Why you should ONLY, EVER use DOUBLE Opt-in

9 replies
I've always used double opt-in, under the assumption that all things being equal a smaller focused list full of people who really want to be on it will be better than sending 1000s more emails out every week to people who don't want to be in my newsletter all that much (as approx 20% of people never confirm their subscription).

I have heard the arguments FOR using just SINGLE opt-in, i.e. that it does actually make more money for some people. I thought fair enough, each to their own.... but last week I nearly had a disaster. It WOULD OF been a complete disaster if I was using just Single Opt-in.

I'm not just saying I would of had a few problems, but I definitely would of lost $1000s, possibly 10s of $1000s. I would of definitely lost 2-3 days of work managing the problem, possibly a week or more.

Heres what happened:

First an affiliate decided to send unsolicited mail to a large list (spam). This was a total junk list and it barely brought any real visits, however someone on that list was evidently a little annoyed.

They decided to run a script to try and sign over 1000 people up to our newsletter. Now this is lucky I use double opt-in or they would all be subscribed and ll be receiving my autoresponder series straight away. They would all be marking me as spam and getting me in trouble with my server, mailing company, and with GoDaddy.

People did complain to GoDaddy and our server. It turned out ok as we could prove it wasn't us and showed we were taking action to stop the problem and were commited to quality mailing standards.

However, the next step with both our server and GoDaddy was to suspend or stop our service. With GoDaddy we could easily enough signup with someone else, but losing our server would mean days of downtime at least, and possibly losing chunks of our website - definitely $1000s lost.

So if you are using Single Opt-in then quite bluntly you are risking your entire business. It would be very easy for a rival to shut you down in a couple of days, or worse, just some hacker kid doing it for a laugh.

If your business is bringing in money for you and you value it at all then don't use Single Opt Ins or they could cost you EVERYTHING!
#double #optin
  • Profile picture of the author Steven Wagenheim
    While I personally only use double opt in, you can't make blanket statements
    like this. I've learned this the hard way.

    Some people use single opt in and have no problems with it.

    Each person has to run his or her business the way they want to.

    Something else I've learned over the years.
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  • A few thoughts:
    • AWeber will start sending out confirm messages if the same IP address tries to register multiple times to a single opt-in list in a short period of time. I don't know about other providers.
    • Confirm messages will get your account suspended with most hosting companies just as quickly as an actual message if you have enough complaints.
    • GoDaddy has been known, in the past, to suspend a domain name when it receives enough complaints. Understand I am not talking about GoDaddy suspending hosting and allowing you to set up a new host, I am talking about holding a domain name hostage.

    Not trying to say everyone should use single opt-in, just that double opt-in does not necessarily protect you from this type of malicious attack.
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    • Profile picture of the author Dan Bainbridge
      Originally Posted by Kevin-VirtualProfitCenter View Post

      Not trying to say everyone should use single opt-in, just that double opt-in does not necessarily protect you from this type of malicious attack.
      But it still seems like double opt in can offer you some protection? perhaps a big attack would really damage double opt-in still, but surely even a small attack to a Single Opt In would be a very big problem? I know if this incident happened to us on a Single Opt in list we would of had a lot more problems, probably getting highlighted as spam for weeks afterwards.

      Does sound like Aweber have some extra safeguards in, but on the other hand there are some real horror stories of them blocking people's accounts for things like this, giving a few days (a week?) to copy your lists and then booting you?
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      • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
        Originally Posted by submp3s View Post

        But it still seems like double opt in can offer you some protection? perhaps a big attack would really damage double opt-in still, but surely even a small attack to a Single Opt In would be a very big problem?

        Does sound like Aweber have some extra safeguards in, but on the other hand there are some real horror stories of them blocking people's accounts for things like this, giving a few days (a week?) to copy your lists and then booting you?
        "But it still seems like double opt in can offer you some protection" is a heck of a lot different than "Why you should ONLY, EVER use DOUBLE Opt-in", isn't it?

        Maybe in your case, confirmed opt-in is the way to go...

        > You sell on Clickbank
        > You use a third party autoresponder service
        > You have the risk of a rogue affiliate
        > You use a domain registrar that apparently is looking for reasons to take your domain name hostage.

        That's not the case with everybody. Externalizing your set of circumstances to the whole world, or even all marketers, is a dangerous thing.

        Most of my list-building is confirmed opt-in, but not for the reasons you give. The extra step, in these cases, is there to increase the subscriber's commitment to being on the list by making them jump through an extra hoop in order to get whatever they signed up to get.

        I do use single opt-in for some things, mostly for after-purchase lists where I'm counting the purchase itself as the first opt-in. I'm even leaning toward confirming opt-ins on these in the future, but again, not to forestall spam complaints. I'll do it as a way to confirm deliverability from my server to their email.
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      • Originally Posted by submp3s View Post

        But it still seems like double opt in can offer you some protection? perhaps a big attack would really damage double opt-in still, but surely even a small attack to a Single Opt In would be a very big problem? I know if this incident happened to us on a Single Opt in list we would of had a lot more problems, probably getting highlighted as spam for weeks afterwards.

        Does sound like Aweber have some extra safeguards in, but on the other hand there are some real horror stories of them blocking people's accounts for things like this, giving a few days (a week?) to copy your lists and then booting you?
        Double v. single may or may not matter to your hosting company. Most hosting companies (and GoDaddy as a registrar) only care about the number of complaints, not the cause of the complaints. In extreme cases less than 5 complaints can result in your hosting being yanked.

        AWeber horror stories are few and far between. They seem magnified here because anyone can complain and those threads tend to get a lot of exposure. The vast majority of successful Warriors use AWeber. I've used them about 7 years with over 50,000 email addresses and have no complaints.

        And I've done both single and double opt in through them.
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  • Profile picture of the author JayXtreme
    I'm still not convinced...

    Some times I will use single, others I will use double.

    Even IF I was in the same situation.. it wouldn't be the deciding factor, for me anyways.
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  • Profile picture of the author kjhblue
    Although my post is not strictly about double opt in you may know the answer I registered for Marketing Makeover Generator by Rick Raddatz this produces squeeze pages that require double opt in. Which I prefer. However it appears to have been hijacked by XIOSOFT which is a nice looking web site with different tabs requiring the person to click on to enter the site unfortunately the site appears not to work. I then rang up the company they have an answerphone message inviting people to click on their site and use the support tab to register a ticket. However that does not work either. Does anybody know how I can contact this company or Rick Raddatz?
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  • Profile picture of the author RickRaddatz
    Rick Raddatz here. i'm at 303 949 8075 or Rickrad@xiosoft.com. We're addressing those issues...
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