Recently I was involved in a debate over the pros and cons of having people double opt in, also known as a confirmed optin, versus using the single optin method. I’ve thought about this quite a bit over the five years I have been working online, and decided to share the implications of this with you. Please read through to the end and then leave a comment to let me know which method you are using and why you prefer that particular one over the other.
This is the situation in a nutshell:
When someone visits your blog or other site your goal is to have them join your list. This is referred to as having someone opt in to your permission based list. The question that then arises is whether or not to have them confirm their name and email address, known as the double optin method, or to simply allow them to opt in without doing any further confirmation. There are arguments for and against each of these marketing methods.
With the confirmed optin your prospects must then check their email to find the message that allows them to confirm that they have indeed requested to join your list. They click on the link embedded within this email message and are then take to another page that thanks them for confirming and tells them to go back to their email account to await the next message. There are some variations with how this all can be set up, but this is the most common way I have seen it done.
The problem arises when someone forgets to check their email, or simply cannot check it because they are away from their computer or otherwise engaged. As time passes this particular email message moves further down the list, and many times your prospect will completely forget they ever signed up at your site. Another problem is that many of these messages go straight into the spam or junk folders, never to be seen again. Either way the result is the same; your prospect is not on your list and you may never see them again.
The other method allows visitors to sign up to request your information and adds them to your list. When they check their email account at a later point in time they will begin to receive regular messages from your autoresponders and broadcasts you are sending out to them. They still may miss some of these messages from time to time, but overall they will soon realize that you are writing to them.
The drawbacks with this system are that you will have difficulty moving your list to another company, should you choose to do so in the future. I have been with my same service for six years and do not foresee making any changes in the next few years. Also, someone may opt in using someone else’s name and email address, either as a prank or a joke. That has never happened to me in all these years, but it could happen and would definitely make someone very upset.
Ultimately, I believe that the single opt in system is best. You do not lose any prospects for the reasons I have mentioned here, and your list will grow much faster. You must ultimately make your own decision about this.
What are your thoughts on this topic?
Hello Connie – thanks for pointing out the benefits of the single opt in system.
I was setting up my sites with the double opt in system as it seemed that was what Aweber advocated. I did the list building challenge training last week when the presenters there advocated not using double opt in as it gave you a chance to install oto and so make more money from that visitor when they were in more of a buying frame of mind..
As a consumer I don’t like OTOs – but as it was pointed out to us on that training – when you are building a list you are doing so from a marketers point of view – not a consumer – and you still have a chance to offer value in those OTOs products
I have now set up a new site with single opt in system but when testing, I found that it was sending the email message to spam box – suppose you can warn people to look for it there and hope that they white list it so that later messages don’t get lost in spam?
As always thank you for your good advice
Moira
Based on your advice, Connie, we’re using single opt in and it’s proven easy and effective. People just get too much email, and our objective is to simply start a conversation with them.
I believe we must take the mindset that folks want to hear what we have to say, and when they ask for something, ie opt in, just send it… without asking them to jump thru hoops.
At the top of the one time offer page (the redirect after opt in), simply put as the first headline “Check your email for your DOWNLOAD link”
To me it doesn’t matter if it is a single optin or double. I have always recommend single due to the nature of people browsing the internet. Hell I even give the free gift away if they don’t want give me their email address.
Do not concern yourself too much on working out if double or single is the best option. Just focus on the buyers list because they are worth 10x more than free gift subscribers. Thats where the money is.
Great post Connie
After a lot of internal debate I recently switched to a single opt-in system. Most of the experts tell you to go with the double opt-in because it’s cleaner and you know that the people who confirm really want to be on your list. It also stops people from hitting the spam button when they forget that they signed up. I have several hundred people on my list that have never confirmed and I can never email them. It was extremely frustrating to lose a large portion of the list I was building when people didn’t bother to confirm and in the end I decided to return to single opt in. I think single opt in is fine if you are with a reputable list management company. If not, the risk of being labelled spam increases.
Thank you for these thoughtful comments on the topic of single or confirmed optin. It’s an important decision to make in your business.
Connie Ragen Green