• by Jack Loechner , Staff Writer @mp_research, August 8, 2007

Friendlier E-Newsletter Subscription Practices From Retailers

The EMail Experience Council and the Direct Marketing Association, in announcing the release of its second annual Retail Email Subscription Benchmark Study, found that more than 43 percent of major online retailers allow customers to sign up for email with one click from their homepage, making the subscription process as simple as possible.  While down from 50 percent last year, retailers made process changes that simplified things, including fewer retailers who required registration to sign up for emails, fewer asking for optional information during sign up, and more using JavaScript sign-up forms, which allow customers to complete more complex subscription forms without navigating away from the retailer's homepage.

Ramesh Lakshmi-Ratan, DMA's executive vice president, said "Email is rapidly emerging as one of marketers' most powerful marketing channels... according to DMA research, commercial email in 2007 is forecast to generate $21.9 billion in US sales... each dollar spent on commercial email is projected to generate more than $48 in sales."

The study reports that addressing privacy concerns is a best practice that's seeing adoption approach the 50 percent mark.  Also, it found that providing sample newsletters is an emerging best practice that should help reduce opt-outs, with the support of nearly 12 percent of major online retailers.  The report concludes that the additional transparency provided by these two practices should increase subscriber satisfaction.

Chad White, the EEC's director of retail insights and the study's author, said  "What we found was that there's a clear trend toward subscription processes that are quick and easy, and increasingly transparent." And, Gold Lasso, the sponsor of the EEC study, noted that  "The opt-in process sets the tone of how a future email relationship between a company and customer will unfold."

Some other findings from EEC's Retail Email Subscription Study include:

• 92 percent of retailers have an email sign-up form or link on their homepage
• 28 percent of retailers offer more than one content selection, ranging from two all the way up to the 50 content options offered by Amazon.com.
• Only 3 percent of major online retailers use a double opt-in subscription process
• The subscriber's name (31 percent) and ZIP Code (18 percent) were the two most often required pieces of information.
• Nearly 12 percent of retailers offer plain-text versions of their newsletters during the sign-up process

More information about the availability of the study may be found here.