Study Shows Retailers Are Not High on Newsletters

Retailers are behind the curve when it comes to e-mail newsletters.

So says a new report from Silverpop on e-mail use. Only 14% of the retail firms studied offer newsletters on their Web sites, and only a small number of those may be true e-zines.

“Anecdotally, many of them are probably full of ads,” says Silverpop CEO Bill Nussey.

What accounts for this lag?

Nussey suspects that some firms—those more heavily focused on catalogs— are so steeped in tradition that they don’t see the need.

“A lot of them have been doing what they do for decades,” he says. “Customers have been comfortable with them for decades. The urgency to change is not particularly high.”

To glean these findings, Silverpop studied the Web sites of 175 companies that participated in last year’s ACC, including multi-channel players like Crate & Barrel, Neiman Marcus, JC Penney and CompUSA. All offered e-mail, but 32% of the larger initial group had no apparent e-mail programs.

But those that do are making responsible use of the medium.

“We don’t didn’t see any disrespectful, customer-ignoring practices,” says Nussey. “We also didn’t see much sophistication beyond batch and blast.”

For example, 23% of those studied did not include e-mail registrations on their home page, Nussey says.

Except for discount promotions that a company may not want to publicize out front, a company should “never bury the call action by placing it off page,” adds Elaine O’Gorman, vice president of marketing for Atlanta-based Silverpop.

In addition, one quarter failed to offer even a simple explanation of benefits in an effort to persuade visitors to register.

And what kinds of information do they offer? Of the firms with e-mail programs, 45% offered notices of sales and promotions. And 11% offered catalogs or other types of direct mail. Meanwhile, almost 80% offered only one category of information despite that consumers want tailored products.

Also limited was the amount of information requested by the retailers. Of those studied, only 37% asked only for an e-mail address, and 39% asked for more detailed information, including postal address.. Only 25% asked for phone numbers and demographic data.

And when customers did register, less than half of the firms sent a confirmation message. Worse yet, a mere quarter of those messages were personalized.

On the positive side, 80% said those who send confirmations said they do so on the same day And 76% include product or brand names in the messages.

But their sophistication seems to end there. Barely 12% asked recipients to add them to the recipients’ address book or white list.

This story is based on a session and interview at ACC 2005, this year’s catalog conference in Orlando.