What Is Double Opt-In?

You can spend months or even years building a massive mailing list and create something that is highly targeted and filled with incredibly engaged and interested readers.

But while this is true, it still only takes a single message to bring your hard work crashing down. Some mistakes are so destructive that they can destroy your chances of running an effective email marketing campaign. Others will simply prevent you from making the process you should be.

Your sending reputation is one of the most important things, it is a little like a credit rating and it will be shared between the different email providers. It will be tied to your IP address and domain, and things that can hurt your sender’s reputation are bounce rate, a lot of complaints, and a low open rate.

4 Ways To Improve Your Reputation

If your sender’s reputation gets too bad, then you risk becoming blacklisted and the number of messages that will get through to your audience will go down significantly.

So how do you prevent this from happening? How do you keep your sender’s reputation in the black? How do you build a strong mailing list?

Here are some powerful strategies:

• Warm Up Your IP – One advanced technique that many people aren’t aware of is to warm up their IP address. This means that you’re going to give your emails the best start possible and the way you do that, is by starting out with a very small list that is filled with only your most engaged fans. When you do this, you’ll build yo some positive credit as it were and this will then help make your address more resilient against future negative influences.
• Keep Friends & Family Involved – This is one reason it can be a good idea to invite your friends and family onto your mailing list. What’s more is that if you keep them there subsequently, you’ll then have at least a few opens and reads guaranteed. This is a good way to avoid a scenario where you get zero opens and every little bit helps.
• List Hygiene – List hygiene simply means that you are looking after your mailing list by removing the contact that never read a single one of your messages or that always bounce. This is a simple matter of logging into your Autoresponder and deleting those users but it will make a big difference.
• Double Opt-In – Finally, it is crucial that every single email list these days use a double opt-in. This means that your new subscribers will need to confirm their email address via a confirmation message and that in turn ensures that the email address is real and also that the recipient checks it often and that they really are interested in signing up.

These small changes can make a massive difference to your deliverability, so get started with this method today.

What Is Double Opt-In

When you get an Autoresponder, you will gain access to a large number of different features and options. Autoresponders can be used simply to send bulk emails but more than that, they can also be used to handle subscriptions, track data like open rates, build your mailing list, and much more.

And one of the most important features you should be using with your Autoresponder is the double opt-in. This is a two-stage sign-up process for your mailing list that will invite the user to first enter their details and hit send and then respond to a confirmation email by clicking the link.

This is opposed to a more old-fashioned immediate form of sign-up that accepts the new member as soon as they hit send.

Why This Matter

A lot of new marketers will look at double opt-ins and be confused. On the face of it, this seems like a bad thing. After all, why would we want our users to have to take more steps in order to sign up?
Surely the easier it is for them to get involved, the better it will be for our mailing list?

This is missing the point. A good mailing list is not a mailing list that is as big as possible, but rather one that is as targeted and as engaged as possible. In other words, it really doesn’t matter how many people sign up. What matters is how likely those people are to read your message.

Double opt-ins prevent people from signing up who aren’t really interested in your messages. They also prevent people from entering bogus details and they prevent people from accidentally typing the wrong message.

Without a double opt-in, someone might sign up for your mailing list on a whim and then never read any of your messages again. But with the double opt-in there, they are now forced to take a look at your message if they’re serious and to demonstrate that they do actively check their emails.

By doing all this, you have immediately improved the quality of your mailing list so that you will have fewer messages that bounce and fewer that don’t get opened. This will help you to improve your sender reputation and will make sure that your metrics stay as accurate as possible.

Don’t focus on the number of emails – focus on the quality. And start with a double opt-in.

Long-Term Relationship Is The Most Important

What is a mailing list for you? If you think of your mailing list as something that you can use in order to promote your products and try to get sales, then you may be missing out on the true potential of this incredible asset.

In reality, a mailing list has much more potential than just a means of selling and if you know how to get the most from it, then it can be the difference between being a small website and a huge, international brand.

The reason for this is simple: mailing lists allow you to build a more meaningful and personal relationship with your readers than any other form of marketing. This is a form of marketing that allows you to communicate directly with each subscriber, right inside their inbox. Your messages will be rubbing shoulders with messages from friends and family and what’s more important still, is that you’ll be able to actually get responses as well.

How To Think Of Your Mailing List

To get the most out of your mailing list, you need to change the way you think about it and the way you approach it. That is to say that your mailing list is something that you will use in order to open up the lines of communication with the insiders in your group. These are your truest fans and in that way, they almost have some level of ownership over your site. They’re a part of a movement and they’re there to contribute their ideas and suggestions as much as they are there to buy from you.

So, write to your mailing list as though they are your friends or your business partners. Let them know what’s new for the brand and ask for their input. Most importantly: when they respond, write back.

By doing this, the recipients of your mailing list will feel as though you really care about them and as though they can really trust you. This not only makes them much more likely to buy from you in the long run but it also turns them into true fans.

And if you’ve ever read the book 1,000 True Fans, then you’ll know that it only takes 1,000 such followers in order to accomplish global success. True fans are fans that will share your content, that will spread your message and tath will read every message you send. This is much more valuable than making a few direct sales!

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Avoid The Spam Filter

One of the biggest challenges for email marketers trying to build their mailing list has since over the years always been beating the spam filter. The job of the spam filter on most email providers is to prevent unwanted messages from getting into your inbox. And then especially those that might contain viruses, phishing scams, or other harmful types of content.

Today this has become even harder though. Now we not only have spam boxes but also social and promotional boxes that further segregate our messages and make it harder for any of our messages to gain attention.

The good news is that there are strategies you can use to combat both these issues.

Language

One of the first and most important tips for avoiding the spam box is to make sure you avoid using the kinds of words and phrases that computers associate with spam. This is similar to the way that Google looks for keywords, except this time the keywords are a bad thing. Examples of words to avoid include things like buy, free, discount, hurry, and viagra. Hopefully, that last one isn’t something you would be writing about anyway…

Structure

If you want to get into the main inbox, then it is not enough to not look like spam. You now need to also look like a personal message.

To do this, you should take advantage of the feature in your autoresponder that allows you to use the recipient’s name in the message. Likewise, try to structure your message more like a conventional email. That means saying Dear [fname] and ending with Best Regards.

Likewise, you also need to avoid including elements that a client will associate with a promotional image or that will make you look less like genuine correspondence. That means avoiding using too many hyperlinks – keep it to just one or two – and it means avoiding using big images.

Sender Reputation

The most important thing to do though is to make sure that you are focusing on delivering great value over time. If you do this, then people will open your messages and they will actually read them. This will help to improve your sender’s reputation, which in turn will mean you donät get blacklisted.

And while you’re at it, why not ask your readers to white list your email address and add it to the main inbox? Sometimes the best solutions are the simplest ones!

Wrapping Up How You Can Build Your Email List

When you promote and build your mailing list, you should make your audience feel as though they are on board with you and your message. This will give you more trust and the same way build your authority. To make this happen, you should really think of how you build your mailing list and how your email, and messages are built.

Spam is a big problem, and if your messages will end up in the junk box, they will probably not be read. So, you have to send messages that not will be caught by the spam filter. If you follow the tips I wrote about you will for sure minimize the risk of being caught as a spammer.

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