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A double opt-in email list is like any email based newsletter or e-course where people can sign-up through the Internet either on a webpage or sending an email to mailing list management software. What makes an email list “double opt-in” is that any person who subscribes must confirm their request twice.

The first time is when the user submits their email address to the web based form. For example, anyone who submits their name and email to my Blog Traffic Tips Newsletter at BlogTrafficKing.com must enter their first name and email address and then hit the button to submit their request to join the newsletter.

After the initial request is received by the email list software a special confirmation email is sent to the address the person input into the form. This is the second opt-in. The email contains a link which the recipient must click to confirm their subscription request. Once they have done this they have “double opted-in”.

You can see an example of the confirmation email also on my BlogTrafficKing.com page here - http://www.blogtrafficking.com/thank-you.html. This is the page I present to people after they fill out the subscription form to make sure they understand how to double opt-in and to ensure the confirmation email doesn’t surprise them and they delete it thinking it is SPAM.

Why Is Double Opt-In Important?

There are several reasons why double opt-in is necessary, but a few key reasons I believe make it mandatory. The double opt-in confirms that the person who entered their email address actually wants to subscribe to the list. If this extra confirmation is not present (single opt-in) then any person could enter any email address to sign-up any other person.

Imagine if you upset someone and they decided to get revenge on you by entering your email address into hundreds of pornographic email newsletters. You would be forced to abandon that email account (unless you really really like porn) if these lists were single opt-in.

From the email list owner’s perspective it’s important that only people who genuinely want to be on your list are signed up. If you use a single-opt on method and, like the example I gave above, someone entered hundreds of email addresses of people who did not want to subscribe to your list, you would end up with a very poor quality list. Those “spam” subscribers wouldn’t respond to what you were offering since they are not your target market.

Do You Want An Effective Email List?

The whole point of an opt-in email list is to attract people who subscribe demonstrating that they are prospects for what you offer - their request for information signifies this. Using a double opt-in list is extremely important for keeping the quality of your email list high.

Consider you are selling advertising space in your email newsletter. You could boast that your email list has 20,000 members but they are all single opt-in and very likely many of the addresses on the list are not valid or go to people who never requested to be on your list. Your advertiser purchases some space in your newsletter but gets poor results so doesn’t buy again.

Now imagine a list contains 2,000, double opt-in hungry prospects that match a key target market. That same advertiser buys space in the newsletter and because of the more precise targeting and confirmed email addresses on the list, generates a better response. The result - a happier advertiser who becomes a repeat buyer of adspace in your newsletter.

Just being able to say “XYZ number of DOUBLE OPT-IN subscribers” is a much better selling point for any person attempting to monetize their list via advertisement placements.

Reduce SPAM Complaints

All email list owners get unsubscribers and spam complaints - it’s the nature of email marketing. People hate spam and anything that smells even a tiny bit like it or if a person can’t remember signing up to your list, may result in a spam complaint (AOL email subscribers are the worst for this in my experience). Even if you have a nice big fat area at the start of your newsletter that describes how to unsubscribe for an email list you will still get people who hit that complaint link.

By using double opt-in you can reduce spam complaints down to single digit percentages or lower. A single opt-in email newsletter lends itself to abuse, resulting in more spam complaints and potential banning of your domain name by the major ISPs. This is something you must avoid at all costs because once you are on an email blacklist it is hard to get yourself off.

One final point on spam - while double opt-in is not law yet I foresee in the very near future it will be. Using a single opt-in email list will be illegal and anyone found doing so may face legal prosecution. If none of the above arguments are enough to sway you, the threat of legal action should do it.

How To Set-Up Double Opt-In

I use AWeber.com (aff) to handle all my email lists (you can read my review of AWeber) and it has a switch you can flick on any email list to make it double opt-in. Be warned though, once you flick that switch there is no going back to single opt-in for that list, you will have to create a new one if you want single opt-in (you get unlimited autoresponder lists with AWeber though so it’s not that big a deal). The AWeber software handles the double opt-in process automatically and has plenty of customization options so you can determine what message is sent back to the user in the confirmation email.

GetReponse (aff) also has a double opt-in facility and I’m fairly confident that most robust third part email list manager/autoresponder services should have the double opt-in feature. If they don’t then they are not keeping up to date so I would recommend moving to a company that does.

If you use your own software, either custom built or purchased online, then you may or may not have a double opt-in feature. That’s a question for your technical person.

Get Serious About Email List Building

Last week I was checking my subscriber stats in my AWeber account and noticed that one of my email lists had over 80 subscribers in a 24 hour period where the average was usually 10-20. I was hoping it was because of a traffic spike from some exposure on a website or blog, but unfortunately it was not. A spam bot of some kind had submitted over 60 email addresses, all very similar, and clearly not from real humans. Thankfully none of these email addresses will be confirmed because of the double opt-in protection my list has, ensuring the integrity of my list is not adversely affected.

