Double Opt-In Vs Single Opt-in

The debate between whether single or double opt-in is better will most likely rage on for years to come and (like most things in life) will always be argued from a matter of personal perspective.

Personally, I'm a big fan of double opt-in because I believe (based on my own experience) that it is better to have a list of ACTUAL humans that want your information rather than a list that has a combination of real humans, junk emails, bots, spam traps, etc...

A recent experience really solidified this for me as we were helping a new client transfer their lists from a couple of the more popular autoresponder services.

They had exported a list of just over 5,000 subscribers between the two autoresponder services they had been using. When the lists were imported in to their new account, we found that well over 1,400 of them were unknown, junk, or bouncing.

By "junk", I mean addresses like aaa@asdf.com, asdfasdfa@alj;ljk.com, etc...

Other records included actual bits of css information and no contact information, at all.

It seems that this person had been offering various downloads and people were just entering junk information in to the form so that they could get to the free download.

This marketer was under the mistaken impression that they had generated a list of 5,000+ actual prospects. When in reality, over 1,400 had just grabbed the download and run off.

One school of thought says, "Yeah, but he had over 3,000 real humans that got his download and he can follow up with them."

But consider this:

Due to so many junk emails being in the list, it's entirely possible that his deliverability was in the toilet. What good are the valid emails if your message won't get delivered to them?

Due to using single opt-in, a number of people were essentially stealing from this marketer. Sure, the download was "free" but the understanding was that they get the download in exchange for valid contact information.

How many opportunities for follow-ups, add-on sales, upgrades, etc... were lost due to an email address that was entered incorrectly? Mistakes do happen.

And how much money was he literally throwing away with these other autoresponder services because they charge based on the list size? His account may have shown over 5,000 but in reality only 3,000 or so were real!

Kinda makes you wonder if these companies that charge based on list size love the single optin method because it can artificially inflate the subscriber count which allows them to charge more.