Last month, we talked about the email subscribers you don’t want and how to prevent them from signing up to your list. Now, it’s time to think about how to get and keep the subscribers you DO want. To help us with this, we talked to Johhn Four from Gamer Lifestyle. He left some impressive [...]

Just two years after the launch of Social Media Examiner, founder Michael Stelzner has plenty to be proud of. He runs one of the world’s top business blogs, with an email list of more than 124,000 and growing, plus over 450,000 visitors per day. He also recently published his latest book, Launch: How to Quickly [...]

What would it be like to be on Batman’s mailing list? What would happen if the Joker stole his list? We spend a lot of time pointing out what real email marketers are doing, but we never consider our fictional superheroes. Find out how we think superheroes (and their arch enemies!) would fare in the [...]

Email marketing tactics and food have a few things in common. There’s the good, the bad, and the people that try to make the bad look good for you.

The food industry has resources like the Eat This, Not That book to guide you, but what about email marketing? With all the different tactics out there, it’s hard to know what will help you and what will hurt you.

That will be changing today with AWeber’s “Do This, Not That” approach to Email Marketing.

We’ll kick it off with some of the worst list management mistakes that could be hurting your email deliverability, and what you should be doing instead.

Send Only to Those Who Requested Your Information

What this is: You cannot did NOT request YOUR information, and you don’t even know how their email addresses were originally obtained. You’d be spamming them.

Another danger is obtaining stale or invalid email addresses. Your message may be filtered because of this, reducing your deliverability rate.

Do this instead:

• Build your list organically.
  You can put up a web form on your website so subscribers can sign up if they want to be on your mailing list. You can also include links to sign up on social media sites like Facebook. And don’t forget if you have a store to include a sign up sheet at the register!

Check out how we invite people to subscribe on Facebook:

Don’t Assume Permission- Ask For It!

What this is: Subscribers skip the confirmation message and just start getting your emails.

There are some worries that confirmed opt-in makes the sign up process harder for the subscriber. But if you don’t have confirmed opt in on, you run the risk of again getting bad email addresses on your list. You’ll also open yourself up to more spam complaints, and subscribers who aren’t as interested in your company.

Do this instead:

• Send a customized confirmation message.
  Set up a customized confirmation that explains to subscribers what’s going on. You’ll have a list of subscribers who want your information and are much less likely to complain.

Here’s what a good confirmation message looks like:

Don’t Ignore Your Complaint Rate

What this is: A complaint is recorded when a subscriber marks one of your broadcast messages as spam.

A subscriber who complains will be automatically unsubscribed from your list in AWeber, which may lead to an “out of sight, out of mind” mentality. However, consistent complaints hurt your reputation and your deliverability rate will go down.

Occasional complaints may be inevitable, but that’s never an excuse to look into what you could be doing better.

Do this instead:

• Make sure you are properly setting expectations.
  Does your web form clearly state what they are signing up for? Do you have a welcome message that details your email plans? You can lower your complaint rate by ensuring subscribers know what they will be getting from you and how often you will be sending them messages.

Here’s an example of a form that sets expectations:

Don’t Push Down the Unsubscribe Link

What this is: Using space or unnecessary text to push down the unsubscribe link. This makes the unsubscribe link hard to find.

If subscribers want to leave your list, you should let them! Otherwise you will run into spam complaints which can hurt your reputation and deliverability.

It will also mean your list contains subscribers who aren’t really interested in your emails. If they’re not interested, they won’t be interacting with your emails.

Don’t fall for the idea subscribers may “accidentally unsubscribe”. It’s not going to happen. The unsubscribe link takes subscribers to a new page where they will need to actually choose the unsubscribe option. Hiding the link is just not worth the risk.

Do this instead:

• Put a link to unsubscribe at the TOP of your message.
  Including some text such as “If you no longer wish to receive these emails, please click here to unsubscribe” is a much better approach. Subscribers will appreciate that you respect their time and attention.

Here’s what it can look like:

Coming Up Next: The “Do This! (Not That)” Approach to Creating Emails

In the next part of the series, you’ll learn the worst mistakes you can make when creating and sending emails. Find out if you’re doing one of these mistakes, and what you can do to fix it!

Want Us To Tell You When The Next Email In This Series Is Online?

Fill out the form below to join our blog newsletter and we’ll drop you a line when the next part of the “Do This, Not That” series is online.

