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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However, if you have composed your message using a template or our URL feature, you may be suprised when you check the Spam Test and see a score of  anywhere from 20/100 to 40/100.  The unsettling results may look a little something like this:

Lots of people see this and think they are doomed to the junk folder on delivery. Luckily, there is a quick and easy fix.  Add an alternate text version. 

More and more spam filters are being configured to watch for both an HTML and a plain text version of a message, as spammers tend to ignore these plain text alternatives.  Adding an alternate text version can make your spam score go from 40 down to 0.

How To Shed That Excess Spam

Adding an alternate text version of your message is simple, and if you use our WYSIWYG editor, we do it for you automatically.  If you do need to add it manually, all you have to do is go to the message preview page and click the ‘Create alternate text version’ link.  Bronto will give you a default version with simple content that includes a link to the online version of your message.  You can leave it at this, or you have the option of filling in your own text content if you’d like.  Once you are happy with your text version, just click save.  You can see that you have an alternate text version set up by checking for the ‘Create alternate text version’ link, if it is no longer there, you are all set.  You can also see a preview of your text version by clicking on the Text Preview tab just above the message preview window.

Now it’s time to check your score again, where you should see that it has dropped significantly. 

There you have it, one quick step to lowering your spam score.  If you have any questions or any other pesky spam score issues, let us know in the comments or feel free to open a support case in the application.

Lucas Weber
Support Associate at Bronto

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