Double opt-in

Within newsletter sign-ups, there are two options:

• Single opt-in
• Double opt-in

The first option works by entering your email address in a sign-up box on a website, clicking "Sign up" and you're signed up for the newsletter. This is the classic model.

Unfortunately, there were people signing up other people for newsletters and there were a lot of bots filling out those forms. So you got a lot of bots on your email list and you got a lot of angry newsletter recipients. It wasn't very appropriate.

That's why double opt-in was invented. Here, the subscription starts in the same way, but you are not immediately subscribed to the newsletter. The very first thing the person receives after signing up is an email. The email contains a link that they need to click to confirm that they want to sign up for the newsletter. If they click the link, you know that the person who signed up for the newsletter also has control of the inbox. So they confirm that it was them who signed up in the first place.

Double opt-in is usually something you turn on in your ESP (i.e. the newsletter service). Enabling double opt-in ensures that you get real sign-ups and you avoid bots altogether.

The downside of double opt-in is that some people don't realize that they need to confirm it. Therefore, they don't get it done and you miss out on some real subscriptions to your newsletter.

We know online marketing in Shoporama

We've been working with online marketing ourselves for decades. As the only shop system in the country, we have spoken multiple times at conferences such as Marketingcamp, SEOday, Shopcamp, Digital Marketing, E-commerce Manager, Ecommerce Day, Web Analytics Wednesday and many more.