We’ll also periodically send you the other email marketing tips we publish here. The blog newsletter goes out twice per week.

Naturally, as a permission-based email marketing company, we respect your privacy.

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You hear it’s part of “best practices” in email marketing. ISPs refer to it as an “industry standard”. It can also help you avoid blocklists and increase deliverability. It’s called “confirmed opt-in”.

Using confirmed opt-in helps ensure you have real subscribers who are interested in what you’re offering. The stumbling block for most people is creating a confirmation message that gets the subscriber to confirm.

The confirmation is a crucial step in the subscriber sign up process. To help you out, we have a couple of examples that demonstrate how you can approach this.

Where the Confirmation Message Fits In

The confirmation message is sent immediately after a subscriber is added to your list. Once it’s sent, the subscriber needs to:

1. Open the message. If the subscriber doesn’t open the email, they won’t get the link to confirm. Make sure you have a customized subject line that will let your subscriber know they need to take action.

2. Click to confirm. If the subscriber doesn’t click on the confirmation link, they won’t be able to receive any more messages.

Customized Confirmation Messages You Can Learn From

Confirmation Message: Moving subscribers into a new list

If you have a list of subscribers you have already been in contact with, you will need to import them in your new list. The subscribers will need to confirm to remain on your list, so your confirmation message could look something like Science North’s:

What should I do if I’m adding a list of my current subscribers?

• Be open with your subscribers. Explain why they are getting a confirmation message, especially if they were unaware a move was going to happen. Marketing transparently will build subscribers’ trust in you.
• Emphasize that if they still want to be on your list, they will need to confirm. If they’re still a subscriber, they’re most likely still enjoying your emails. Make sure they realize they need to take action.

Confirmation Message: Subscribers coming in from web form

If subscribers are going to your site and filling out a form, your confirmation message could look something like The Bee Folks’:

What should I do for subscribers coming in through my form?

• Ensure they realize they requested this information. Make sure your from name matches what is on the site so the subscriber can easily recognize your message.
• Get their interest so they want to confirm. You can encourage them to confirm by reminding them of the incentive or content you promised them.

Another Way to Optimize the Confirmation Process

You’ve customized the confirmation message, but the sign-up process is still not as smooth as you’d like. Back up a bit, and look at what the subscriber will see before the confirmation message: your thank you page.

After the subscriber fills out the web form, they’re immediately directed to a thank you page. You can make this page a custom page with detailed instructions.

Use the thank you page to:

• add you to their address book.
• Show what the confirmation message will look like and point out what they’ll need to click. This can be done by taking a screen shot and using an image editing program like Skitch or GIMP to mark up the image.

You also have the option to use the Smart Video Thank You Page. This is an AWeber-hosted page that’s customized with your logo and plays a video with an example of how your confirmation message may look to your subscriber in their inbox.

How Do You Get People to Confirm?

What have you done to your confirmation message and sign up process to ensure subscribers know what to do and are compelled to take action?

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In the many discussions I’ve had about Confirmed Opt-In, and why it’s key for anyone doing email marketing, there’s one point I’ve found many people just don’t believe:

When you run your campaigns as single opt-in, you run the risk of people or scripts maliciously signing up other people’s email addresses to your list – meaning you’re spamming them.

Unintentionally, yes, but it’s still spamming, because that person who you’re now emailing never signed himself/herself up to your list.

For many people, the idea that someone would use their signup form to sign up someone else’s email address just makes no sense.

Well, you’re right – it doesn’t make sense.

But it happens, sometimes on a grand scale.

Spamza: How One Site Created A Lot of Spam Problems for Single Opt-In Email Campaigns

Recently, email marketers had a scare thrown into them by the website Spamza.com.

Spamza promoted itself as a site that allowed people to “spam their enemies” by entering an email address into a web form.

Spamza then took the email addresses entered and subscribed them to hundreds of email newsletters.

Yikes.

Spamza is no longer online (although they are apparently looking for new hosting), but you can see a screenshot of their homepage below (click for full-size version).

Scary Stuff – If You Run a Single Opt-In List

What if your email newsletter were one of the ones Spamza signed addresses up to?

Well, if you were running your campaign using Confirmed Opt-In, anyone added to the Spamza form would get your confirm email. The owners of those addresses would either delete that individual message or mark it as spam. And that would be the end of it.

