Win customers’ hearts – and leads on “Green Friday” – with tree sponsorships:
#Trees4Leads
Green Friday as an alternative to Black Friday
I don’t know about you, but I get stressed out by Black Friday and all the consumer frenzy surrounding it, which I prefer to avoid. That’s why I go to St. Peter-Ording every November and do most of my shopping offline. In 2022 was the first time I heard about “Green Friday” as an alternative movement. (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 “offset” part of their profits to do something good for the environment. In other words: Not only should consumers benefit from Green Friday, but above all the environment. The participating retailers decide for themselves how they do this. Some plant trees or donate part of their profits. 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 your own purchases.
As a green alternative to Black Friday, our trees have already been used repeatedly by our customer, the fashion retailer Scandic-Fashion, with GREEN DAYS or Green Friday or – as I find particularly fitting – by the children’s second-hand store BraunBaerchen.de with the GREEN WEEK.
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.
Planting trees as marketing incentive: The idea of our Trees4Leads campaign
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:
Are you ready for your first tree planting campaign? Planting trees for one euro is easier than you think with us!
The process of planting trees with GreenAdz is quite uncomplicated:
request non-binding information package about tree sponsorships for 1,-€ per tree (minimum order quantity: 50 trees)
This is where our trees are planted: In the GreenAdz forest in Zambia
Our interactive webmap at weforest shows our forest in Zambia and much more information about the project
“And where do you plant your trees?” is the first question we are asked as soon as we tell people that we not only do “market research that plants trees”, but that tree planting has also become our private passion.
How nice when we can then show our always up-to-date interactive webmap. Here in Zambia we plant ‘our’ trees together with weforest. By the way, weforest is the first partner of the green search engine ECOSIA, our big role model. The “search engine that plants trees” shows how easy it is to do good by the way. And if you don’t search with Ecosia yet, you should start quickly. Another step for many new trees on our planet.
*: 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!
Susanne Riehl, founder of You-craft-it.de, gave me the idea for the Bäume-statt-Böller campaign. You-craft-it.de
Her New Year’s greeting to your customers turned out great, didn’t it?
#youcraftitcologne
“You are the Viva con Aqua for market research”.
“Nice thing about the tree sponsorship. Considering how many pointless Christmas presents roll in, this is definitely the better option […]”
“The trees at Christmas were so well received by our customers that we would like to ‘reorder’ another 150 trees”
About the author:
Dr. Sandra Gärtner is co-founder of the market research and technology service provider GreenAdz as well as an independent market research consultant with mediaresearch42 from Hamburg with passion and a green soul. Green, because GreenAdz stands for “market research that plants trees” and the sustainable incentive concept is particularly effective in the area of influencer marketing research – especially for campaign-accompanying advertising impact studies of influencer campaigns.
More appreciative than classic pop-up survey invitations, we help our customers better understand their customers through good online surveys: We are always unobtrusively involved and ALWAYS incentivize each respondent with a tree sponsorship. For higher participation rates, better results and above all: more fun.
And because it’s so ingenious and simple, we also convince companies to use a tree like this as a thank you for all their other marketing campaigns. We call this ‘#Trees4Leads’ and have written a separate blog post about it here: “Mit Bäumen Leads und Herzen gewinnen“
#Trees4Christmas #Trees4Leads #ChristamasCards #ThePerfectGift #Christmas2024
#EntrepreneursforFuture