If you are serious about building a quality email list, and you should be if you are in Internet business, then double opt-in is a must. Even if it means you lose a few genuine subscribers because they don’t follow the double opt-in process, it is worth it to protect you from all the negative things that can occur reducing the quality of your list.

Yaro Starak
Email List Builder

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Target Met: $955 raised in one week!

Congratulations everyone - Our two children remained supported for another year thanks to your support.

We have surpassed the target - I will be in touch with the last person about usage of their donation money.

With thanks to…

• Joel Williams from Life Goggles
• Fraser Edwards from Fraser’s Affiliate Marketing Blog
• Martin Roth from Health Monitors
• Rodger Constandse from Effexis Productivity Software
• James Martin from Google Watchdog
• Jon from Art of Money
• Christian Montoya from ChristianMontoya.com
• Oke Atatah from Life Is What You Make Of It
• Reesa from ReesaFindMe
• Dan Walsh from PayStage
• Darren Rowse from Digital Photography School
• Will Swayne from Marketing Results

It’s that time of year again - child sponsorship charity drive time! Since the year 2001, with the generous help of my community members and website readers, we have been able to support two children under the World Vision child sponsorship program.

Here’s how the story goes…

Back in the late nineties I was running an e-commerce business selling Magic: The Gathering trading cards out of my community site that I built and later sold to new owners - MTGParadise.com. Back then it was just me in charge and I was working frantically shipping cards all over Australia and the world as well as growing the website community. Unfortunately I made the mistake of selling a large sum of product to a person in Thailand and was taken for credit card fraud. You can read more about what happened in my business timeline.

After the whole ordeal was over and I had shut up shop I decided to sponsor a child. The first child I deliberately chose from Thailand because I wanted to make sure he didn’t grow up to become a credit card fraudster. This was my way of balancing karma - or something like that - and Apichet Chaisanan (and his village community in Thailand) was the first child sponsored by my online community.

Since the first child sponsorship drive went so well, when it came time to renew our sponsorship I approached the community at MTGParadise.com and asked for donations to raise enough to sponsor a second child as well and we successfully raised enough to help out Lucas Arcanjo from Mozambique.

When I sold MTGParadise I no longer had a daily presence in the Magic community, however with the growth of this blog I had a new community and last year I asked you, my readers, to dig deep and help maintain the child sponsorship for one child. For those readers who have been with me for a while now you will know that we were successful in last year’s charity drive raising $480 - enough for one year of sponsorship for one child.

Child Sponsorship 2006

This year we are aiming to raise enough to sponsor both children for a year. To do that we need to raise $900.

Last year you will recall that I gave out links on my blog in exchange for donations and this year I will be doing the same thing under the following system -

Donations

Option 1: Purchase a standard sponsorship package from Entrepreneur’s Journey and I will donate all the proceeds to the charity drive.

You can select a sponsorship package from the advertise page.

Follow the instructions there and tell me you made the purchase for the charity drive.

Option 2: Donate cash

Donate $50 and your name and website link will be listed in this post under a “thank you” section at the top.

Donate $100 you get a site-wide text link under a new “charity sponsors” section area on every page of Entrepreneur’s Journey for two months.

Donate $250 you get an article on Entrepreneur’s Journey specifically about your business. The article can’t be pure advertising but it can focus 100% on your business and of course link back to any of your own websites. You must supply the article.

You are welcome to donate any amount, more or less than the amounts listed above - everything helps!

[ Click Here To Make A Donation ]

All donations are taken via Paypal. Once you have made your donation please contact me via my helpdesk and provide the following details:

• Your name
• Donation amount
• The email address you used at Paypal to donate
• Your website URL
• Your anchor text

Thank you everyone for your generous support and let’s make that $900 target!

Yaro

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I had dinner with Jeremy Wright, head honcho of the b5media blog network last week since we both happen to be in Toronto at the moment. Jeremy was in town on business and now the whole world knows what that business was about -

b5media Inc. have raised US$2 Million in venture funding to help grow the business into the future. That’s a fairly big stamp of approval for the blog network and (yet again) demonstrates the possibilities of blog networks as a successful Internet business model.

Congratulations to Darren, Duncan, Jeremy, Shai and the rest involved with b5.

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Michael Pollock from Solostream Webstudio has finished the redesign of Small Business Branding. The new design better reflects the multiple writers and you can now meet all the faces behind the articles that have been posted to the site over the past few weeks.

Check it out at SmallBusinessBranding.com

I’ll be calling for more authors in the near future so if you would like a chance to write for Small Business Branding stay tuned!

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Today Brad Fallon and Andy Jenkin’s StomperNet (aff) was launched and as of writing it appears to be nearly sold out. This was by far the largest ongoing launch I have ever witnessed, both as a prospect and a JV partner. Also launched today, but not quite with as much a build-up as StomperNet, was Scott Boulch’s Click Flipping core group members club.

