Double Opt-in Email Marketing Lists

In the early days, marketers used the "opt-out" method to grow their email subscriber lists. This is where you'd fill out some form on a web page (such as to receive free information about something), and there'd be a little checkbox at the bottom of the form that said, "Yes, subscribe me to your email marketing list." The checkbox would already be pre-checked. You needed an eagle eye to spot it and de-select it. The opt-out method fell out of favor (as well it should) when more and more marketers started getting reported for spamming. Personally, if I ever see an opt-out checkbox, I think it's so slimy that I don't even trust that the company will even honor my opt-out. I think if they have the nerve to use opt-out, they'll surely just add me to their list anyway.

In their defense, those were the early days.

Marketers eventually saw the light and switched to the opt-in method. This is where a subscriber would need to affirmatively sign up for a list by entering his email address, or checking a box. Nowadays, it sounds like common sense to use this method (isn't it better to send stuff to people who actually want to hear from you?). But there was actually a pretty hard push to get people to abandon opt-out for opt-in.

Pretty soon it became obvious that even though opt-in was a lot less evil than opt-out, it had a huge drawback: any jackass could sign you up for some stupid list you never heard of. It also meant Grandma could sign you up for weekly quilting tips. Your nephew could sign you up for the "Fart Joke of the Day." Innocent people got subscribed to lists accidentally via simple typos (The Story of Nadine is probably the most famous case). Mean-spirited competitors could sign people up to your marketing lists, just to get you in trouble.

At the same time, spam was getting so out of control, that ISPs like AOL, Hotmail, and Yahoo were putting little buttons in their email programs to "Report this as spam." This got a lot of innocent email marketers reported for spamming, and their email campaigns got blocked.

Introducing Double Opt-in

As a result, double opt-in (referred to as "confirmed opt-in" by some people) was introduced into mainstream email marketing. Double opt-in was already being used by security-conscious techies for their mailing lists. Here's how it works:

1. A subscriber enters his email address into your signup form.
2. The subscriber receives an email with an activation link in it, asking him to "please confirm that you really want to receive our emails"
3. If the subscriber doesn't click that link, he's never added to the list.
4. If the subscriber clicks the activation link, he's added to the email list (and usually receives a final "welcome" email)

Here are the pros and cons to the double opt-in method:

There's really not much of a case against double opt-in, unless you're an impatient marketer focused on quantity over quality (in which case you're thinking about email marketing totally wrong, and you should probably go ahead and unplug your computer and punch yourself in the gut).

Double Opt-in Prevents Major Headaches

At MailChimp, we had a case where a marketer was getting repeatedly reported for spamming. Some jerk was telling his ISP that a marketer was sending him spam in order to get the marketer in trouble. But because the marketer used double opt-in (which stores all subscribers' date and time of opt-in, plus the IP address they used at the time of signup) he was able to prove to the ISP that the complainant had indeed requested those emails, and was just being malicious. It prevented the marketer from being blacklisted by a very major ISP.

It's not just jerks that can get you in trouble. We had one case where a spambot was repeatedly submitting bad email addresses to one of our customer's signup forms. When the spambot attacks (about once a quarter), it submits a few hundred emails to the signup form, and some of them are spamtrap addresses (email addresses that ISPs use to lure spammers). Initially, the ISPs thought something was amiss, but once they saw that they were receiving, "are you sure you want to receive our emails? confirm below" they knew our customer was using the double opt-in method, and was legit. The first attack was a bit confusing for all of us, but thanks to double opt-in, everyone's cool whenever the bot strikes.

We had another case where a new customer came to us because he was fired by his previous email service provider (ESP) for spam complaints. When we investigated his account, it turns out he had an incident where a very prominent anti-spam group (yes, the entire group) was subscribed to his list by pranksters. They reported him for spam, so the previous ESP gave him a warning to clean his list. He removed the group's email addresses, but they were maliciously re-subscribed a few months later. The ESP gave the marketer a final warning to switch to double opt-in. He refused. Inevitably, the anti-spam group was re-subscribed to his list, and he was shut down. In this case, the marketer really was not a spammer. He was an innocent victim of a prankster (more likely a spambot roaming the internet, instigating fights like this). But his refusal to switch to double opt-in got him shut down. And ESPs do talk to each other, so finding a new ESP who will accept his business will be difficult. Double opt-in really would have prevented a major headache for this marketer.

MailChimp customers can setup as many different marketing lists as they want in their accounts. We manage subscriptions, opt-outs, and bouncebacks. And we only use the double opt-in process. Period. With over 40,000 managed customer lists on our system, single opt-in would be a huge pain, and would ultimately hurt the deliverability of our servers. If you're new to email marketing and you're trying to decide whether or not double opt-in is right for you, stop to think about what your goals are. Are you an old school marketer, just looking for a cheaper way to blast out your message to the widest audience possible (whether they want to hear from you or not)? Then go ahead and use single opt-in (just don't use MailChimp to deliver your emails). If you want to use email marketing to send more personalized, targeted (relevant!) campaigns to customers who gave you permission, you need to use double opt-in.

See Also:

• Case Study: Local Pub Gets Better Results With Double Opt-in
• Summary of Email Permission Best Practices from MAAWG (Clickz article)
• Double Opt-in Explanation from Anti-Spam Expert Al Iverson

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