Chad White in his RetailEmailReports blog covers about retail welcome email benchmark. The study shows technical glitches, missed sales opportunities and CAN-SPAM non-ncompliance issues at the largest online retailers.

Of the 66 percent top retailers that sent out welcome emails, many are just saying hello and leave it at that. The lack of sales mentality makes it largely missed sales opportunities.

For instance here are some findings:

• 12 percent of the welcome emails included in the study didn’t bother to include a link to the retailers’ shopping sites.
• Only 68 percent of welcome emails included the retailer’s mailing address.
• Only 37 percent included retailer’s phone number.
• Only 20 percent included contact email address.
• Surprisingly, only 65 percent included an unsubscribe link.
• 34% of welcome emails include a discount, reward or incentive.
• Only two retailers—Lowe’s and TigerDirect—used a double opt-in subscription process that required subscribers to confirm that they did indeed sign up for their newsletters.
• 49% of welcome emails asked the subscriber to add an email address to its address book.
• 45% of welcome emails included links to the retailer’s privacy policy.
• 69% of retailers sent out HTML welcome emails, while the remaining 31% sent out text-only welcomes.

[RetailEmailReports]