Here at Sendwithus, we are committed to sharing information relevant to marketing teams dedicated to improving transactional emails for their companies. We believe that first impressions matter. We want your email campaigns to have a positive user experience from the moment they sign up. Recently, Return Path reported the results of its five-year study on email subscriber experience.
This report compares data from a 2008 survey of 61 marketing programs with recent data from the 2013 survey of 76 marketing programs. While this is a concentrated study, the report evaluates engagement data derived from Return Path’s panel of three million email subscribers.
Interesting highlights included in this study supports our recent comments around dead-end emails. The report emphasizes the importance of the welcome email and found that 80% of brands surveyed in 2013 now begin their email subscriptions with a welcome message. This is up from 40% in 2008.
At Sendwithus, we encourage marketing teams to take every opportunity to further engage with their customers. Transactional emails are still a missed opportunity for many companies. Unfortunately, fewer companies are adding value to their transactional emails by adding special offers, such as recommendations, discounts, or coupons, than in 2008. In 2013, only 39% of companies surveyed reported to offering deals in their welcome message, compared to 65% five years ago. This is clearly a missed opportunity since the study also shows that subscribers who received a special offer in their first message were more likely to read more of their email messaging.
First impressions matter.
