What Is Double Opt-In Email Marketing?

No matter how you decide to structure your campaigns (like with lifecycle marketing or drip email campaigns), you must first begin by gathering the names and email addresses of interested people. The key word? Interested. And the way to do that is with double opt-in email marketing.

If you’re ready to get started using double opt-in email marketing campaigns, you can contact us online or call 888-601-5359 today to speak with one of our experts!

What is single-opt in email marketing?

To understand double opt-in email marketing, you first have to understand single opt-in email marketing. Single opt-in email marketing goes something like this:

1. You ask people for their email addresses.
2. You send marketing emails to those people.

Seems simple, right? It is. But that’s why it can be so problematic. For instance, how do you know every single person typed their email address correctly? Or that they didn’t just provide a fake one in exchange for a free download?

Plus, you could risk being identified as a spammer because you keep sending emails to people who don’t really care about what you have to say.

This is why it’s best to use double opt-in email marketing.

What is double opt-in email marketing?

Double opt-in email marketing includes a third step:

3. You send an email to the email address that was just submitted. That email requires that the person verify that they do, indeed, want to receive emails from you. Usually, all they have to do as part of this verification process is click on a link that takes them to a special landing page.

It’s a very simple, straightforward vetting procedure, but it can make your email marketing strategy as a whole much more effective.

The benefits of double opt-in email marketing

Let’s get to the most important part of double opt-in email marketing: The benefits. Otherwise, why would you go to the trouble of adding another step to the opt-in process?

You can be sure that you’re talking to the right people.

Have you ever provided your email address for something, only to be bombarded with annoying emails for products you’ll never buy? It’s annoying to constantly have to delete them—and with double opt-in, you can avoid being that annoying company to other people.

You won’t risk being blacklisted by servers.

While it’s common for all email lists to occasionally get flagged as spam by individuals who change their minds about wanting to receive information, those flags should be few and far between.

When you approach your email marketing with single opt-in, you may get bad email addresses. This can lead to a flood of opt-outs and flagged emails. If your company gets enough of these, you can be blacklisted by email servers.

As you can imagine, that’s a huge issue because once you are blacklisted, it can be tough to reach anyone—even those who actually want to hear from you.

You can trust that you’re not spinning your wheels.

You really cannot afford to waste time or energy in business. With double opt-in email marketing, you know that you’re only spending time creating content for people who can be considered qualified leads or potential customers.

As a result, you can tailor your content more carefully and improve your overall efficiency and effectiveness.

You can build a robust community of supporters.

Never underestimate how valuable it can be to have a community that supports your messaging and brand. With the right calls to action embedded in your email marketing content, you can turn your subscribers into a team of ambassadors for your business.

You are likely to get fewer unsubscribes.

If you set up a system to ensure that your email list is created based on those who actually are hungry for your messaging, you’ll end up with fewer unsubscribes. This means that if you do receive many unsubscribes as a result of a particular email, you can be sure that it’s because of the content, and not just because a lot of people never wanted to receive your emails in the first place.

Your analytics will be trustworthy.

As with any online marketing strategy, email marketing analytics can help you improve your strategy over time. But what happens if those analytics are skewed because you only required single opt-in for all your email marketing?

If that was the case, you might start making decisions based on flawed data. That could lead to huge issues, not the least of which would be lowered or uneven revenue streams.

As you can tell, there are plenty of benefits to double opt-in email marketing, and the only downside is that when you set up double opt-in email marketing, you may see an initial drop-off in subscription rates.

However, the only subscribers you’re missing out on are the ones who aren’t interested in hearing from you. And in that case, they likely wouldn’t have ever become customers anyway.

Ready to start using double opt-in email marketing?

As you begin to more fully explore double opt-in email marketing, as well as all types of Internet marketing, it’s important to remember that people are beginning to expect these kinds of courtesies from the businesses they consider purchasing from. One day, it might even become required, so why not get the jump on it and set up your double opt-in email marketing now?

If you’re ready to set up double opt-in email marketing campaigns—or any other kind of Internet marketing campaign—WebFX can help. Contact us today to learn how!