Opt-in and Double Opt-in
What is opt-in and what is it used for?
What is opt-in?
Opt-in is the process through which a person agrees to receive emails from a company or brand. It’s the foundation of legal and responsible email marketing, as it ensures users have given their consent to receive messages.
What is double opt-in?
Double opt-in is a system for registering users to a mailing list, where the subscriber expressly and unequivocally consents to receive email messages at the address provided during the signup process.
How does double opt-in work? Step by step
The subscription form process for capturing email addresses and validating them with double opt-in is simple:
- The subscriber visits our website or landing page where we have the double opt-in subscription form and fills in the fields (including their email address).
- They accept the terms of use and click the subscription confirmation button.
- Automatically, an email is sent to the address they provided, requesting confirmation once again so we can add them to our contact list and reach out to them via email from now on.
- If the response is positive, they confirm again, double confirmation (double opt-in) is completed, and we can start using that address.
- If the response is negative or there is no response to this confirmation email, the user hasn’t confirmed their authorization and messages cannot be sent to that address.
Differences between single opt-in and double opt-in
There’s a simpler system for adding email addresses to our contact lists known as single opt-in. Unlike double opt-in, it only requires the user to provide their email and accept the terms to be added to our email list.
However, this doesn’t ensure that the owner of the email is the one who provided it. That’s why we always recommend using double opt-in.
On the other hand, double opt-in goes a step further by asking for confirmation again. This gives you the certainty that the person who provided the email is its legitimate owner, clearly showing their interest in receiving our emails.
Disadvantages of using only single opt-in instead of double opt-in
If you decide to use only single opt-in (meaning, allowing users to sign up without confirming their email), you might face several issues that impact your list’s quality and the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns.
Here are the main drawbacks:
- Higher risk of fake or misspelled emails: Without a second confirmation, anyone can type a misspelled or even fake email. This will fill your database with useless addresses and increase your bounce rate.
- Worse deliverability and higher spam risk: If your list has many invalid emails, providers (like Gmail or Outlook) might view your domain as suspicious and send your emails straight to the spam folder.
- More spam traps and risks to your reputation: Spam traps are addresses created to detect unauthorized sending. If your list contains these types of emails, your sender reputation can take a hit, and you could end up on a blacklist.
- Less engagement and open rate: If people subscribe without confirming, they might not be genuinely interested in your emails. As a result, your campaigns will get fewer opens, fewer clicks, and lower conversions.
- It doesn’t guarantee compliance with GDPR and other regulations: Double opt-in is the best way to ensure every user has given explicit consent. Without this step, you could be violating regulations like the GDPR in Europe.
- Lower quality database: Over time, a list without double opt-in fills up with inactive emails, which hurts your metrics and makes your campaigns less effective.
Advantages of double opt-in
Without a doubt, using double opt-in is the best choice to ensure our mass email campaigns achieve excellent results, avoid reputation issues, and build a high-quality database. Some of the main benefits of using double opt-in forms are:
- Goodbye to spam traps. No one will be able to add spam traps to your mailing lists, keeping your ISP reputation as high as possible.
- They add better-qualified contacts. With double confirmation, we know for sure that the subscriber is genuinely interested in our brand and receiving our messages.
- Boosts the open rate. Since subscribers joining our list take the time to open the confirmation email and click the link, they are highly interested users who will help drive up your open rates.
- High-quality databases (leads). Requiring subscribers to confirm their consent via email keeps non-existent or uninterested addresses (like misspelled ones) off our list, which improves the bounce rate.
- The added email will always be correct: by reading and confirming the data provided, we verify that the address exists and works properly.
- Improves deliverability for email marketing campaigns: Having a clean database filled only with people interested in our messages helps us maintain a much better reputation with destination servers.
Disadvantages of double opt-in
Double opt-in is the best way to ensure your databases are high-quality and stay perfectly healthy, but it does come with a significant drawback compared to single opt-in:
Databases using double opt-in grow much slower than those built with single opt-in. The reason is simple: some subscribers won’t open the confirmation email, and therefore, won’t become part of the database.
The percentage of users who don’t confirm varies by industry, but it usually averages around 10%.
How to implement a double opt-in process in Mailrelay?
In the case of Mailrelay, when you create a subscription form, it automatically works with double opt-in to ensure your signups are valid, real emails from interested people.
You don’t need to do anything.
When a new contact subscribes, they will automatically receive an email to confirm their subscription. By doing so, it verifies that they are an interested person, not a bot or a malicious user.