If, on the other hand, you were using single opt-in, you’d have quite a problem on your hands.

• Your list size would be artificially inflated with uninterested subscribers – lowering your click and open rates
• Your subsequent email newsletters would get more complaints as the owners of the addresses added to your list started marking your messages as spam.
• You could show up on URL blacklists (based on links that appear in your messages) – meaning future emails with your website in them could be blocked, even if they were sent by other people (like your affiliates) or if they were transactional messages (like payment notifications or responses to customer support tickets).
• Perhaps worst of all, your target audience could label you as a spammer (which could lead them to persuade others not to do business with you, online or offline).

“Sure – But I Use Single Opt-In, And I Wasn’t Affected. That Stuff Just Won’t Happen To Me.”

I hope not – and I mean that sincerely. I don’t want to see any of that stuff listed above happen to you.

But is hoping that it won’t happen to you really a prudent way to run your business?

Anne Mitchell, founder of email accreditation firm ISIPP, had this to say:

[E]ven if it isn’t Spamza – in fact, even if it isn’t a targeted effort – people enter the wrong email addresses in web sign-up forms all the time. Sometimes it’s by accident (they typo their own email address and the result is someone else’s email address), but often it’s on purpose.

The fact is, malicious subscriptions are quite real, and if you’re not confirming subscribers, your email deliverability could be threatened by a script like Spamza’s.

More Coverage Of Spamza

1. ZDNet
2. Word To The Wise

It’s a weird, wild Internet we do business on. Better to protect yourself than to run the risk of some knucklehead taking advantage of your single opt-in signup process.

(If you’re still on the fence about confirming your subscribers, check out these common Confirmed Opt-In Myths.)

Would you spend money on pay-per-click ads (i.e. Google Adwords) and not bother to optimize your landing page content?

What about the price of your product, or incentives you use to build urgency — they affect your conversion rate, so you probably test them, right?

Now… what about your confirm rate? If you could do something to influence the percentage of people who confirm their signups to your email campaign, you would… wouldn’t you?

I recently came across an AWeber user who was frustrated with his confirm rate. As I talked with him, I realized that a lot of you may be missing the same opportunities to get more of your website visitors to confirm.

A Quick Word on Confirm Rates

Confirm rates, while they’ll never be 100% (nor should they be), can actually get quite high. It’s not at all unreasonable to shoot for a confirm rate greater than 75%.

On To The Example — Stuart and His Web 2.0 Videos

Getting subscribers to confirm is just like any other part of your marketing process — it can and should be tested/tweaked.

I was on Twitter the other day and saw a comment from AWeber user Stuart, who helps people learn to build web 2.0 applications through a series of video lessons.

He builds his list with an offer of sample videos, and he requires people to confirm to get the videos (a great idea, by the way). Still, he was wondering why his confirm rate wasn’t higher.

I got in touch with him and took a look at his signup process. Immediately, a few things he could do to get more subscribers to confirm jumped out at me.

Like many people, he simply hadn’t put enough attention into making his confirm process a good subscriber experience.

Recommendations To Stuart To Improve His Confirm Rate

Below is a link to view the email I sent Stuart, verbatim. That way, you can see exactly what types of tactics you can use to max out your own confirm rate:

Read The Suggestions

You’ll see that while many of them are relatively simple tactics, they’re exactly the sort of ideas that you may have overlooked in your own confirm process.

How Does Your Confirm Process Look Lately?

How good are your thank you page and confirm email at getting subscribers to complete their signup?

As you read that email, did you see places where you could apply those concepts to your own email marketing campaign?

What are you doing to max out your confirm rate?

Share your ideas below so we can all benefit!

Confirmed opt-in as defined by SpamHaus, who is one of the most respected anti spam organizations in the world:

Known as “COI” in the legitimate bulk email industry, also known as “Confirmed Opt-in”, “Verified Opt-in” or sometimes “Double Opt-in”.

With Closed-Loop Opt-in the Recipient has verifiably confirmed permission for the address to be included on the specific mailing list, by confirming (responding to) the list subscription request verification. This is the standard practice for all responsible Internet mailing lists, it ensures users are properly subscribed, from a working address, and with the address owner’s consent.

In the event of “spam” accusation:

The Bulk Email Sender is fully and legally protected because the reply to the Subscription Confirmation Request received back from the recipient proves that the recipient did in fact opt-in and grant verifiable consent for the mailings.

