What words do you use to ask someone to double opt in to your email address, or do you avoid double opt in, risking upsetting the GDPR rules hoping that you won’t be discovered?
My advice has always been the same – use the double opt in, in fact love it!
There are sound business reasons for this, which I will explore in this article, and I have been following them since starting my email marketing list in 2004, long, long before anyone had ever hear of or thought about the blessed GDPR.
What The Goooooorooooos Used To Tell Me
I have had some dreadful advice over the years from so called Internet Marketing Goooooroooos (that is the correct spelling by the way – for me the dreadful spelling matches their schocking advice).
Some of the worst advice received was about email marketing. I have always used the same email marketing software (download the guide below to see which one and to receive my free, easy set up guide to get you going quicker than a squirrel being chased up a tree by a Jack Russell).
The advice was this: “Make sure you always turn off ‘double opt-in’ when adding people to your email marketing list.”
If you don’t know what “double opt-in” is, quite simply it is the mechanism used when someone adds themselves to your email list, or you add them to your email list, whereby they receive an email from you asking them to confirm that they would like to hear from you.
There are two reasons why this is just hopeless advice and why I never followed it:
- It didn’t seem like the right thing to do – it seemed underhand; and
- If they do not click the link in the ‘double opt-in’ email, most emails you send to them are more likely than not going to go into spam in any event, so having someone on your list who never receives your email is a waste of time.
Therefore, leave double opt-in on, and as long as you tweak the wording in the first email that they are going to receive, you should quickly grow your email marketing list.
The Wording I Use For My Double Opt-In Emails
Let me set the scene.
You are on a call with a prospect. You know that if you can add them to your email list, you will not only have the chance of converting them into a new client on that phone call, but you will also have the chance of converting them for every email you send after they add themselves to your email list. I recommend an email once a week, but at worst once a month, so that is 12 to 52 more chances of you turning a prospect into a client.
Worth doing, isn’t it?
So, whilst on the phone with your client you say to them:
I am just going to send an email to you to confirm that I have the correct email address for you so that I can keep in touch. Simply click the link in that email to confirm your email address, thank you.
I then amend my automatic double opt-in email to this:
Subject Line: Please confirm your email address.
Content: Please click the link below to confirm that I have your correct email address, thank you:
Email confirmation link.
Your usual email sign off.
That’s it.
Simple isn’t it?
If you would like to know the software that I use, to receive my Fast Start Set Up & Marketing Guide, and to receive advice about the best subject lines (including 30 sample subject lines to get you started), how to write great content, how to sell easily from emails and every other aspect of email marketing, please click the button below:
