On Monday, I was intrigued by a confirmation e-mail I received when I joined NewEgg.com. This e-mail, unlike others I had gotten in the past, offered a variety of clearly labeled browsing options to the new customer, including links to “My Account,” “Help and Information,” and even “E-mail Preferences.” I began to wonder what other major online retailers had improved in the field of the confirmation e-mail, and where these e-mails send new account holders for first impressions of a site. Would new customers be offered a custom landing page? Would each e-mail offer helpful links, like NewEgg had done? With this in mind, I created an e-mail account and signed up for accounts at ten major online retailers: Abercrombie and Fitch, Amazon, Best Buy, CDW, Circuit City, Staples, Gap, Target, Wal-mart, and the aforementioned NewEgg.

However, the comparisons that I had envisioned never materialized. Out of these ten, only four bothered to send out a confirmation e-mail: Best Buy, Wal-mart, Abercrombie and Fitch, and New Egg. The others, I suppose, decided that it wasn’t worth it to welcome a new customer into their store.

This is a huge mistake.

Confirmation e-mails are an important way to bring the customer back into your site and restate the value of having an account with you. They offer a sense of welcome, as well as a record that the customer has, in fact, registered. If a particularly forgetful customer gets an infuriating “an account already exists for this e-mail address” message and then search their e-mail archives frantically for a password or even proof that they registered, and there’s nothing there? The sale has been lost, as the frustrated shopper goes elsewhere to make the purchase.

Don’t waste such a valuable marketing opportunity. Always send out a confirmation e-mail to new account holders, and make sure to include the following: