Category: Email Marketing

By Brian Rooney CEO TrafficWave

Email Marketers are constantly debating the worth of single optin vs double optin when it comes to building their lists. Let’s start by understanding the difference between the two and then look at why you really want to use double optin practices to build your list.

Email Marketing Single Optin simply means that someone can enter any information in to a capture form and they are automatically subscribed and/or given access to the free ebook, software, etc… that is being offered.

Double optin means that once the form is submitted, the person will receive an email asking them to confirm their request. Typically, the confirmation is accomplished by having the subscriber click a uniquely coded link. This is the best way to make sure the people on your list WANT to be on your list and helps you stay compliant with GDPR laws about data security by receiving express consent that can be documented.

The most common argument for using the email marketing single optin method is that some email marketing practitioners believe it helps build a larger list.

The claim is that people are unlikely to take that extra step to click a confirmation link so you could end up losing out on potential prospects. In addition to the idea that single opt-in could cause you to run afoul of GDPR and other anti-spam legislation, you run the risk of building a list of non-responsive and even spoofed email addresses.

The most common argument for using the double optin method for email marketing is that email marketers want to know that the prospects they are generating are:

1) Real humans that read their emails.

2) Genuinely interested in receiving the information being offered.

Someone using the single optin method may think that they have 5,000 prospects in their database but may actually have somewhere around 3,000 because 2,000 are nothing more than junk emails, spam traps, or bots.

While 3,000 prospects is nothing to take lightly, consider that if 2,000 of those addresses are not valid, that means the ebook, software, download, etc… that was being offered has essentally been stolen if you did not ask those prospects to confirm before receiving your offer.

This is a direct quote from a discussion forum about how some folks intentionally use junk emails to get downloads and samples:

“Some sites have you provide an email, and then right after
you can download the free thing on the page.
In those cases I type in a random/fake adress.
Highly recommend if you don’t want or need the
direct to email content.”

For you, as the marketer, here is what happens:

1. You just gave your stuff away for free.
2. You can’t follow up with the prospect.
3. Your service company will charge you MORE as your list grows with addresses like these.

The only person not winning? You.

Another big issue to consider is deliverability.

If your list is cluttered with unknown or garbage email addresses, this can have a negative impact on your overall deliverability. Many email service providers will begin blocking domains that are known to repeatedly send to email addresses that don’t exist. Over time, this can result in your messages not being delivered to the real prospects that you do have. What good are those real prospects if your message can’t be delivered to them?

Some proponents of email marketing single optin hold the position that it doesn’t matter since email marketing is so inexpensive. “Why should we care if some of the email addresses in our list don’t really exist? Email marketing is so cheap anyway.”

This is a flawed perspective. Those bad email addresses could be costing you more than you realize.

Not only is your deliverability affected, meaning that your message may not be getting through to even the good email addresses, but you may be overpaying your autoresponder service provider.

AutoResponder companies like Aweber, GetResponse, Constant Contact, iContact, etc… charge on a sliding scale meaning the larger your list, the more you will pay each month.

When their system looks at your account, they see the total number of prospects. So if you have 5,000 records but only 3,000 are actually deliverable, you are paying for email addresses your message will never reach.

The idea behind using technology like autoresponders and email marketing should be to help your business increase sales while reducing expenses. Using single optin to build your email marketing lists could cost you not only in efficiency, potential legal ramifications, but also in your pocketbook.

Creating email marketing momentum is a very powerful and very simple way to make sure you are able to grow your business.

I have a FB group called I Love Thai Food. It currently has 205, 500 members.

When I first started the group I was very consistent in posting relevant content. I kept the posts on message. I did not allow others to post irrelevant content or blatantly promotional content. The members appreciated this and showed it by inviting their friends to the group.

We began to pick up momentum. Now the group increases in membership by 1000s every day. Momentum is a powerful thing.

But sales, though they increased, they climbed slowly.

I had set up an email campaign in TrafficWave which would weekly send out a new recipe to the subscriber list. But I was not driving traffic to my Thai Food Capture Page consistently.

So for the past 2 months I have been posting content to my FB group and inviting them to get more recipes using my Landing Capture Page.

I started getting about 6 new subscribers every day to my email list. Those subscribers were getting good content, good recipes. Then they began telling their friends to sign up for my email recipes. They began saying how good the recipes were. They began posting things like, “for the first time I made a Thai dish and it was so easy using George’s recipes”

More and more people began subscribing. More and more sales resulted. Momentum is a powerful thing and email marketing helps you automate that momentum.

You start by setting up a campaign, a series of emails, in my case a series of Thai Food recipes. You then set the timing for sending that series of emails. I started with 10 recipes, 10 emails, one mailed out every seven days. This means my subscriber would hear from me once a week for 10 weeks.

Once you have your campaign set up, you want to make a capture page. My Thai Food Capture Page is simple. TrafficWave has many templates and services so you can step by step build a Page.

Next is to begin driving traffic to your capture page. You will want to make sure you are doing this on a regular (daily) basis. This can and should be done through your social media accounts, any advertising you have, etc… The ads you set up, the posts you make, the tweets you share, etc… will live online for quite a while.

What I do is post a Thai Food picture, last nights dinner, and in the text I talk about the food, some key ingredient, who made it, how tasty it is and such. I end the post with an invitation to subscribe to my recipe emails, and I include the link to my Capture Page.

Sometimes I may include the recipe itself, such as this recipe for Chicken Feet. If you go to that recipe you will see a capture form in the top right corner, inviting people to get my email recipes.

The key here is “consistency”. Creating email marketing momentum happens when we are consistent. Doing a little bit here and there, from time to time, etc… will not create that momentum we need to get successful results. As you take daily action, you can begin to see momentum build up in your overall stats including subscriber counts and sales.

As your list begins growing, you will have those subscribers that decide to do business with you, subscribers who remove themselves, and subscribers who complete your followup series without taking action. When they complete your automated series, they are marked as “finished”.  You will want to check your list about once per week and recycle any subscribers who are marked as “finished”.

This keeps your messages in front of your subscribers. Sometimes, we have folks that decide to join us months or even years after subscribing.

And, of course, don’t forget to broadcast special offers, announcements, etc… to your readers as appropriate.

These types of consistent activity will have you creating email marketing momentum before you know it.