Retailmail.blogspot is an excellent free resource on various benchmarks for email.
If you’re looking for info on what other marketers are doing in terms of form and formating of thier email sign up process and of their emails blasts this is a great starting place.
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email 
0 Comment » This, direct from RetailEmail.Blogspot.
The Direct Marketing Association’s Email Experience Council recently signed up for the email newsletters of 118 of the top online retailers tracked via RetailEmail.Blogspot. What we found was that there’s a clear trend toward subscription processes that are quick and easy, and increasingly transparent.
Along with this shift toward greater ease of subscribing, the confirmation page is rising in importance. Rather than making customers complete long subscription forms, many retailers are now allowing people to subscribe with just an email address and then allowing them to express delivery and content preferences on the subscription confirmation page.
Also, addressing privacy concerns is a best practice that’s seeing adoption approach the 50% mark, and providing a sample newsletters is a clear emerging best practice that should help reduce opt-outs, with nearly 12% or major online retailers doing that.
On the content front, 28% of retailers offer more than one content selection, with it ranging from two all the way up to the 50 content options offered by Amazon.com. Nearly 6% of retailers offer a local store update.
When it comes to transparency on frequency, however, retailers do a poor job. Not even 7% of retailers give subscribers any kind of idea how many emails to expect. And only one retailer, Coldwater Creek, allows subscribers to opt to receive a monthly only email.
Format-wise, nearly 12% of retailers offer plain-text versions of their newsletters during the sign-up process. Because of the superior responses from HTML emails, retailers may be hesitant to give subscribers this option.
Here are some other findings from the study:
• Only 3% of major online retailers use a double opt-in subscription process.
• Only 92% of retailers have an email sign-up form or link on their homepage.
• More than 43% of retailers allow customers to sign up for email with one click from their homepage.
• The subscriber’s name (31%) and zip code (18%) were the two most often required pieces of information.
Visit the Whitepaper Room to download the full report, which is free for EEC platinum members, available at a discount to EEC gold and silver members, and available for $179 for non-members.
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email AOL’s “E-mail Addiction” survey examined the relationships Americans have with their e-mail accounts. The survey, conducted by the Opinion Research Corporation, polled 4,000 people in 20 cities. Among the findings: citizens of Miami check e-mail more than any other city, 40% of e-mail users have checked their mail in the middle of the night, and 41% check their e-mail first thing in the morning, before heading to work.
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email Specific advantages consumers see in mail versus unsolicited e-mail and telephone calls, according to the report, compared with other communications channels, survey respondents found mail to be:
http://news.pb.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=4202
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email Random Email marketing best practices report. Mostly a lead generator for this company, but it does have an interesting checklist for email development.
http://www.responsys.com/documents/Forrester_BestWorst_EmailMktg_2006.pdf
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email Found this really cool, although kind of dated, report on email statistics on Adverblog.
http://www.eroi.com/resources/eROI_email_numbers_Q3_05.pdf
