Why Retail Loves E-Mail

Many retailers seem to think so. During this past holiday shopping season, e-mail marketers were out in full force.

According to the "Retail E-Mail Year-End Trends for 2008" report, from Smith-Harmon, promotional e-mail volume accelerated in October and reached a peak in December when retailers sent consumers a monthly average of 14.6 e-mails.

Smith-Harmon's analysis of the top 100 retailers revealed that 90% of them increased the number of e-mails they sent during the holidays.

"Retailers ratcheted up their e-mail marketing campaigns to aggressively compete for consumers' dwindling spending dollars," says Jeff Grau, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, Retail E-Mail: Online Marketing Strategies. "That was due largely to the fact that e-mail is cheap to administer and delivers an ROI far superior to paid search, catalogs and other marketing media."

Nevertheless, for retailers with large advertising budgets, e-mail campaigns represent only a tiny fraction of their marketing budgets

"E-mail marketing still accounts for only 1.5% of direct marketing budgets in the US," says Mr. Grau.