Single Opt-in vs Double Opt-in E-mail Marketing Lists
As an Internet Marketer you should have an email list to help you follow up with customers and subscribers. We assume you do. If you don’t have an email list you need to create one. (You may want to read our article: “Website Lists Are Essential to Maximize Your Internet Income.“) Which type of list should you have? Single opt-in or Double Opt-in is the question. Each has its benefits and drawbacks:
Single Opt-in:
Benefits:
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Simple process to sign-up by completing a form provided by you to include nothing more than their email address.
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Can ask for additional information such as a user name.
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Assumed to be one of the quickest ways to build a list.
Drawbacks:
- Never sure if subscribers are sincere.
- Lower credibility about subscriber’s email address.
- Receiving subscriptions from malevolent individuals:
- Towards others
- Towards you or your website
- Greater risk of being accused of SPAMMING.
Double Opt-in:
Benefits:
- Requires subscribers to take a second or verifying–confirming– action.
- Greater assumption of validity of subscriber’s intent to receive your information . . . they have shown some specific interest in what you have to offer.
- Assumed to be the best method of building a “quality” list.
- Eliminates malevolent subscribers because they need to respond to a confirmation email sent to the email address provided at the time of subscribing.
- Verifies valid emails–problems with misspelled addresses, etc.
- Generally it reduces being accused of SPAMMING, but those users bent on SPAMMING are finding ways around this double opt-in process.
- You have confirmed information about who subscribed, their email address, along with the date and time they subscribed–valuable data should you receive a SPAM complaint.
Drawbacks:
- Some subscribers don’t like the added opt-in confirmation step.
- Confirmation email can go directly to a subscriber’s SPAM box.
- Subscriber fails to read the confirmation emails instructions.
- You may irritate some subscribers because they have the confirmation step, and may chose to not respond.
- Unwittingly, some subscribers may respond with a notation they are not interested. If you are not “hand screening” these confirmations, and those using an autoresponder service don’t, they’ll be missed and added to the list because they responded.
A clean quality list of interested subscribers is your ultimate goal. Which of the two opt-in methods you chose is up to you. We favor the double opt-in method for obvious reasons.
In our list building efforts we have chosen to use the benefits of using an autoresponder service. There are several available. The preferred autoresponse provider we have chosen because of their willingness to allow the input from outside list builders–like ListCrew, is Autoresponseplus .
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