Survey: Email marketers make customers feel welcome

You only get one chance to make a first impression, and retailers are applying this truism to their email marketing efforts.



According to a survey of 150 retail clients by email marketing technology provider Campaigner, 39% of respondents say that the first email content new subscribers see from their brand is a thank-you-for-subscribing message. This approach seems to be working, as almost 50% of respondents report that 21% or more of new subscribers engage with such welcome emails.



To encourage customers to sign up for regular email messages, many respondents are leveraging content marketing, with 55% offering the latest news and content to their customers as incentives to subscribe. The second-most-popular incentive is standard promotions, at 49%.



Looking at welcome message timing, 62% of respondents report that their new subscribers receive their first message from the brand within 24 hours of signing up.



Additionally, the majority of retail marketers surveyed (60%) find it best to deliver emails early in the day — specifically, before 2 p.m. Thirty-five percent say between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m. is the ideal time to garner responses from new subscribers, while 25% report that between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. is best.



Despite the reported success of these messages, 60% of respondents feel they are not making the most of their welcome emails. Still, more than 60% of respondents plan to use email marketing as their primary method to acquire customers in the coming year.



Other notable findings include:



• Eighty-seven percent of respondents are including images in their welcome emails, while 26% are including videos.



• Nearly one-third (31%) of respondents report that geo-targeting is important for initial emails to contacts.



• More than half of the respondents ranked personalization and segmentation as the most successful tactics in driving conversions.



• Seventy-seven percent of respondents report the pressure on their business to acquire new customers as the economy slows is high or very high.



• Forty-seven percent of respondents report that the most damaging email marketing issue for brands today is having messages delivered to spam folders.