According to the Internet Retailer survey of IRNewsLink e-newsletter readers conducted last month with e-mail marketing and survey firm Vovici Corp., about half of retailers report between 1% and 10% of all online sales stem from e-mail marketing; 15.7% say 1% to 2.5%; 15.7% say 2.6% to 5%; and 15.4% say 5.1% to 10%.

[Half of retailers with a connection to the Internet Retailer web site get between one and ten percent of their revenue from e-mail marketing]
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[Some] stores give a shopper $5 off a purchase if they give you their e-mail address. The typical annual worth of an e-mail address is about $20, so that $5 is a good investment.”

Retailers are using many other tactics today to improve the effectiveness of e-mail marketing:

—38.8% are triggering e-mail marketing messages based on behaviors or events.

—36.5% are personalizing messages (such as by addressing customers by first name).

—28.2% are adding Forward-to-Friend links.

—22.7% are leveraging transactional messaging for marketing communications.

—18.4% are providing multiple options (for example, opting out of promotional e-mails but remaining on the e-newsletter list) during the opt-out process.

—17.6% are including customer reviews.

—14.1% are adding Share This links to social networks.

—13.3% are adding more video-related content.

All of these tactics help make e-mail marketing messages more relevant to customers—and in e-mail marketing, relevancy rules. {more}