What 207 consumer brands send after a newsletter signup
We signed up for the email lists of 207 consumer brands, from small Shopify stores to Chanel and Gucci, and kept the roughly 3,300 emails they sent. We never opened any of them, so to each brand we looked like a subscriber who had lost interest.
Summary
- 144 of the 182 brands we could time sent a welcome within 15 minutes.
- The typical brand sent 7 emails in the first ten days. Three weeks in, 106 of 140 were still emailing.
- Only 4 of 140 asked whether we still wanted to hear from them.
- 6 of 69 popups promised an offer that never arrived by email.
- None of the 16 luxury houses offered a welcome discount.
What a new subscriber gets
The welcome usually arrives within a couple of minutes and carries the code. After that, most brands send something on most days.
The typical subscriber got 7 emails in the first ten days. Half of brands sent between 5 and 10, and the busiest sent 27.
How fast the welcome arrives
The median welcome came 1.9 minutes after signup, and 72 brands sent it within a minute. Smaller stores were faster than big ones, under a minute at the median compared with 3.4 minutes for the largest sites. Vego Garden's arrived in 21 seconds.
21 of the 182 took more than an hour, and 11 took more than half a day. Some of those are luxury houses. Chanel, Gucci and Jaeger-LeCoultre each sent a formal "Welcome to..." email between a day and a half and almost three days after the signup, which looks deliberate.
Five brands never sent a welcome at all. The first thing their new subscriber received was the next regular newsletter or promotion, as much as three days later. Of everything in this study, that's the simplest thing to fix.
Where the sale gets lost
None of these show up as an error on the brand's side. You only see them by signing up to your own store.
- The popup's offer never arrived at 6 of 69 email-only signups. At 4 of those, the offer depended on a phone number asked for on a later screen, and the email step didn't mention it.
- The welcome took more than an hour at 21 of 182 brands, and 5 of those never sent one.
- Two signup flows overlapped at 32 of 140 brands, both sending in the same first ten days.
Welcome codes and sales also run into each other. At 16 of the 129 brands that gave a welcome offer, a public sale was a better deal within two days. The subscriber gets a discount either way, so this isn't necessarily a problem. It's still worth deciding whether your welcome code stacks with sales, goes up during them, or pauses.
What happens when nobody opens
106 of 140 brands were still emailing in week three. Volume drops, from a median of 6 emails in the first week to 2 in the third, but most brands kept going. Over 24 days the typical brand sent 12 or 13 emails, and 39 sent 20 or more.
Four brands asked whether we still wanted their emails. The rest kept sending, or stopped without asking.
Luxury houses
We included 16 luxury houses, among them Chanel, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels and Moncler. None offered a welcome code, gift or credit, compared with 129 of the other 189 brands. They sent a median of 2 emails in the first six days, against 5 for everyone else, and 5 of the 16 took more than an hour to send a welcome. The only swipeable product carousels in the whole set came from Gucci and Valentino.
Premium heritage brands such as Filson, Rapha and Montblanc behaved more like everyone else. 8 of 12 offered something for signing up.
Examples worth copying
Some subject lines answer an objection before the email is opened. Dollar Shave Club used "Commitment issues? You'll fit right in." with the preview "Pause it, skip it, cancel it. No guilt trip, no exit interview." Ridge used "99 days to change your mind." Michael Todd Beauty wrote "Sonicsmooth Pro+ isn't for everyone," previewing "Here's exactly what it can and can't do."
A few brands asked before giving up on us. Manta Sleep asked "Is it time to say goodbye?" on day 10 and sent one more email in the following nine days. Dalstrong wrote "Alright... this is goodbye (unless you click here)" on day 16. Michael Todd Beauty ("It's been a while...") and Got Bag ("Du fehlst uns!", German for "We miss you!") did it on day 24.
Some sent much less. Dollar Shave Club sent 6 emails in 19 days, while the busiest brand sent 51 over the same period.
16 of 205 brands asked readers to reply. Brooklinen's welcome says "Just hit reply" and offers help finding the right fit.
Hardly anyone used interactive email. No brand sent an email you could shop or answer a question in, and 8 used a live countdown timer.
Check your own store
Sign up to your store every way a shopper can (the popup, the footer, checkout, with and without a phone number) and watch the inbox for a few weeks. Things to look for:
- whether the popup's offer arrives by email
- how long the first email takes
- what a new subscriber sees during a sale
- whether two flows send at once
- whether anything changes when the subscriber stops opening
Or start with an audit of your store.
About the numbers
- 140 brands were signed up in October and followed for about four weeks. 67 more, mostly luxury and premium brands, were added in November and followed for about a week. Each figure uses the brands it could be measured on, so the totals vary.
- No email was opened or clicked, so brands that respond to engagement showed us what they send to people who don't engage.
- None of this measures sales. The examples show what brands do. From the outside we can't tell which approaches sell more.