One of the most important areas of email marketing is list growth. In order for your marketing efforts to flourish, you must add contacts that are interested in the messages that you are sending. The most obvious way to grow your list organically is through the use of a web form on your web site. It is in my humble opinion that you should use a double opt in when you add contacts through this type of web form.
What Is A Double Opt In?
In the context of email marketing in Bronto, double opt in refers the best practice of having your contacts explicitly state that they would like to receive messages from you. The easiest way to do this is with a web form. Once a contact adds them self to your account via a web form, the application holds the contact in an inactive state and sends the contact a confirmation email. Once the contact receives the confirmation email, they are asked to click on a link to confirm that they have signed up to be a part of your list.
Why Would You Want To Enable This?
There are several compelling reasons to use a double opt in strategy for list growth. The most obvious is that you want to make sure that the person who entered the email address on your form is the same person that you are going to be sending messages to. The second, and probably most important reason for doing this, is that it helps to ensure that your audience consists of contacts that are truly interested in receiving your messages. It’s easy to just put your email address in a form and hit submit. However, if a confirmation comes in almost immediately and it is acted upon, odds are there is some interest. Additionally, this can also help to improve your delivery/sender rating.
Where do I Start?
Let’s first create a message that can be used for confirmation. You can send anything you like, but I would recommend that you put the confirmation link near the top and make sure that it is clear. There will be plenty of time to market after the contact has confirmed their subscription. You can use the %%!confirm_url%% special tag to create the confirmation link. To add this into an HTML message, highlight the text that you would like to use as a link, click the link button in the editor, and then choose the Confirm link from the drop-down as illustrated.
Setting Up The Form
The add contact web form is your next step. I’m going to work under the assumption that you have watched the tutorial videos and are happily creating forms inside of Bronto. The part of your add contact form that we are interested in is the “Form Settings.”
Click on the Form Settings button and head down to the bottom of the dialogue window. You will see an area labeled Welcome Messages & Subscription Confirmation. Click the Yes, and require subscription confirmation radio button.
The application will now provide you with an area to pick your Welcome/Confirmation email. You will also have a chance to add a From Name and From Address to this welcome email. It’s a good time to start building name recognition with your contacts, so be sure to use the same identities that you will be using in your regular marketing messages.
That’s all there is to it. The application should now send your custom welcome message containing your confirmation link to anyone who enters an email address in your form. You can now be reasonably sure that the contacts that you are adding through your Bronto web form are sincerely interested in receiving your messages.
Frank Chapman
Bronto Client Services
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