CleanTech WebLog

I saw the first episode of the new series called “Startup Junkies” a couple of weeks ago.   It’s a reality/documentary show that details the lifecycle of a startup company, in this case a company called Earth Class Mail.   Two cool ideas converge here— the series itself, which for those of us addicted to entrepreneurial ideas is great fun, and a creative idea for replacing the US Postal Service.   That’s what I call an audacious goal.

I love the idea.   Your mail, instead of being delivered to your doorstep, is delivered to a warehouse where it is scanned and an image of each item is sent to you by email.  Then, you decide whether to 1) open it and look inside 2) have it sent directly to your doorstep 3) destroy/recycle it.  This all happens electronically without you touching anything.  It’s innovative, and it’s already working.   CEO Ron Wiener has done this before—this is his fifth startup and he sounds like he knows what he’s doing.

The premise of Startup Junkies is that we get to see how he’s doing it.  He and his team lived with a camera crew for an extended period of time,  and that became an eight-episode television show.   It’s somewhere between reality show and documentary, with a healthy dash of PR as a side benefit.  It’s fast-paced and fun to watch—you can see it on Mojo TV or at  http://www.mojohd.com/mojoseries/startupjunkies.

There’s some controversy over whether this is a “green” technology. I believe it is.  It’s a productivity aid for people who travel or who just don’t want to spend time handling mail.  It’s  carbon saving in that it consolidates a fuel-intensive activity.   (According to Earth Class Mail, the post office is one of the country’s largest consumers of energy.)  Sure, there’s machinery, and there’s transportation involved.   But compare that to the mail an average business sends to a landfill.  How much space and how many employees are devoted to physical mail services in a very large business?    Earth Class Mail has set a goal of recycling 200 tons of paper in 2008—which represents 90% of received mail.  The average person today recycles about 20%, and I’ve seen statistics for businesses as low as 5%.  It would be ideal if fewer pieces of mail were generated in the first place, and in time,  that will happen.  By then I suspect Ron Wiener will have another big idea. 

Many corporate purchases of cleantech products are made based on anticipated savings of some sort. But measuring the actual savings can be a challenge. So, I get excited when a cleantech product comes along that includes built-in results measurement. Ridespring is a great example.

Ridespring is a service that automates and promotes corporate commute trip reduction programs. Here’s how it works:

• Customized Website - Ridespring creates a customized commute website for your company. The site is hosted by Ridespring and accessible to all employees. It offers information about commute alternatives (i.e. commutes by means other than single-passenger car trips) and provides links to resources for planning commute alternatives (e.g. public transit, vanpool programs, etc.). The customized Ridespring website also offers employees a way to connect with other employees who want to carpool – either regularly or occasionally.
• Driver/Rider Matching Program - Employees register with the site and can offer rides to, or find rides with, other employees for carpooling purposes.
• Incentive Program - An incentive program is tied in to the service. Employees earn points for using alternative transportation and these points allow them to win prizes. Prizes are tailored to match the interests of the company’s particular employee population. Individual employees can also enter in their typical commute length, gas price paid and miles-per-gallon (MPG) in order to calculate gas savings.

Ridespring takes care of the website customization and hosting, incentive program administration and employee communication related to the trip reduction program. And the Ridespring service automatically tabulates statistics about trip reductions based on information provided by employees who log their trips in order to claim their incentive points. Individual employees log their commute data on a screen that looks like this:

Employees can even choose to receive an automated weekly reminder to enter their commuting statistics.

Employers are then able to obtain reports about employee participation, rides offered and car trips removed (example below).

Since employees are able to input their typical MPG and miles traveled, the system has the potential to calculate estimated reductions in gasoline usage and CO2 emissions.

Sure, it’s not a perfect reporting system, since employees could potentially lie about their commutes in order to get incentives. It’s the honor system. But since the prizes tend to be relatively inexpensive rewards, I would guess that most company cultures would “out” and “shame” the liars. The beauty of this reporting system is that it’s integrated into the service itself and the manual effort required to gather the data is spread among the employee participants. The input process is pretty painless and literally rewarding.

In August and September of this year, full-page ads appeared in my town’s local newspaper, the Los Altos Town Crier. “Brilliant!” I thought, after glancing through the ad.

The headline was targeted specifically at Los Altos and Los Altos Hills residents and contained a simple call to action: “Act Now and Save 15-20% on a Solar Power System.” It further stated that the “Promotion Ends September 28^th.” The ad contained an invitation to attend a “workshop” at the local community center and requested that attendees register online at the SolarCity website. Further down the page, the ad offered readers a free site evaluation and gave a toll-free number.

So what’s so brilliant about that? Well, it turns out that in order to achieve the discount, “the aggregate total of resident purchases of solar systems through 9/28/07″ must exceed 175kW per city. This is viral marketing at its best. It’s in the buyer’s best interest to make sure that their friends and neighbors buy a solar system, too. Then everyone benefits. Solar City calls this its “Community Solar Program.” Apparently, this promotion has been quite successful. So far the company has met its installation targets in 9 of the 12 “solar cities” listed on its website and is currently rolling the program out to three additional cities.

There are several things about the program that make it effective and worthy of our marketing admiration. Including even a few of these key elements in a marketing program can supercharge it. The program:

1. creates an impending event, a clear deadline for purchasing
2. stimulates viral marketing by appealing to the purchaser’s own self-interest
3. could potentially pre-empt competitors (if SolarCity essentially gathers all prospects into a buying group)
4. generates local reference accounts that are often literally just down the street
5. employs three different ways to directly capture prospect names (workshop attendance, workshop registration and calling for free site evaluation)
6. results in an impressive list of community testimonials and highlighted “solar champions.”

Not only is this marketing program seemingly quite effective, it also has to be pretty efficient for the company. When the bright green van with the SolarCity logo emblazoned on the side cruises through the neighborhood, it’s reaching exactly the right eyeballs. In addition, there may be operational efficiencies associated with installations that are geographically clumped together. And the company recently hired one of its customers and most ardent “solar champions,” Bruce Karney, to fulfill the role of Community Programs Marketing Manager. There’s hiring efficiency for you!

Everybody wins. The company wins customers. Customers win discounts. The community wins a small sense of pride. The environment wins a gentler carbon footprint.

If you know of other cleantech marketing innovations – whether in the business-to-consumer or business-to-business space, send your stories our way.