Big news: chances are more recipients will open your list's welcome message than any other email you ever send them in the future.

We've long suspected that welcomes are more important than most marketers believe. Our theory is that response is driven by recency of opt-in. If someone just joined your list a few minutes ago, they're darn likely to open the first few messages they get from you.

Today we learned our recency theory matches reality.

We asked Morgan Stewart, Director Strategic Services at ExactTarget (who sends campaigns on behalf of hundreds of marketers including Home Depot, Minolta, Embassy Suites, and Honeywell), to run a report across all their aggregated client campaign response data.

Which types of campaigns performed the best for 2004?

It wasn't sales alerts or newsletters. 'The vast majority were introductory or 'welcome to the program' messages,' Stewart told us."
Welcome Messages Get Highest Open Rates of All Email Campaigns: How to Improve Yours Posted by: DTB at 9:15 PM  |  Permalink