A colleague recently forwarded me the interesting results of a new email marketing survey conducted by Internet Retailer. Not surprisingly, the survey reveals that retail email continues to represent a great value proposition for marketers.

The survey was mailed in early August to subscribers of Internet Retailer magazine's e-newsletter, IRNewsLink. Of the more than 400 online retailers that responded, 73 percent said they spend 5 percent or less of their marketing budget on email marketing. Yet more than half said 6 percent or more of their sales come from email marketing, and more than 25 percent said they get more than 11 percent of their sales from email marketing.

Retail email marketers appear to be doing a good job with relevance as well, reporting strong overall open and click-through rates, and significantly higher conversion rates compared to a year ago. While nearly a third reported no change in email sales conversion rates this year compared to last, 20 percent said sales had improved by 5 percent, and 7 percent said sales had increased by more than 10 percent as a result of better email marketing.

Most respondents (57 percent) have opt-in lists of fewer than 50,000 names, although 10 percent have lists of more than 1 million names. Nearly all (92 percent) said they expected to increase the size of their opt-in lists within the next year. And nearly half of those said they planned to grow their lists by as much as 50 percent or more. They also anticipate conducting more frequent, but segmented, email campaigns. Judging by these results, online retailers have a lot to look forward to as they move their email marketing programs forward in the coming year.