Sep 28, 2007 6:02 AM, PROMO Xtra, By Patricia Odell Patricia.Odell@penton.com

The number of online retailers recognizing the value of sending out welcome e-mails to customers is on the rise.

Some 72% of major online retailers delivered the greetings, up from 66% last year, according to the second annual Welcome E-mail Subscription Benchmark Study by the E-mail Experience Council.

For the first time, the council also tracked the passage of time between subscriptions and the delivery of welcome e-mails.

The majority of retailers delivered their welcome e-mails within 10 minutes of sign-up. However, 19% took more than 24 hours to deliver — with nearly a third of those taking more than a week.

“In the world of digital communications, that’s an eternity to wait for a welcome email,” the council said.

Other findings of the study include:

*58% of welcome e-mails were CAN-SPAM compliant in terms of including both a mailing address and unsubscribe method, versus 52% last year.

*62% of the correspondences asked the subscriber to whitelist them by adding an e-mail address to their address book, up from 49% last year.

*79% of retailers sent out HTML welcome e-mails, up from 69% last. The remainder sent text-only welcomes. (Most of the HTML welcome emails were HTML “lite,” making extensive use of HTML text.)

*75% of the communications included the retailer’s brand name in their subject lines, on par with last year, an important step in helping the subscriber recognize the e-mail as one that they requested.

32% of the e-mails included a discount, reward or incentive, down from 34% last year. That’s in line with the results of the council’s Retail E-mail Subscription Benchmark Study, which saw a move away from incentives during sign-up.

The council is a group within the Direct Marketing Association that’s focused on the e-mail marketing industry.

The 30-page study examined the welcome e-mails of 118 of the top online retailers tracked via RetailEmail.Blogspot. The study identifies a number of best practices and provides benchmarks in the areas of merchandising, relationship-building, deliverability, and CAN-SPAM compliance. The study is available for $179 in the EEC’s Whitepaper Room.

“It is said that you never get a second chance to make a first impression—and that adage holds true to the email channel as well,” said Kara Trivunovic, director of strategic services at Premiere Global Services Inc., the sponsor of the study, in a statement. “Properly executed welcome messages actually create anticipation in the recipient for the next message.” 

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