single opt in Archives - RocketResponder

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When it comes to using email marketing software then there is always a choice to make over how you build your list.

There are generally two options – whether to use single or double opt in – and this relates to how your subscribers are added to your list.

Email marketing opt in options are basically very straightforward but they can also be surprisingly controversial.

Some people insist that one is better than the other and in fact RocketResponder is very much on the side of the double-opt in camp. (We will explain exactly why later.)

However let’s not get ahead of ourselves in this story of optin email marketing…let’s explain the difference between both methods first.

When you use email marketing software to communicate with your subscribers via email then you will need their permission to do so in order to avoid anti-spam regulations.

This makes sense because it is not really an totally ethical thing to send emails to people who don’t want to hear from you.

The permission is given when your subscribers voluntarily give you their email addresses and indicate that they want you to communicate with them via email.

Single optin email marketing means that as soon as a valid email address is added to your email marketing software then you can begin sending out emails right away.

There is no problem here if the email address owner is the person who signed up to join your list.

However the danger with this method is that it is open to abuse from malicious people who simply know the email addresses of other people and want to cause mischief.

So if Katie is upset with Jon she might sign him up to a whole host of email lists so that he is inundated with emails from lots of people he has no interest in communicating with.

In this case there is no permission but the owner of the email list will have no idea that this is the case.

This is the major flaw in single opt-in systems and is one of the reasons why RocketResponder does not recommend single opt in for users.

Double optin email marketing adds an extra layer of security to protect the owner of the email address.

In this situation the email address is not made “live” by the email marketing software until it is confirmed by the owner.

This works by automatically sending an confirmation email to the address which just joined the list and asking the owner to click a link to confirm that they really do want to receive emails.

Only once the confirmation has been granted will the address be unlocked to allow any further emails to be sent.

This extra layer of protection will mean that it takes longer to build lists because some people will sign up to receive emails but never go on to confirm their subscription.

At RocketResponder we do not see this as a problem – if the person is not even interested to confirm their interest then they are most unlikely not to want to hear from you anyway.

In addition the extra level of protection to subscribers offered by double optin email marketing is why we insist on this method for all our account holders.

Quality

Quality matters when it comes to listbuilding and at RocketResponder we strongly believe this to be true.

We don’t believe in the rather outdated concept that says you just pile as many people onto your list as you possibly can in the hope that if you send them enough marketing emails that some will eventually bite.

Not only is it not very clever marketing, but neither is it very effective and you will just end up unnecessarily annoying a lot of people for no good reason.

To everyone who enters the world of listbuilding there is a question which always must be answered…should I go for single or double opt in when it comes to getting subscribers.

Single opt in is where someone enters an email address and as soon as that happens the email address is automatically added to your list.

Double opt in is where someone enters an email address and it is only added to your list when the owner of that address clicks a link in an email to confirm that they actually want to be on your list.

The first, without doubt, will allow you to build your list faster than the second which is slower, but which, arguably, will give you a much higher quality list.

Think of it like this. It is so easy to get hold of someone’s email address and sign that person up to a list – with single opt in the owner of that email address is on your list whether or not they wanted to be on it in the first place.

With single opt in, you as a list owner, have no way of knowing whether anyone at all on your list actually wanted to be on it.

Even if someone did sign up for your list with a single opt in process, it is difficult to determine how interested they are in what you are promoting. The person who really wants to hear from you cannot be differentiated from the person who signed up to your list by mistake.

With double opt in you are asking people to actually take some positive action to say “Yes I really do want to be on this list and receive email communication from the person who owns it.”

I can guarantee that with double opt in you will regularly get people who sign up for the list but then never get around to clicking on the email to confirm their interest.

This can be really frustrating but it need not be. Look at is this way – if the person cannot even be bothered to confirm their interest then they probably have little or on interest in anything you have to say or any goods or services you might want them to buy.

At RocketResponder our message is simple – there is nothing to fear from double opt-in and by getting people to take one extra step to join your list means you are building a higher quality list.

The higher quality should translate into more engagement and higher conversions and that, after all, is what listbuilding is all about.

Tag: single opt in

Email Marketing Opt In Options Explained and Analyzed