How Can I Improve My Confirmation Rate?

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How Can I Improve My Confirmation Rate?

Confirmed opt-in is the single best way to protect your list against against unwarranted SPAM complaints, malicious sign ups to your list, and it helps to keep the unsubscribe rate low on your list.

Inevitably, there will be some people who sign up and do not confirm their subscriptions.

Consider that right off the bat, on average 10-15% of all email addresses entered into a sign up form are bogus in a mix of full mailboxes, false addresses, typos, and so on.

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.

Is There Anything I Can Do?

Yes! There are several steps you can take to improve your confirm rate:

Optimize Your Thank You Page

After your subscribers submit their information in your form, they are taken to your Thank You page.

On this page, you should:

Tell them what's going to happen next

Provide clear instructions on what they need to do in order to complete their signup.

To get the best confirm rate possible, you must remove all uncertainty from your subscribers' minds, and walk them through the confirmation.

What Can I Do Specifically To Achieve This?

First of all, explain to them that they will receive a message prompting them to confirm.

You don't have to use the phrase confirm your subscription. You can use other ones like complete your registration or activate your membership. Use wording that's appropriate for your subscribers. See our blog for more on this topic.

Show people what the message is going to say. You can even use pictures and even video to show the message to subscribers and explain what exactly they must do! Our own testing on this led us to implement video on several of our own Thank You pages.

A Note on Free Downloads

If you're offering a free download, such as an ebook or whitepaper...

Do Not Put It Directly On Your Thank You Page!

Require subscribers to confirm in order to receive it. Otherwise, why would they confirm once they have the download?

Read more on this topic on our blog.

Your Confirm Message Text

In addition to your Thank You page, you need to optimize your confirm message.

The message should:

Reinforce what you said on your Thank You page

Explain what needs to be done to confirm

Remember that even if you tell them to on your Thank You page, subscribers may not check their email immediately after signing up.

Your confirm message should be clearly worded - if someone sees it hours after signing up (by which time they have other things on their mind), will they would understand who you are, what the message is about and what they need to do?

Something Else To Keep In Mind

Who the message is coming from can make a difference in whether or not subscribers confirm.

If people are signing up on your website, make your "from" email address one at that domain (for example, when people sign up for our Test Drive at http://www.aweber.com, the emails they receive come from help@aweber.com).

This helps subscribers recognize the confirm message as coming from you. If at all possible, avoid using a free email address such as one at Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL or Gmail (check out our blog for a discussion of why).