6:34 pm admin

Naturally, the question comes up: “What Should I Do If Somebody Doesn’t Complete the 2nd Step In A Double OptIn?”

First things first… double opt-in is not a can-spam requirement, though it may be a requirement of 3rd party email providers. So, whether you’re doing it by choice using your own “self-hosted” email solution, or if you’re required to do so by your email provider, there are definitely some considerations when it comes to getting people to confirm their opt-in so you can continue to send them messages.

There are a number of reasons that the prospect doesn’t “complete” the opt-in process. Here are a few of the common reasons:

1. The visitor/subscriber gave an invalid email address on purpose.

It doesn’t matter if you’re using single opt in or double opt-in.

MickeyMouse@asdfasdf.com is NEVER going to work! They were just trying to get to what was on the next page without ever intending to give you legitimate contact information.

You can combat this by not giving them the item for which they opted in without entering a valid email address. This way, they don’t get your item of value without giving you a valid email address in exchange.

2. He/she changed their mind.

Again, as in the reason above, you can choose to NOT give out the item of value until they have clicked the confirmation link in the confirmation email.

Simply send the prospect to a “thank you page” that instructs them to check their email and let them know that they will get their “gift” as soon as they click that link. If they really want that item of value, they’ll go click the link!

3. The customer didn’t receive the email AT ALL.

This can often be the result of a typo! Your best option is to combat this with innovative form creation.

Your form should require that the user enter the email address twice. The argument here is that this extra effort might discourage a person from giving you any email address, but some might argue that an incorrect address is of about as much value as one not entered, in fact, even less due to its potential for delivery failures and other possible issues.

In addition to double-entry, your opt-in form processor could run some standard validation routines including (but not necessarily limited to) checking for the presence of the @ sign, ensuring that the domain portion of the email address is resolvable and addressable, looking for common transpositions (hotmial.com, yahoo.cmo for instance), and scanning for illegal characters.

If these steps are carefully taken, and the email still does not get delivered, there is a possibility that your sending server was intentionally denied delivery by the person’s email service provider (i.e. AOL, Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, etc.).

4. The customer didn’t receive the INITIAL email immediately.

Some systems take longer than others to send out your email. If it’s not there immediately, then you run the risk of losing this prospect forever.

They’re interested NOW and want the information now! If you can’t get it to them, they will often move on to the next website that will.

This is one of the main reasons we recommend your own hosted email solution because you’ve got more control over this particular issue.

While it can certainly be overwhelming to consider setting up your own email solution, there are a lot of benefits to doing so.

To learn more about what it takes to host your own email (and it’s not as much as you might thing), visit www.EmailDelivered.com.

Author: Heather Seitz

Attention Readers, Publishers, Editors, Bloggers, and Marketers: You may republish or syndicate this article without any charge. The only thing I ask is that you keep the newsletters, article, or blog post exactly as it was written and formatted, with no changes. You must also include full publication attribution and back links as indicated.

This information has been provided by http://www.EmailDelivered.com and written by Heather Seitz. To find out how you can boost your campaign conversions, visit http://www.emaildelivered.com/email-deliverability/how-to-get-people-to-double-opt-in/. Don’t forget to sign up for the EmailDelivered Pulse newsletter for articles, tips, and recommended resources related to email marketing and email deliverability.

January 10, 2012