Source:Spamhaus Website

Numerous myths have circulated regarding confirmed opt-in and its effects. There are many misconceptions out there, and we’d like to help clear those up.

Myth 1: My List Size Will Decrease Because Of Confirmed Opt-In.

Some addresses entered into your form will not confirm — that much is true. The percentage of addresses that don’t confirm depends on many factors, including the quality of your traffic and how effective your thank-you page, confirmation message and incentive for confirming are.

Percentages aside, there are compelling reasons that having fewer addresses on your list is a good thing.

Sometimes Less is Better

I know. You may be asking, “How can a decreased list size be a good thing?” Well, let’s consider:

5-20% of all web form submissions are undeliverable right off the bat.

This means that of your total list size you can cut that by 5-20% because these email addresses are simply dead. Remember these are not temporary undeliverable but permanent dead addresses.

Now, add on the bogus and malicious sign ups that undoubtedly will happen. For example, someone comes to your website and decides to put in bob@aol.com. Well, bob@aol.com was once a real email address and because you were not using confirmed opt-in you are now classified as an unintentional spammer.

A recent study by MarketingSherpa and KnowledgeStorm found that only 68% of users always enter a valid email address.

So, nearly a third of respondents knowingly enter bogus email addresses.

- Source

ISPs do not differentiate between unintentional spammers or actual spammers. The potential for you to be blocked or even worse, blacklisted, remains the same.

Myth 2: My Mailing List Is Different! I Don’t Need Confirmed Opt-In.

Let’s be clear, confirmed opt-in is for all businesses, plain and simple. Anyone collecting subscribers and in turn sending email needs to confirm that those people intended to sign up to your mailing list and want to receive your email.

In this age of email regulations and massive volumes of spam email, deliverability can be an issue. Why increase your chances of not getting delivered by putting yourself at risk.

Myth 3: No One Else Uses Confirmed Opt-In. Why Should I?

This is simply not accurate. Our own campaigns here at AWeber use confirmed opt-in for all email marketing activities. When someone signs up for a Test Drive of AWeber, they must confirm.

After setting up an account, if they want to receive our customer training email course, they must confirm. The same goes for our affiliates and their email training. Even when someone subscribes to our blog, they must confirm.

Ok, but AWeber must practice what they preach, who else?

If you want to sign up for the mailing lists of these organizations you will need to first confirm:

CNN	Microsoft
Oprah, CNet	bellagio.com
IRS.gov	weather.com
ign.com	maxim.com
tgifridays.com	olivegarden.com
pbs.org	visitpa.com
Whitehouse.gov

The list goes on and on…

Myth 4: Subscribers In My Market Don’t Know How To Confirm.

The simple solution is to tell them. The first page after someone fills in an opt-in form, commonly called a “thank you page” should tell the visitor exactly what to do next. Often this is done most effectively with a picture showing visitors what the confirmation email will look like.

An excellent example is our test drive sign up video on the thank you page showing visitors what to do.

Honestly, if they can’t click a link then you probably should be marketing your business offline. If someone can find your website online I guarantee they can click a link.

Myth 5: My Sales Will Decrease Because Of Confirmed Opt-In.

Have you tested this assumption? The answer is always, “No, but I just assume” or “No, my colleague told me it would hurt sales”.

It’s best not to assume anything, but rather to seek out your own answers by testing and observing your own campaigns. We have found from our own testing that while the raw number of email addresses on our list declined when we switched to confirmed opt-in, sales did not.

This means that the people who did confirm were the ones that truly wanted the information that they had to offer and the ones that didn’t were not left to bloat the mailing list.

Grow Your Business Without Risk

Will your results be exactly the same as AWeber or even anyone else? This can only be determined by proper testing and measuring.

Use confirmed opt-in as an opportunity to make sure that your lists are 100% clean and that you know without a doubt that 100% of the people receiving your mail have specifically requested it themselves.

Spend your time and energy building your business with subscribers who want to hear from you rather than dealing with issues created by people who don’t want to hear from you.

Free Video from Our Confirmed Opt-in Seminar

Ready to optimize your Confirmed Opt-In process?

Join our Education Team for a recording of a recent live seminar for a demonstration of what you need to know to maximize the number of responsive subscribers on your list.

