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Single Vs Double Opt-In – E-mail Marketing List Options

An e-mail marketing list is one of the most valuable assets an Internet Marketer can have. It allows you to stay in contact with your prospects on an on-going basis. This power makes it easy to announce new websites, products, and services at a moments notice.

When it comes to setting up a brand new opt-in e-mail list, you have to make one very important decision right from the start. Do you want your list to be single opt-in or double opt-in. This can make a very significant difference in how people register for your list, and how receptive they are to any future e-mails you may send to them.

Single Opt-In vs Double Opt-In

If you are creating an e-mail list for the first time, you may not yet understand the technical differences between these two options. Here is a very quick overview.

Single Opt-In – Place a simple subscription form on your website. When a user fills out their information, they are immediately added to your list and sent to the next page on your website. There is no disruption in the sales process, but no verification of the information provided.

Double Opt-In – Place a similar subscription form on your website. When a user fills out their information, they will instantly receive a confirmation e-mail. They must click a link within that e-mail to confirm that they want to receive future mail from you. Once they click this link, they will be added to your list and continue to the next page on your website. There is some disruption, as they have to leave your website temporarily, but you have verification of their contact details.

The big debate is whether or not it is worth confirming the status of your subscribers. Some top Internet Marketers swear by single opt-in. However, more and more people are slowly starting to switch over to double opt-in, and with good reason.

Common E-mail Marketing Myths

In this tutorial, I want to tackle three important myths that often come up when comparing single and double opt-in. They have created controversy among Internet Marketers in the past, so I want to clear up some of the confusion to make the two options more clear.

• MYTH #1 – Single Opt-In Will Get More Subscribers Overall
• MYTH #2 – Double Opt-In Is For Subscribers, Not Marketers
• MYTH #3 – Single Opt-In Has Always Worked And Always Will

Many people take these myths as truth, and often choose single opt-in as a result. However, as you continue to read through this article, you will learn that double opt-in is typically the better solution for long-term success. In fact, I believe it is best for short-term success as well.

The Numbers Can Be Deceiving

People believe myth #1 because the numbers and statistics associated with both single and double opt-in can be very deceiving. The following is a screenshot of one of my double opt-in lists currently hosted on Aweber. Green represents subscribers that fully verified their status, blue represents unsubscribes, and yellow represents subscribers that remain unverified.

This is where the numbers become deceiving. Most people look at the yellow blocks and are shocked by how many prospects are failing to verify their status. However, the numbers that make up that part of the chart are not as accurate as you might think. It is easy to assume they are all lost prospects, but here is a breakdown of unverified subscribers:

1. People Enter Fake Information – This happens more often than you might think. Most single opt-in forms use an “instant” call-to-action. In other words, the button that submits the subscription form usually includes a phrase like “Click Here For Free Instant Access”. This suggests that no matter what text is in the form, users will get the bonus content simply by clicking the button. Naturally, this leads to many users typing in fake information.
2. Prospects That Mis-Type Information – Sometimes you have a visitor that tries to do the right thing, but accidentally mis-types some of their information. It happens far more often than you might think. When it does, the user doesn’t even realize that they messed up. As with people that enter fake information, this user will never receive any mail from you. It doesn’t matter if you use single or double opt-in.
3. Servers With Aggressive Spam Filters – Some e-mail providers have aggressive spam filters that block mail from coming through. They pick upon the fact that the e-mail is being sent by an automated system, and block the content before it even reaches the prospects inbox. Unfortunately, with single opt-in, the user may not even realize they were supposed to be receiving an e-mail. On the other hand, double opt-in subscribers expect to receive an e-mail, and can be given instructions to check their spam folder (opening an opportunity to reclaim subscribers that would be lost with single opt-in).
4. Confirmation Messages Get Ignored – This is the one legitimate argument against double opt-in. If someone attempts to subscribe to your newsletter, enters their information correctly, and the confirmation message makes it through their spam filter – they may still choose not to confirm their status. People that fall into this category are the only prospects that you could actually miss by using double opt-in.

