In marketing, the term ‘permission’ is used in a more specific and important way than it is in other contexts. Permission is everything when it comes to email marketing in particular and will hugely impact on how positively your marketing messages and adverts are received. Email marketing is a form of marketing that involves collecting a list of contacts or leads and then sending them messages intended to increase their engagement with your brand and ultimately to sell to them.
Permission based email marketing means that you are taking extra care to get permission from your recipients first. This might mean getting them to sign up to your mailing list knowing that you will also market to them, or getting them to tick a box/untick a box when signing up to your site as a member/buying a product. However, it is also important to make sure that you get permission – and are extra careful to ensure this permission – whenever using any form of email marketing.
Permission and Opt-In Forms
When you set up your first opt-in form, you’ll find you have a number of critical choices to make. For instance, you’ll have to choose precisely how many fields you want to include and thus how much data you want to collect. Then you’ll need to choose the color, the layout, the text and finally whether you want a double opt-in.
What is Double Opt-In?
Simply put, double opt-ins mean that your subscribers need to confirm their interest in subscribing after they’ve filled out the form, which is accomplished through a confirmation e-mail. Usually, they’ll then need to click a link to follow in order to register their interest in the message. This creates an additional step for signing up and this can sometimes be enough to mean that your visitors change their mind and opt-out. But despite this, it’s still very much worth implementing…
Why Use Double Opt-Ins?
Double opt-ins thus prevent a number of things from happening. For one, they prevent people from signing up accidentally and they ensure that they genuinely were interested in becoming members. This also means they can’t deny that they gave their details, which ensures that you don’t end up getting into trouble for sending unsolicited e-mails.
Moreover, double opt-ins prevent you from getting spam or fake e-mail addresses which can otherwise end up damaging your list and making it useless in terms of targeting. At the same time, this forces the visitor to engage with your mailing list and thereby to get used to opening your messages and to looking for you in their inbox.
And when you consider the kind of subscriber you lose through double opt-ins – the kind who doesn’t want to engage with your messages – you realize that the pros far outweigh the cons. Double opt-ins save everyone a lot of time!
