Confirmed Opt-In Protects Against Spamza and Other Malicious Sites
by Justin Premick on September 2nd, 2008In 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.
Continue reading “Confirmed Opt-In Protects Against Spamza and Other Malicious Sites”
Comments: 11
Want Subscribers to Confirm? Get Creative!
by Justin Premick on April 17th, 2008Would 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.
Continue reading “Want Subscribers to Confirm? Get Creative!”
Comments: 59
Confirmed Opt-in Myths Exposed
by Sean Cohen on December 20th, 2007Confirmed 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.
Continue reading “Confirmed Opt-in Myths Exposed”
Comments: 33
Sending to Yahoo? Confirmed Opt-In Is The Way To Go
by Justin Premick on December 7th, 2007If 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!
Continue reading “Sending to Yahoo? Confirmed Opt-In Is The Way To Go”
Comments: 12
Migrating Your List? Remember To Tell Them…
by Justin Premick on December 5th, 2007Over 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:
Continue reading “Migrating Your List? Remember To Tell Them…”
Comments: 9
How Good Can Your Confirm Rate Be?
by Justin Premick on October 19th, 2007Something a little different for Friday:
We get a lot of people asking what a “good” confirm rate is — out of everyone who signs up to your list, what proportion will open the confirm message and click on the link to activate their subscription to your list?
So, I thought I’d share some of our own results, from our own blog’s email subscribers.
Continue reading “How Good Can Your Confirm Rate Be?”
Comments: 14
Learn to Let Go
by Justin Premick on July 3rd, 2007
If I had a nickel for every time someone has asked to send a “reminder” email to unconfirmed subscribers… well, my 4th of July fireworks would already be paid for.
It’s a common temptation: email addresses are entered into your form (or imported), sent the confirmation message… and then…
Nothing. They sit there, pending. They haven’t confirmed. And it’s looking like they might not at all.
So the publisher starts thinking…
Continue reading “Learn to Let Go”
Comments: 13
Spam Buttons and Complaints
by Justin Premick on December 14th, 2006Ever gotten a spam complaint?
At AWeber, email deliverability is serious business. We and our customers take great care to manage their lists well so they can enjoy the best possible deliverability.
Even so, occasionally subscribers lodge spam complaints.
Continue reading “Spam Buttons and Complaints”
Comments: 33
Confirmed Opt-In: Help Your Subscribers Confirm
by Justin Premick on August 30th, 2006I took a support call recently where the customer was concerned about using Confirmed Opt-In with her subscribers. She remarked at one point:
“My subscribers aren’t web-savvy, and they don’t know what double opt-in means.”
She brings up a good point: language that is understood among one group of people (in this example, senders of opt-in email) may not be understood by another group (such as your subscribers).
When telling your subscribers that they need to click a link in the confirm email, your wording will affect your confirm rate.
The challenge — to explain to your subscribers what happens after they submit their email address in your signup form — sounds daunting, but it’s really quite manageable.
Continue reading “Confirmed Opt-In: Help Your Subscribers Confirm”
Comments: 20
Confirmed Opt-in Reduces Unsubscribes & Complaints.
by Tom Kulzer (AWeber CEO) on March 31st, 2004Results of a study conducted by AWeber identified that a confirmed opt-in AOL subscriber is significantly less likely to unsubscribe in the first 60 days of publication than a single opt-in subscriber.
Statistics were run on a random sampling of approximately 200 AWeber client opt-in email lists of AOL subscribers added in the past 60 days having received a similar volume of emails over that 60 day period. Each subscriber visited a client website and typed in their name and email address requesting to be added to their sales follow up process or newsletter. Since we also record and receive statistics from AOL’s “this is spam” button we included the percentage of those subscribers who also complained the messages they opted into were spam.
Continue reading “Confirmed Opt-in Reduces Unsubscribes & Complaints.”
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