Inspiration Space

How to reduce your digital carbon footprint

Cut unnecessary digital clutter without making your marketing less effective. Natalie Welch explains what to review and where to begin.

Want to reduce your business’s digital carbon footprint without making your marketing less effective?

Natalie Welch, co-founder of The Typeface Group, explains how to make websites, email, social media, cloud storage and everyday digital tools more focused and useful.

What you’ll learn

  • How to remove files, posts and web pages that no longer serve a purpose
  • How to use performance data to stop ineffective marketing activity
  • When to segment email audiences and remove inactive contacts
  • What to review across hosting, software and digital suppliers
  • How to reduce unnecessary messages, notifications and automated emails
  • Why digital maintenance can also protect your time, attention and budget

Watch this if

You run or market a business and want to understand where unnecessary digital activity builds up — without waiting for perfect measurements or making your marketing less effective.

Chapters

  • 0:00 Why your digital footprint matters
  • 1:20 Natalie Welch and The Typeface Group
  • 3:00 The hidden impact of digital activity
  • 4:20 Is your content adding value or noise?
  • 5:18 Use marketing data to eliminate waste
  • 6:49 Digital overload and the pressure to keep publishing
  • 8:10 Take out your digital rubbish
  • 9:50 Clear unnecessary files from cloud storage
  • 11:28 Protecting attention and mental health
  • 13:58 Does your audience need another newsletter?
  • 16:24 When physical marketing may cut through
  • 18:37 Balance impact with useful business results
  • 20:00 Give people permission to unsubscribe
  • 21:40 Clean inactive contacts from your email list
  • 22:42 Review your digital suppliers
  • 23:56 Audit your software and subscriptions
  • 25:31 Check your website’s digital footprint
  • 26:36 Why purpose-led businesses need to look deeper
  • 27:19 Start improving before measurement is perfect
  • 29:41 One practical place to begin
  • 30:58 The digital clean-up challenge
  • 32:05 Reduce unnecessary automated emails
  • 33:14 Treat digital sustainability as ongoing maintenance
  • 34:24 Bringing digital emissions into the conversation

What to do next

Choose one place to start: an obsolete web page, an unread email sequence, an inactive contact list, an abandoned cloud folder or a tool nobody uses. Clear it out, then decide how you will stop the clutter building up again.