Watch the Confirmed Opt-in Seminar Video

If you’ve ever spoken with anyone here at AWeber about what you can do to maximize your email deliverability, you’ve probably heard us say “use Confirmed Opt-In.”

While it’s certainly not the only thing you can and should do (check out our Email Deliverability Guide for more tips), it’s a best practice that clearly correlates to more email getting to the inbox.

And as time goes on, it’s become less of a suggested best practice, and more of an ISP requirement.

Just ask Yahoo!

Yahoo! “Recommends” Confirmed Opt-In

A recent post on Tamara’s BeRelevant! blog addresses the divide between what email marketing practices are “legal” and what practices actually get your email delivered.

First up on the list of ISP recommendations (and bear in mind, when an ISP recommends you do something, it’s a pretty good bet that your deliverability will depend partly on whether you do it)?

Confirmed Opt-In.

From Yahoo’s Postmaster area:

Now, that’s not the only recommendation on the page (for example, they also talk about things like keeping your message content relevant to what subscribers signed up for), but the fact that they place Confirmed Opt-In at the top of their list of recommendations speaks volumes about how important its use is.

It’s also worth noting that Yahoo! isn’t the only ISP that recommends this. Others do too — for example, Gmail outlines it directly on their site, while Microsoft advises that senders “comply with industry standards” (among which they include Confirmed Opt-In).

Learn More About Confirmed Opt-In

Head over to our Knowledge Base for more on why Confirmed Opt-In is a key to good deliverability.

Or join us for a free live video seminar:

Protect Your Business & Maximize Results Using Confirmed Opt-in

• Thursday, December 13, 2007
• 12:00 – 1:00PM Eastern Time

Not on Eastern Time? Click Here.
What does this seminar cover?

For more email marketing advice, check out Tamara’s BeRelevant! blog — she aggregates anticles and tips from numerous sources, and it’s a resource that several of us here at AWeber read regularly.

Over the past few weeks I’ve come across a lot of businesses talking about migrating their email marketing campaigns — either from in-house systems to hosted solutions (such as AWeber), or between hosted solutions.

Once you’ve decided that it’s time to upgrade your mailing capabilities, it’s tempting to focus on doing so quickly. After all, if you’re unhappy with an email system, why would you want to spend any more time at all using it?

Today, I want to highlight a common mistake that we see businesses make as they migrate their lists:

They Don’t Tell Subscribers What’s Going On

Too often, I see businesses so eager to drop an email service or software, so eager to cut ties and move on, that they cancel their account or uninstall the software before they’ve even begun to migrate subscribers over to us.

I guess I can understand this — you want to get away from using that system and you’re forcing yourself to move forward — but I don’t agree with it.

Here’s why: that other system can help make your migration easier. By keeping that line of communication open just a bit longer, and letting them know about the migration, you can do two things:

1. Help Subscribers Continue Their Subscription

When your subscribers are migrated to AWeber, they’ll need to confirm their subscriptions.¹

Let your readers know about that confirm email — the more “in the know” they are about what’s going to happen and what they need to do, the better your confirm rate will be.

We recommend letting letting them know at least twice before you make the move, say 1-2 weeks before and again 1-2 days before.

In these emails, tell subscribers why you’re moving, approximately when they’ll get the confirm email, what the subject of it will be, and what they need to do (click the confirm link). That way, they have all the information they need to decide whether they want to keep reading (and if they don’t? Let them go.)

2. Sustain and Build Trust and Credibility

In addition to making sure your engaged subscribers make the move with you, keeping them informed helps by showing them that you regard them as people, not anonymous email addresses.

When they see that you care enough about them to let them know about changes/improvements that you’re making to your emails, their view of you and your business is reinforced (or improved, if it was in need of improving).

Learn More About Migrating Lists at our Confirmed Opt-In Seminar

Next week, our Education Team is hosting a free one-hour seminar on how you can effectively use Confirmed Opt-In to grow your business while maximizing your email deliverability.

We’ll be going into more detail on how you can maximize your confirm rates when:

Migrating Lists

Collecting Subscribers Offline

Building a List Through Web Form Signups

Protect Your Business & Maximize Results Using Confirmed Opt-in

• Thursday, December 13, 2007
• 12:00 – 1:00PM Eastern Time

Not on Eastern Time? Click Here.
What does this seminar cover?