A Return Trip Through 80 Retailers’ Email Sign-Up Experiences

Are inbox welcome experiences getting any better? That's what I wanted to find out by revisiting the retailers whose welcome programs I evaluated here approximately one year ago. Readers can scan that article for the methodology I used in evaluating the programs. At a high level, this is an assessment of the retail vertical welcome experience. The analysis is based on Internet Retailer's list of the top 500 online business-to-consumer retailers based on sales. I used the same set of retailers as last year, when 73 of the top 80 retailers evaluated had an email program available for sign-up. This year that number increased to 74 of the sample set, with two adding programs and one dropping theirs. Improvements still necessaryA surprisingly high number of companies continue to skip the welcome (9 percent) or don't send any email at all (11 percent), in spite of permitting, even encouraging, email sign-ups. That's 15 major brands that aren't taking advantage of one of the most important phases of the subscriber lifecycle. I suspect that given welcome programs are often designed with a "set and forget" approach, there's no ongoing monitoring of these sends occurring. The brands may not even realize that emails aren't going out. Ouch. If you're in charge of automated sends, you should, at the very least, check periodically to ensure these emails are being sent consistently. Better yet, you should be tracking performance over time. Another big miss that changed little from last year was the subscription confirmation page. In 2011, 40 retailers offered a landing page that provided no clear direction or guidance on what to do next. While better in 2012, 33 companies didn't take advantage of this valuable real estate by offering very simple guidance either to "continue shopping" or "sign up for our other programs" (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, etc.). Deliverability improvedInbox deliverability improved last year. In 2011, 9 percent of welcome emails ended up in my spam folder; this year that number was only 7 percent. I used a Gmail account for this research and monitored the number of welcomes that were flagged as "important" by Google (a feature of Priority Inbox I don't believe was in place in 2011). Twenty of the companies received the highly beneficial flag. It's hard to determine exactly what drove the prioritization, given these were first touches from each brand and I hadn't marked any prior emails as "important" from anyone. The most obvious difference was that typically if the subject line started with "welcome" it was given priority status, whereas if it began with "thank you" it didn't. Cross promotionGiven the handraiser event that email sign-up is, it's an obvious opportunity to encourage sign-ups for other channels (e.g., an SMS program, Twitter or Facebook). Overall, 73 companies had a Facebook and/or Twitter presence and 51 (70 percent) encouraged following or becoming a fan of the brand in either the welcome email or the landing page post-email sign-up. This is up from 48 percent in 2011. Incentives fall offWhile the practice of incenting subscribers remained steady (up to 7 percent from 6 percent in 2011), only four of the seven companies overlapped from 2011 (one brand stopped and two started). Additionally, only 12 retailers offered a gift (e.g., discount, free shipping, etc.) in the welcome email last year, down from 22 the previous year. This represents a huge philosophical shift in treating the subscriber to an unexpected reward. Presumably, the thinking is that they're already drawn to the brand at this point and don't need a nudge to purchase. Other general trends and opportunitiesThere were a few other notable trends worth calling out compared to 2011: RSS: Eleven companies had RSS feeds last year, while only nine did the previous year. What was most interesting, however, is that of the nine that offered an RSS feed in 2011, only three still had it last year. Many brands with an RSS feed had given it up while another audience decided to try it. I've never found RSS feeds to be particularly consumer friendly or a compelling experience, so I expect the churn on this to be high again this year. Pinterest: With all the buzz around Pinterest in the past year, I expected brands to be encouraging use of it and, in fact, 26 brands promoted it in some capacity on their site or in their email program. Mobile SMS: Seventeen companies offered a mobile SMS program, compared to only 12 in 2011. Slow but steady growth is occurring in this channel. Social: Only three brands enabled consumers to sign up for their email program via Facebook. This is a no-brainer area for growth. I hope this figure is substantially higher this year. Social sign-up offers a quick, easy engagement experience for the subscriber and a lot of valuable data for the brand. Text vs. HTML: In 2011, five companies asked subscribers if they have a format preference (HTML or Text). Last year that number was down to two. As I've indicated previously, this is typically an unnecessary question that adds another hurdle to the sign-up process. While twice as many companies used a double opt-in approach to their email program last year, that number is still just 4 of 74 brands. Double opt-in continues to remain a little-used approach to the subscription process. The winner is …I wish that picking my favorite welcome email this year was equivalent to choosing your favorite child (i.e., impossible), but that just wasn't the case. Gilt.com's welcome email is really well done — it's unique every day since it highlights "today's sales." The email also has a link to a video to learn insider tips (who doesn't want those?) and provides an overall excellent orientation experience to what Gilt is all about. This is exactly what every welcome email should include. Clint Kaiser is senior director of strategic services at Merkle. Clint can be reached at ckaiser@merkleinc.com.

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A Return Trip Through 80 Retailers’ Email Sign-Up Experiences

Clint Kaiser

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Clint Kaiser