Retail Subscription Highlights

The ever resourceful and insightful Chad White of RetailEmail.Blogspot provides some very interesting excerpts from his forthcoming 2007 Retail Email Subscription Benchmark Study. They are all from that grab bag of email best practices, volume and frequency, otherwise known as retail email marketing.

These highlights were featured from MediaPost's EmailInsider newsletter

• Only the Gap Inc. brands -- Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic and Piperlime --give you the chance to subscribe to sister brands when you sign up for email from of the individual brands.

Comments - this is shocking. Companies will sacrifice quality and brand integrity with letting random companies be a part of a co-reg or affiliate program yet fail to include sister companies in their email list building efforts. Chalk that up to some synergy sizzle. Or maybe not.

• Omaha Steaks was the only retailer to say how many subscribers it has -- over 2 million.

Comments - Bragging is OK if you can back it up. I wonder if they were really using this as a consumer incentive or just to pat themselves on the back. Either way, that is a lot of porterhouse emails.

• Hanna Andersson was the only retailer to offer its newsletter in a language (Japanese) other than English.
• Coldwater Creek is the only retailer that gives subscribers the option of receiving a once-a-month email.

Comments - these are surpising and evident of the continuing focus of email programs based on marketing goals, not consumer needs. I agree with Chad that consumers will want (and deserve) more control.

Who wants to be the real leader among retailer's in the email world?