A study released yesterday looked at the e-mail marketing practices of 250 online retailers, including many large national brands. Here are some of the findings:
- 68% are running e-mail marketing programs
- Retailers that send e-mail personalize it 25% of the time
- 23% of retailers don’t offer an e-mail signup on their homepage
If you’re selling online, it’s imperative that you have an e-mail marketing campaign, and it’s less costly than you might think. Let me offer up a recent example to show you how well e-mail performs and how high the ROI is.
I sent an e-mail marketing campaign to customers of an e-commerce site that I manage on the 18th of May. People sign up to receive e-mail in two ways—they can register from the homepage or they can opt in when they place an order. The database is what I would call “mature”—much of the list contains loyal customers who have shopped with this web site for over a year.
Over a three-day period, the e-mail brought in one-fifth of May sales thus far. As you can see, it’s alarming to me that only 68% of online retailers are running e-mail marketing programs. The mailing cost $0.01 per e-mail sent, and the return on investment was over 450%. It took two days to set up the mailing and design the text and HTML versions.
If you’re in the ecommerce business, you need an e-mail marketing program. There are many issues to consider to ensure success, so you’ll need to consult a professional. Contact me and I can help you set up an e-mail marketing program that you can run and manage.
