Green Friday as an alternative to Black Friday

I don’t know about you, but I get stressed out by Black Friday and the whole consumer craze around it, which I prefer to avoid. That’s why I go to St Peter-Ording every year in November and do most of my shopping offline. Last year I heard about “Green Friday” as an alternative movement for the first time. (among others on Bustle Fashion or BBC):
What does “Green Friday” mean? In short, “Green Friday” is a sustainable, alternative shopping event to Black Friday. On this day, retailers “compensate” a part of their profits in order to do something good for the environment. In other words, not only consumers should benefit from Green Friday, but above all the environment. The participating retailers decide for themselves exactly how to do this. Some plant trees or donate parts of their earnings. The aim is not to demonize consumption per se, but to draw attention to more sustainable consumption and to create a benefit for the environment and climate with one’s own purchases.

Our trees for €1 could be used by retailers on Green Friday (or any other day!) as an incentive or “small thank you” to reduce returns or to buy more sustainable products from the range. Freely according to the motto “We plant a tree for every purchase without a return” or similar.

Normally, we do “market research that plants trees” with GreenAdz. What our role model, the search engine Ecosia.org, does with “search that plants trees”, we do with what we know how to do – market research: We always incentivize every participant of our online surveys with a tree donation as a thank you. At €1 per respondent, this costs much less than most would expect, but not only results in better participation rates and deeper insights, but above all in lasting joy, as we see again and again from the many positive reactions of our respondents.

Participation in our surveys is what we call a “lead”: “Simply defined, leads in marketing refer to any individual or organization within your marketing reach who has interacted with your brand way or has the potential to become a future customer.” (vgl. Definition Marketing Guide on wrike.com)

What is your lead? With the Trees4Leads campaign, we want to know

Because it’s not just through our market research projects, such as our campaign-accompanying influencer marketing studies on Instagram in GenZ, that we have now cracked the 100,000 tree mark. They have all already been planted in our GreenAdz forest:
Since 2017, more and more companies have been getting enthusiastic about our tree-replacement card idea at Christmas under #BaumstattKarte: For a flat rate of one euro per tree, our cooperation partners ensure that our GreenAdz forest grows with each seedling and sets a positive example against climate change. Because each tree binds about 6 kg of CO2 per year and can thus compensate for about half a ton of CO2 in the course of its long life, great, isn’t it?

We are happy with all the companies that plant trees – like Ecosia.org, Plant-for-the-Planet, Grow my Tree, The Generation forest, Aktion-Baum.org, weforest, Primaklima, Myclimate or Treedom – for their success and that tree planting is more in vogue than ever. And basically, we don’t care* which cooperation partner you plant trees with – the main thing is that you do it! 😉

But of course we are especially happy if you plant your trees with us for 1,-€ per tree and “our” GreenAdz forest continues to grow and thrive (to see, here on our interactive webmap with all info about the project). We have chosen our project partner weforest out of complete conviction and are happy to have been working with the great people there for so long and in a spirit of trust.

5 examples of using a tree incentive for lead generation #Trees4Leads:

You can use a tree as a marketing incentive wherever the added value or ROI from its use is greater than €1. Depending on the marketing goal, many lead generation possibilities can be named here. We have compiled five possible uses for our #Trees4Leads:

So, did you feel like giving trees to your customers, too? Then go for it!

The process of plantinig trees with GreenAdz is quite uncomplicated:

*: OK, we don’t really care which partner you plant trees with either, because there are now a large number of companies that operate tree planting more or less as a business model or are true believers. In contrast to companies such as Reviewforest.org, which plant a tree for every Google review (at €5 plus VAT, five times more expensive than our trees), the founders of Ecosia or the non-profit GmbH Aktion-Baum.org are true believers and are committed to making seedlings cheaper so that more trees can be planted (regardless of profit).
For a small introduction to the topic, which organization suits you (if we with our non-profit cooperation partner weforest.org are not), I recommend the article on Utopia: “Planting trees for the climate: 15 recommendable organizations – and what you should look out for“.

PS: Here are a few more customer reactions to our #Trees4Christmas campaign:

We have been saving ourselves the trouble of printing Christmas cards for years. Instead, we give away electronic New Year’s greetings paired with a tree to our friends and customers. This is not only more climate-friendly, but at one euro per tree, it’s even cheaper than any rocket or card plus postage. It’s an ingenious idea that has also inspired other companies to give trees instead of Christmas cards or as New Year’s greetings. This is shown by reactions like these:

[…]By the way, we had 27 customer responses to our “tree instead of card” campaign and the customers were very enthusiastic about the great sustainable campaign.
So it was a complete success for us too! […] […]our newsletter is personalized out ….and the response is fantastic :-))))
Our customers are thrilled. We have never received so much positive feedback on a Christmas campaign. […]

Conclusion: lead generation through trees or “trees-instead-of-Christmas-cards/birthday greetings/newsletter subscription/online store order/or-whatever” go down well – now it’s your turn, just give it a try!