This year we struggled to keep a couple store bought columbines alive in the apron of my yard (also struggling, though my wife insists it looks great). First they drooped, then they bleached out and/or turned brown - apparently dead. I read an old pamphlet from a local nursery that said something to the effect of “it’s a wonder anything grows here at all” when describing the soil and climate here in Jackson. Great.

However - two hopeful notes.

First, after returning from a weeklong trip where it apparently rained here for days, the once dead columbines have come back. One’s even threatening to full-on bloom!

Second, my wife discovered a huge patch of wild columbine on one of her insane mountain runs. She took me out and we harvested a small handful while I was gasping for air. My dad tells me these seeds will have a much better time getting established than the ones we transplanted. Here’s hoping…

Arik

I’ve made a goal for myself to ride my bike to work twice a week for as much of the warmer months here in Jackson Hole as I can. This is not always an easy task, between weather, meetings, errands, carting kids around, etc. It’s also not as easy as riding from across town on a bike path—my ride from Wilson is a fifteen mile round-trip—but it sure feels good to get in the exercise and not have to sit in busy tourist traffic.

As you may know from previous posts, I’m a fan of Keith Peters’ Carbon Neutral Journal. Occasionally Keith writes some interesting things on his own findings about his driving and cycling experiences. (In fact, today’s post has to do with the greening of our US capital. I know, sounds far-fetched.)

So, in the spirit of carbon neutrality, I’ve realized some carbon and cost savings for my personal cycling goal—though exercise and sanity were at the root of my original goal.

I typically fill the tank in my van (admittedly not the most carbon-friendly vehicle, but hey, it gets 17+ miles per gallon and that’s better than a Hummer, right, Stine?) every two weeks. Figuring there are ten days of work commute in a typical two-week period and I ride my bike twice a week, in five weeks of two-day-a-week bike commutes I will have saved a whole tank of gas. That’s close to $70 per tank in today’s prices! Yeah, it’s a guzzler—all the more reason to feel good about riding the bike.

So, if you’ve been meaning to ride your bike to work more (or walk, or car-pool, or ride the bus—whatever), hopefully this provides a little incentive. And if not, well, at least keep an eye out for us cyclists on the road. Thanks!

– Chris

Here at Circumerro we’ve gotten pretty good at producing our products. But just when you think the job of producing is done, it’s time to market. While there are many ways to do that, direct mail and direct email marketing tend to be fairly straight forward and effective. And as we continue to focus more of our energies on the Web, we look to direct email marketing as the easiest and most cost-effective way to get the word out.

But here’s the catch (or at least one of ‘em): email addresses tend to be hard to come by, while snail-mail addresses practically grow on trees. Of course, I completely understand the reluctance to provide email addresses in this age of unending spam. Many of us who work in front of a computer get literally hundreds of emails a day, and the average Internet user has something like four separate email accounts. If you work a lot with email and have an effective spam filter, most of those emails are qualified, necessary things. Unfortunately, in a less-than-perfect world, a great deal of email is unwanted spam.

Back to the point:

Sending snail mail costs money. You’ve got to print the piece and then pay to have it mailed, including the physical cost of handling the pieces so many times before they end up in your box. But to send something via email costs very little, for both the sender and the recipient. Mostly just some extra bandwidth and the time it takes to set it up. Of course, there’s the time on the recipient’s end to read the message, qualify it as something they want to respond to, and then hit delete if they’re not interested—arguably less time than it takes to check your snail mail box and throw the unwanteds in the trash (or hopefully the recycle bin).

The cost of direct snail mail marketing certainly gives marketers pause about the resources they are using (or should). But the system continues to encourage us to waste resources to deliver our messages effectively when email marketing creates no waste.

For as much as we hate to receive junk mail in our postal box, we still prefer it over unwanted email. For example, when I call my local chamber of commerce for their business listing, they are more than happy to share their members’ physical addresses with me, but the emails? That’s a big no-no.

It’s controversial enough that, when I floated it by my friend Keith for use in his CarbonNeutralJournal blog (as I do for many things I find on the subject of saving resources), he bounced it back to me, saying:

“I agree with your logic, but not with the reality. You can do a lot to curb print junk mail (Greendimes is just one such service), but you can’t do anything to stop junk email. Plus it’s often so vulgar and offensive.”

As a marketer I realize that much of what we produce in print is just so much fodder for the recycle bin (which is why we here at Circumerro focus our efforts on the Web when we can). It is very much a resource issue, and I hope we can get to a point where it’s more acceptable to receive email than snail mail.

Again, Keith sums it up:

“I’m afraid the spammers have spoiled the water for what could/should have evolved into an efficient and reasonably unobtrusive way to do direct marketing.”

Thanks for nothin’, spammers.

- Chris