Improve Deliverability & Open Rates With a Double Opt-In Process

Details

Have you got a subscription form on your website? Or maybe people might need to key in an email address on your website to receive additional information on a topic? If you have something like this in place, have you considered how incorrect data submitted through your form might hurt your marketing?

Here are a few examples of how this may effect your marketing:

• Someone might simply make a typo when entering their email address. A simple mistake but one that can hurt your marketing stats.
• Someone might decide to key in an incorrect email address. It is not nice but unfortunately this does happen and if that incorrect email address happens to be owned by someone, that person may submit a spam complaint which would not be very good at all.

To prevent situations such as the above from effecting your marketing, we recommend for you to set up a double opt-in process so to verify the email address is indeed correct prior to sending to them.

How-to Guide

Setting up the Subscribe Form and Thank You Page

1. Select Lists & Forms from the sidebar.
2. Click the New List button.
3. Select the list type to create; in this example, we're using the Newsletters Subscribers - Basic list.
4. Choose the option to Edit List & Create Forms.
5. From here you can design your Subscription from as you desire by adding in your required fields and branding this as your own with any required colours, logos, etc. An example is provided below.
   
   

   If you already have an existing subscription form, you can use this one.

6. Save your changes when done.
7. Select the Thank You Page sub-tab for your Subscribe form.
   
8. With the design of the thank you page, be sure to add a message to let the subscribers know that a confirmation email will be sent to them shortly, so they can confirm their subscription with you. An example is provided below.
   
9. Save your changes when done.
10. Finally, select the Confirmation Page sub-tab for your Subscribe form.
    
11. With the design of the confirmation page, be sure to add a message to let the subscribers know that their subscription is now confirmed. An example is provided below.
    
12. Once complete, save your changes.

Setting up the Confirmation Email

1. Select Messages from the sidebar.
2. Click New Message to create a new one. You an use a template, or start from a blank one if you wish.
3. From here you can edit your email message as required to brand this as your own. Somewhere within your email message, you will need to add some text in the body of the email explaining that they need to click on the confirmation link to proceed with their subscription request. Enter your desired text for this, as required. An example is provided below.
   
4. Next we'll take a look at how to insert the link that your recipients need to click on to confirm their subscription. To do so, start by highlighting the text that you'd like to become linked.
5. From the floating toolbar, click the world / chain (insert link) icon to insert a link.
   

   If you have many lists in your account (and thus, many forms all with different confirmation pages), you can get our system to automatically insert the correct Confirmation URL for you. To do so, skip steps 6 - 9 below and instead simply insert this special wildcard into the URL/link field: %%confirm_url%%. This will dynamically generate the right URL for the contact & their relevant list, when the automation runs.

6. On the popup window that appears, select Web Forms.
7. Set the Link To field to Confirm Subscription Page using the dropdown menu.
8. Set the List field to be the list that contains the subscribe form that they would have subscribed to.
9. Set the Form Style to Default Style - or select the specific subscription form in this list (if you have created one just for this purpose).
10. Give your link a name so that it's easily identifiable in your reports.
11. Select the Open in new window option.
12. Click Insert Link to insert this link.
13. When done, save your message.
    
    

Configuring the Autoresponder to send the Confirmation Email

1. Select Automation form the sidebar.
2. Click New Automation.
3. Press Create next to the Create your own automation option.
4. In Step 1 of 4, you will need to set up the trigger to start this automation. For this autoresponder, set the trigger as Subscribe.
5. In Step 2 of 4, choose the List the person will subscribe to. This list will be the list you set the Subscribe Form up in at the beginning of this article.
6. In Step 3 of 4, select the message that you'd like to send when the automation triggers. This would be the Confirmation Email that you created in the previous set of instructions.
   
7. In Step 4 of 4, set when you would like this message to send. For example, Immediately.
8. When finished, click Save to save & close the autoresponder setup.

Once saved, this will automatically activate this autoresponder ready for new subscribers. If you wish to turn this off or on, at any stage this can be done by toggling the On/Off option found under the Automations menu for this.

Testing Your New Setup

1. Subscribe your own email address via your public subscription form.
2. Wait for the confirmation email to arrive, then click on the confirmation link.

Your email address will now be subscribed, and confirmed.

Sending To 'Confirmed' Contacts Only

By default, our system sends to all subscribed contacts - not just those that are 'confirmed' (a status which is set by the double opt-in process). If this is a new process for you and your team, be sure to inform all of your users that they'll need to make sure they only send to confirmed contacts.

If you use a double opt-in process for your list(s), you could also search for, then remove, unconfirmed contacts from these lists every now and then. These will be contacts that subscribed, but never completed the double opt-in process.

Search for and Send To Confirmed Contacts