Denise Cox of Newsweaver takes a look at the Email Experience Council's recent 'Retail Welcome Email Benchmark Study', which is a follow-on from the 'Retail Email Subscribe Benchmark Study'. The Welcome Email study focuses on what some marketers might regard as trivial: the email message sent to a subscriber after they sign up to a newsletter. But this welcome message is usually the first contact a subscriber has with the company - and generally has a higher open rate than the regular emails that follow. It's a prime opportunity to set the tone of the relationship, build interest in subsequent emails and offer incentives to inspire action.

While 72% of major online retailers send out welcome messages (up from 66% in 2006), 22% of them are not maximising this important first touch with the subscriber to explain the benefits of signing up to their newsletters, or to use it as a selling or relationship-building vehicle. This in depth study finds that 98% are including a link to their shopping site, but are less likely to include other links: only 7% of the welcome messages contained send-to-a-friend links, 32% a discount, reward or incentive (down from 34% last year), 33% store locator links and 14% links to catalog information.

Read this benchmark study to glean great ideas for crafting your own welcome messages. The study will move you beyond 'hello' and help you start strategising to include incentives, links to products, loyalty programmes, shopping related material, catalogs and other. Read More