing is growing in popularity. Surprisingly, the growth in email promotions has decreased the millennials interest for email adverts. This outcome was caused by the large amount of spam that started to bombard people’s personal emails. As a result, 68% of consumers aged 18-24 are more likely to react to advertisements in print rather than digital notes (SMS, e-mails, etc.). Therefore, printed promotional materials are still an essential sales and marketing tool for businesses.

The main advantage of printed marketing is that your customer can physically interact with it. While an email can be easily ignored and deleted without being read, a printed item will engage your customers directly, attracting their attention. According to a research done by JWT, almost 80% of the people born after the 90’s consider important the tangible connection established with all sorts of printed materials.

With new digital printing technologies, it is easier than ever to create adverts that stand out. Using scratch cards for example is a great way to create a physical interaction between customers and promotional materials. It brings together the excitement of discovering the message the company sends, and also fills a void that digital marketing will never be able to, because of its intangibility. Creating unique and personalised materials that show empathy with clients is what marketing is starting to look like at the second half of the decade.

More and more business are personalising their businesses content.

Offering promotional materials to customers (such as personalised agendas, calendars and of course a business card that stands out) will bring extra exposure to businesses. Every time the logo or the name of a brand is being displayed, it creates awareness. As long as it is displayed in the right place, to the right targeted audience, awareness is one of the main perks that a company can gain from their marketing.

In order to be competitive in such a volatile environment, businesses only have one chance to create a hybrid strategy that takes into consideration both printed and digital marketing, getting the best of both!

The United Nations conference on climate change that took place in Paris this month has reached its objective. For the first time, a global agreement was achieved on reducing the climate changes and the CO2 emissions all over the world. In the words of US President Barack Obama The climate deal reached in Paris is “the best chance we have to save the one planet we have”.

Here, at Purely Digital we are proud to be Premier Paper’s first customer to become a certified Carbon Capture Company. We take our environmental responsibilities very seriously. At the end of the day, our planet is not an inheritance from our parents, but a legacy for our children! Therefore we are making sure that we are doing our bit to keep the world clean and healthy.

The initiative’s outcome is to reduce the CO2 emissions of our operational activity. We’ve been part of the Carbon Capture paper purchase offset programme since 2013, contributing to tree planting activities year on year, which we’ve always really enjoyed.

The scheme involves calculating the CO2 emissions from our energy and fuel consumption. With the calculations being submitted for an independent audit and verification, we were able to Carbon Capture our CO2 emissions together with the paper purchased. We are excited that have created well over 247 m2 of new native woodland in the UK.

The programme includes a Carbon Management plan and internal carbon reduction programme; Quantifiable CO2 reduction claims that can be included in annual reports; Marketing programmes to help add customer value; High integrity environmental programme independently verified; Use of the unique ‘Green Seal’ logo.

The certified Carbon Capture® Company status is for a 2 year period, after which the operational CO2 emissions will then be audited and re-verified.

The Carbon Capture® scheme operates under the Government’s Woodland Carbon Code, a voluntary standard for woodland creation projects in the UK. The independent certification to this standard provides assurance and clarity about the carbon benefits of these sustainably managed woodlands. It is calculated that 25m² of native UK woodland will capture and store one tonne of CO2 and creating large areas of new native woodland, will, over time, remove hundreds of thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.”

We are really happy to add another aspect to our environmental credentials to protect our planet. This should comfort our customers to know that by working with us they show responsibility and are doing their bit too.