The confirm link is automatically inserted into your confirm message, and is unique for each subscriber. There’s no need or way for you to manually add it.

When someone clicks the confirm link, they’ll be redirected through it (confirming their signup) to your Confirmation Success Page.

Leslie,

Excellent point - the word "subscription" (like many others) carries different meanings for some people.

I have talked to customers in the past who said that recipients in such-and-such country - I don’t recall which off the top of my head - associate "subscription" strictly with something they get on a paid-for basis. For some of us, it might be better to replace "subscription" with "free membership" or something of that nature.

I’m a big believer in creative thinking and implementing those strategies all the time and it really shows worthwhile results.

The examples of thank you pages using nice big old screen shots with big fat arrows and so on are excellent. I’m currently using something simpler, but I’ll change it over asap. (Maybe I’m just a sucker for big fat red arrows! Seriously, though… if you SHOW people exactly what to DO, the chances are better that they will.)

Another issue that came up for me recently and one I thought worth mentioning here is the actual message you send out to ask for the subscription.

I set up a new list last week and set the "Please confirm" message (lazily, I guess) to "Please your subscription to…."

This is on a survey. The old "Fill out the survey and I’ll send you a free copy of the product once it’s done" deal.

Someone emailed me back (despite having a Thank You Page that explains what’s about to happen) saying (and I quote):

>>
>> I did not order a subscription.
>> cancel it.
>> i repeat cancel it.
>>

I responded thus:

>> Hi there [name]
>>
>> Fear not. There is no subscription in the
>> sense that you’re obviously thinking.
>> There is nothing to buy and you will not
>> be billed for anything.
>>
>> Clearly I need to change "Confirm your
>> subscription" in my mailing list settings
>> to "Confirm your request for information"
>> or something like that.
>>
>> My records indicate that..

And then I went on to remind them that they’d filled out the survey on my site and that I would send them a free copy of the product, but I needed a way to contact them in order to do so, etc.

Clear lesson in that, methinks. Hope it’s useful to you and not just me raving away here! ;-P

Also, re: Amber’s comment about people emailing you back and saying "I confirm" or "You have my permission" and so on… yep, that’s happened to me, too–despite having a thank you page that I think is pretty clear.

If that sort of thing IS happening, though, it clearly cannot be as clear as I think. Which brings me back to the big fat red arrows.

Thanks, Shelley, for the great example!

Leslie

P.S.

@Christine. Everything you ever wanted to know about HTML, CSS, etc can be found (for free!) at http://www.w3schools.com

@Aaron: Will test your script soon. Cheers!

Another way to get rid of the "confirm" message is to have them visit ANY download page. Pretty all my "subscribe then download" pages write the cookie to "1", so in most cases even people using multiple computers will eventually get the right cookie.

But still, it’s not perfect.

Another way to do it would be to save the submitted email along with its subscribe status in a MySQL file, but that has far more headaches (and privacy issues) than using a local cookie.

Thanks again for the script, but I’ve run into an interesting issue. I’d set this up for one of our clients a week ago. Yesterday, I got an email from the client saying that they had confirmed their subscription but was still seeing the "confirm your email" box.

They checked the cookie, and they still had the cookie value set to 2 — signed up but unconfirmed.

I was speaking to the client today, and it turns out that he had signed up for his opt-in while at work, and then confirmed on his home computer.

So just a heads up to everybody who’s using the cookie script. Although it’ll probably be a small percentage of users, some people will opt-in on one computer, then confirm on another. After they confirm, they’ll still see the reminder message if they go back to the site on the computer they used to sign up.

This isn’t a huge deal though. If you followed Aaron’s instructions to the tee, the first cookie expires after 1 week anyway so the "confirmation reminder" will disappear later after the cookie expires…

I just "stumbled over" Justin’s blog on day, and have tracked it every so often ever since

Anyway, I can see from the above comments that I have had the same hassle as Ryan, and I followed Kayleens advice to setting up my thank you page. (Thanks Kayleen for simplifying things! Much appreciated)

I then entered the url of my uploaded page there where Kayleen described in the box next to the words "Thank You" and then put the same url in the box where it says "Confirmation Success Page", under List Settings / Verified Opt-in.

BUT…. what link do I use/where do I find the link that confirms a
subscription?

I really don’t have a clue :/ Hope someone can help and if so, please keep it simple

Thanks in advance.

I am going to make the changes today and then I’s like you all to take a look at it and give me some constructive critisism.

My site just went ‘live’ on 4/8/08 and of course I have all kinds of concerns over "Did I do it right? Does it look ok? Does it flow right? How can I improve it?".

I am hoping you can all help me.

I will post all info later after I tweak it today

Ryan how did you go?

To make the first’thank you page’…….

You need to go into your admin and do the following:
Select: List settings > web Form (wait for it to load up then click next.
Then on the (1.Form Details) part put the URL to your uploaded page in the box next to the words Thank You.

To make the ‘thank you for subscribing page’……

Go to List settings > Verified Opt-in
Put the URL in the box next to where it says ‘Confirmation Success page’

I hope that helps