Welcome emails are increasing, as 72 percent of major online retailers are regularly sending out welcome emails this year, up from 66 percent last year according to a new study by the Email Experience Council (EEC).

More Retailers Using Welcome Emails

The report "Retail Welcome Email Subscription Benchmark Study" looked at the welcome emails of 118 top online retailers tracked by RetailEmail.Blogspot. The study identifies best practices and benchmarks in merchandising, relationship building, deliverability and CAN-SPAM compliance.

"There has been a tremendous increase in the adoption of welcome e-mails this year," said Jeanniey Mullen, EEC founder and a senior partner and executive director for e-mail and dialogue services at OgilvyOne Worldwide.

"I think that over the past year e-mail's positioning has changed from being strictly a direct marketing tool to being more of a customer relationship [component]. A welcome message is a good way to start this relationship."

For the first time this year the EEC tracked the amount of time between subscriptions and the sending of welcome emails. The majority of online retailers send their welcome emails within 10 minutes of sign-up, 19 percent take more than 24 hours to deliver and a third of those take more than a week. The EEC says that taking more than a week to send a welcome email is too long for an online retailer to wait.

 The study also found that 58 percent of welcome emails were CAN-SPAM compliant in terms of a mailing address and an unsubscribe method, compared to 52 percent last year. In addition 62 percent of welcome emails asked the subscriber to whitelist them by adding an email address to their address book, up form 49 percent last year.

According to the report 75 percent of the welcome emails include the retailer's brand name in their subject lines, which is consistent with last year.

"I think that the retailers who use their name in the subject line are going to have better results," Mullen said.

Welcome Emails Ecommerce