Offsetting carbon footprint strengthens Smartly.io’s brand

Smartly.io automates every step of social advertising to unlock greater performance and creativity and helps brands optimize digital advertising. Today, the company serves 700+ brands from various industries to scale their social advertising on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat and TikTok.

In 2019, Smartly.io started calculating their carbon footprint to find out both the sources and the amount of emissions. The initiative came from employees who were passionate about climate action.

“After we started this work, we have reached remarkable reductions in emissions even though we have grown at the same time and the amount of employees has doubled,” explains Johanna Kalli, Director of Customer Education at Smartly.io. “While the pandemic has had an effect on the emissions with less travel, we have also renewed our travel policies towards more sustainable traveling. We want to create a path for emissions reductions, aiming to define the areas we should concentrate on and create more accurate calculations.”

“When we got the first set of data, we were unsure if offsetting emissions was the right thing to do,” she continues. “However, we decided to start carbon offsetting in 2020, and we think it was the right decision. Reducing emissions is a path of several actions. Offsetting also puts a price tag on creating emissions.”

“We want our investment to have a true impact”

Smartly.io is compensating for all its emissions with Compensate. The company evaluated several offsetting service providers, but considered Compensate’s portfolio approach as the right one for them. Smartly.io also didn’t want to take risks with double-counted offsetting projects , something that is taken into account in Compensate’s project selection process . “Compensate’s role as a portfolio manager is valuable for us. They ensure that the projects have a true effect, and we can trust that our investment is used the best possible way, having the desired climate impact. We don’t have the knowledge in-house to choose carbon offsetting projects, and it would be too big an investment to start building this kind of know-how internally.” Smartly.io also values the scientific approach: The selection criteria for Compensate’s carbon projects have been created in collaboration with an independent network of scientific advisors. “It’s worth it for us to concentrate on reducing emissions and use Compensate’s expertise for offsetting,” Kalli explains. Compensate’s offsetting service includes an impact dashboard that clarifies which carbon projects have been used and what is the impact of offsetting. “It’s easy for us to guide our stakeholders to read more using this third-party report. It was just today we shared the report internally and encouraged our employees to pass it on to people who might be interested in it,” Kalli says.

Climate action is important to various stakeholders

Smartly.io has experienced that climate issues seem to be an interest of both current and potential employees. “We know the talent market well. Recruitment candidates show increasingly more interest towards climate action and are curious about how we are contributing,” comments Siiri Hakulinen, Employer Branding & Communications Lead at Smartly.io. Other stakeholders are equally important as well – customers and partners are more and more interested in climate action. Doing the right thing affects the brand positively. “Carbon footprint reduction is a journey that doesn’t come ready in a year but is an on-going process. The data we have guides us to make the right decisions,” Kalli says.

Interested in a high impact carbon capture portfolio? Get familiar with our carbon projects .

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