Eco-friendly guys finish last

Running an eco-friendly brand is the DTC version of "nice guys finish last."

As an email agency owner, I can tell you earth month campaigns are some of our WORST performing emails of the year. We're talking $0 sales on brands that normally do 5-6 figures per email.

Most eco-friendly brands have a small demo size (few people practice what they preach), and in the eco-friendly consumer's eyes, DTC contradicts the essence of eco-friendly.

It's really really really hard to make that equation work.

I recently listened to the Boring Ecom Pod with Matt Epstein as a guest and he shared some notes on this. I saved this passage because it resonated:

It's super depressing but that's the state of the world we live in.

Mr. Beast tried to launch a product that's "better for you candy" and nobody cared so he pivoted. He's even publicly stated his "give back" videos are some of the worst performing videos he puts out (but he'll still do it because it's good PR).

"Congrats Paperboy, you just explained greenwashing in a roundabout way."

Yes, but the point of this post is to be a reminder to marketers and founders.

To the founders reading: Eco-friendly is noble, but is really hard to build a business around it. Very few brands exist that have made it work (and even fewer without controversy). I tried to build a brand around giving back and nobody cared about that, they just liked our designs as holiday gifts.

To the email marketers reading: nobody cares about most invented holidays. Unless you can make it VERY emotional/interesting, it will never land. You’ll get very few opens, let alone sales.

People are too busy in their lives to care about national pizza day unless you’re attaching a sale or special drop to it. They want you to solve their problems, not create another thing they need to care about.

If you work with eco-friendly brands, challenge yourself to find ways to overlap the brand’s eco-friendly POV & what the customer can benefit from:

• order a lot to minimize shipping frequency & packaging and save

• order bigger sizes to minimize waste and save

• slow shipping (anti-amazon stance), cheaper and less emissions

You get the gist. That’s what some brands hire me for. It’s hard but there are ways to do it. Or at least to test it and say “yeah this is not going work as good as X”.

Try to line up sales, drops, etc. around these fun days. Use them to highlight core problems your products solve for the consumer. Not to show off how virtuous you are.

I have huge respect for brands trying to make their products more eco-friendly, ethical, etc. In reality it’s a thankless task that in the long-run might be a differentiator in ways you wouldn’t expect. Or maybe not. But you still need to survive and grow enough to find out.

To close this email I want you to think about why you clicked the subject line. Was it to learn about email marketing? Or was it out of anger and belief that eco-friendly brands can make a difference? Maybe I challenged your belief system, or maybe you just like my memes. I have no political agenda, it was intentionally clickbait because I wanted to share some food for thought on writing good subject lines (and content).

Paperboy out ✌🏼

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