These two releases were just the latest in a long line of products launched this year and it seems that each and every month sees the release of at least one or two big product pushes in the Internet marketing world. Since the public release of Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula (aff) everyone has had access to the story board formula to successfully release a product online.

I operate in the Internet marketing industry because I am interested in it and have enjoyed some success as an Internet marketer. As expected the industry that is all about Internet marketing make use of the best Internet marketing techniques to market Internet marketing products, and conducting a big product launch has become a standard. Not every product launch is the same, although they all rely on the same tried-and-tested elements. The psychology behind marketing doesn’t change after all, and that’s exactly what a product launch is about - pushing all the right buttons and triggering the appropriate responses from consumers.

Are We Becoming Overexposed To The Product Launch Process?

I have difficulty answering this question. As a person working in Internet marketing I am exposed to a lot of product launches and I can honestly say that most launches appeal to me on some level. I don’t have time to fully absorb everything going into every launch, but at the basic level Internet marketing products appeal because I like Internet marketing. The potential, the opportunity and the education is tempting - and being a person who likes to take action I know that if I really care about it I will put in the work to get results from any product I buy. However that doesn’t mean I actually make a purchase during the launch.

I don’t buy products based on a product launch, I buy them based on how they can impact my business activities or life. I need to be able to action what I learn/buy and have the time available to get to the point where I can take that action. Provided those ingredients are there I will buy Internet marketing products, however most of the time I don’t buy during the launch process, I buy when I need it.

The hype of a product launch certainly gets me excited and I’ve come so close to signing up to all kinds of things over the years during the big push at launch, but each time I pull away before hitting that “buy” button. I have bought into some big products, including Butterfly Marketing (I bought it six months after the launch) and Rich Schefren’s 12 month strategic business coaching club (this I bought at launch because that was the only time you could buy it and be in the core group with Rich and because I was ready to be coached in this area).

The usual marketing triggers work on me - testimonials, credibility enforcing recommendations from people I respect, samples, detailed description of the product benefits - are the key elements that influence my decision making process. The problem with a product launch is that during this process other elements such as perceived (or real) scarcity, hype and over the top copy is used to elicit a “frenzied” buyer reaction to ensure maximum sales based more on emotion than common sense. I don’t like these elements because I don’t trust them. Yes sure, a good product launch should be genuine and back up the hype and claims, but I’ve yet to see one that does. It just makes me tired and distracts me from finding the real information about the product that I want to know. Of course from the marketer’s point of view it works so hey, if Yaro doesn’t buy it’s no big deal, many other people will and marketing is about maximizing sales.

I can say, and I know a lot of you concur with me, is that I am tired of Internet marketing product launches. I think there are too many, I think they are losing their appeal because there are so many and as a result each launch has to be bigger than the previous in order to have impact, creating even more clutter in the market - there is just so much free information out there that comes along with each product launch you could spend a lifetime just absorbing the free stuff. However I believe this only applies to product launches in the Internet marketing arena. I think conducting a product launch in almost every other industry is a huge opportunity because it’s rarely, if ever, done well.

Product Launching A Non-Internet Marketing Product

The product launch process is over-done in the Internet marketing industry for obvious reasons, but in other industries I don’t see nearly as many launches and as a result I suspect the consumers in other industries would react positively to them. Even launches not executed that well would bring in reasonable results since the saturation point is far off - these are “virgin markets” for the product launch process. I don’t diligently follow every industry, that would be impossible, so I could be wrong, perhaps there are many product launches going on online in other industries on a regular basis, but besides the dating product marketplace I’ve never personally seen one outside of Internet marketing.

A consumer is a consumer and marketing psychology works in all industries because everyone sells to the same thing - human beings. There is a golden opportunity for a good Internet marketer (or several) who have experience with product launch (just owning and then following the steps to execute Product Launch Formula should be enough) to either consult or run their own product launches on products outside of Internet marketing. I’m sure there are experienced Internet marketers doing just that now and get paid very well for their expertize.

Will Product Launches Always Work?

Always is a strong word and I doubt anything will always work without constant change and reinvention, however based on current results the product launch formula works, even in the saturated Internet marketing world, and will no doubt continue to. Whether that’s because we are all suckers for emotional marketing triggers, or people like me, who are over-exposed to product launches, are in the minority, is another question. I don’t know exactly why, but I do know as long as the launch process continues to work there won’t be a good reason not to do a product launch, even if a small group of people grumble about how many product launches there are, and how they won’t be “suckered” by the hype. Ultimately these people are probably just not the right target prospect for the product in the first place - that’s always been the easiest way to dismiss people who grumble about anything in Internet marketing. As long as those grumblers don’t become the majority, everything will be fine.

Yaro Starak
Conducting a product launch and grumbling about them too…

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