With all of these options considered, you have to realize that subscribers that fall under the first three categories were never going to receive your e-mail under single opt-in or double opt-in. Prospects that fall into categories two and three are given a second chance to make it onto the list if you use double opt-in, and subscribers that fall into category four are only given another chance by follow-up messages from a single opt-in list.

Given this information, it’s fair to say that the reclaimed subscribers from categories two and three will often more than make up for any subscribers that are lost due to category four. In fact, as the next section will show, people that fall into this fourth category are typically worth dramatically less than users that verify their status when given the opportunity.

Un-Verified Subscribers Have Less Value

I recently performed a unique test to see just how many subscribers my double opt-in strategy might be driving away. This is something I strongly recommend that you do NOT try. I believe it is somewhat borderline in terms of business ethics. Many people may consider it to be a reasonable strategy (as it is basically emulating single opt-in), but I feel it is pushing the bounds a little.

Basically, I exported all of the un-verified leads from my Aweber account. These are people that attempted to subscribe to my double opt-in lists over the past 3-4 months. They wanted to be on my list, but did not complete the confirmation process. So, all of them would be on my list if I was using single opt-in.

I sent out some valuable content to encourage them to visit my website again. This was not a hard pitch, but the results speak for themselves. This should settle the case against single opt-in.

Here is exactly what happened after the e-mail was sent out to the 7,527 un-verified leads:

• Within 12 Hours – Half Of All The E-mails Bounced…
• Within 15 Hours – 60% Of All the E-mails Bounced…
• List Was Removed Before The Stats Got Worse.

This just goes to show how little value these “un-verified” leads (represented by yellow in the original chart above) were actually worth. Had I left this list intact, the bounce rate could have easily climbed to 75% within another five hours. Also note the high unsubscribe rate and the extremely low open-rate.

At the end of the day, these leads provided no value to what was a very responsive double opt-in list. In fact, here are some statistics from prospects that originally verified their subscription.

As you can see, people that actually make it onto the list are high quality subscribers. E-mails that go out to the 80,000 subscribes on it get low bounce rates, virtually no spam complaints, and get higher than average open/click rates. Moreover, less than a few hundred prospects unsubscribe from this list on a monthly basis, while literally thousands are joining during that same time frame.

Note: The “sent” statistics above are a little erratic as the broadcasts are sometimes including and other times excluding some of my other lists. This is used to target additional prospects, or to filter out customers that might have already purchased the product being pitched in the e-mail.

Examining The Pros And Cons

Single Opt-In Pros

• No Confirmation Distraction In The Sales Process

Single Opt-In Cons

• No Verification Process To Protect List Integrity
• Subscribers May Not Realize They Are On A List
• Potential To Get Blacklisted Due To Spam Complaints
• Potential To Get Blacklisted Over High Bounce Rates
• No Accurate Way To Measure True Subscriber Count
• A List At Risk Has Much Lower Long-Term Value

Double Opt-In Pros

• All Subscribers Are 100% Verified As Real People
• Spam Complaints/Reports Are Dramatically Lower
• Much Stronger Reputation Within Your Community
• Subscriber Count Is A More Accurate Measurement
• Your List Has A Dramatically Longer Life Expectancy
• You Get A Subscriber Rebate With Confirmation Page

Double Opt-In Cons

• Added Steps Can Distract In The Initial Sales Process

The Big Game Changer (Long Overdue)

Most people that use single opt-in will acknowledge that it might be banned at some point in the future. E-mails sent to single opt-in lists are often categorized as light versions of spam, as many recipients didn’t actually confirm that they wanted to receive follow-up e-mails.

Spam is a massive problem. It slows down Internet servers, clogs network servers, and can be extremely annoying to the end user. At some point, someone will come along and attempt to solve spam. One of the first steps could very easily be to ban single opt-in lists outright (on some or all major servers)

It might be the FTC, it might be a big company like Google, or it may simply be a consortium of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that decide to solve this problem. Whatever happens, it is very likely that the use of single opt-in lists will not last forever. Consider this when choosing between using single or double opt-in for your own lists.

Done with this lesson? Visit the homepage for more Internet Marketing Training tutorials.

Article Tags: conversion, e-mail, list, marketing, opt-in, tutorial