Retailers and E-mail Subscriptions

[Howard Larson]

The new study by the EEC found that retailers are putting more focus on list hygiene. 38% of retailers surveyed are asking subscribers to confirm their e-mail address by re-entering it when opting in. This is up from 27% last year. In addition, 5% of retailers are now using a confirmed (double) opt-in process, up from 3% last year, which improves list quality and assures that consumers know for what they are opting in.

The new study examined the opt-in practices of 120 of the top online retailers tracked via the Retail Email Blog also found that using incentives to entice consumers is more popular again. While 27% of retailers used this tactic in 2006, only 8% did last year when the idea that these consumers may not be as loyal was more accepted. Perhaps this is not true, as 13% of retailers are back to using this kind of tactic.

“Incentives are not known to attract the highest quality of names, but I think that with this new rise retailers are being more careful about their offers,” White added.

The study also found that retailers are less likely to put privacy policies upfront during the subscription process, probably do to speculation that this scares consumers away. This year only 36% of retailers mentioned their privacy policy, down from 45% last year.

Despite quicker subscription fulfillments across the board, 29% of retailers took 15 days or longer to honor opt-ins or failed to honor them all together, which is the same percentage as last year.

Larson note: The cleaner your list the better success rate that it will not get black-balled. With a double opt-in your emails are more likely to be opened and read as well. And unless that happens you are just spinning your wheels and wasting your time.

Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
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* Main source Dianna Dilworth

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