The Content Letter: Why We Use A Double Opt-In Process

Browsing through Constant Contact’s back end for our company newsletter, The Content Letter, I recently discovered that we have 23 unconfirmed e-mail addresses. These are e-mail addresses for people who have attempted to opt-in to our newsletter, but for one reason or another did not click the link in the confirmation e-mail that was sent in order to activate their submission.

There are several reasons why this could have happened. The e-mail could have landed in the person’s junk mail and they haven’t seen it, or they may have just forgotten about it and never clicked the link. I have done this several times myself after signing up for a newsletter that I thought I wanted. Some of them may have changed their minds after signing up for the newsletter. And, of course, some of them are likely spammers.

Spammers sign up for e-mail newsletters hoping to find an easy doorway into becoming a weed in someone’s rose garden. That’s why I like double opt-in lists. The individual has to confirm their subscription and spammers aren’t likely to do that simply because it takes up more of their time than an e-mail address is worth. All they really want to do is to get the e-mail address of the person sending the newsletter so that they can reply to an issue with their own spam. If they sign up for thousands of newsletters a day with that intention and only a handful of them are double opt-in newsletters then they have a low pay out in time commitment. That’s why we have opted to use the double opt-in process. It cuts down on spam.

If you have signed up for The Content Letter any time between mid-December and now and have not received an issue, it may be because you have not confirmed your e-mail address. Please search your junk mail folder and click the confirmation link. Otherwise, we will be cleaning out unconfirmed list and will delete all unconfirmed e-mails. We’ll give you one week. After that, you’ll have to opt in again.

If you are not receiving The Content Letter at this time, I encourage you to sign up for our newsletter by entering your name and e-mail address in the opt-in box in the top right corner of this blog.