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In this episode, we answer the question:
“Can I contact subscribers who didn’t complete the Double-Confirmation?”
Resources Mentioned in this Episode:
Let’s dive into this week’s question!
JOCELYN: Thanks for joining us for another mini Q&A podcast. Today’s question is from John Sheryl and he says:
“I’m using AWeber for my email list and just launched it about 10 days ago. I have 171 confirmed subscribers so far ,but in checking my subscriber list, I have over 100 additional people who have not confirmed their email. I’m assuming it is in their spam folder or maybe they missed the confirmation email. Do you have any suggestions on how should I approach this? Can I contact them directly? I hate to miss that many people who have signed up for my list.”
SHANE: What you’re asking is can you contact people who have not done the double opt-in? What AWeber does is, it collects emails for you on your website and then they can deliver them a lead magnet or something else that you use to “bribe” them for an email address. What happens is, when they give you their email address, AWeber sends them a message which says “Click this link to confirm that you really want to subscribe.” That way it prevents people from ex. using a friend’s email to sign up for everything and he gets all these lists. It has to be double confirmed.
What John is saying is he has 171 people who have given him their email list, they have clicked confirm and now they’re on his list, but there’s 100 people who’ve clicked on “I want your free product” or “I want to join your newsletter”, “I want to be on your email list”, but they never went in and clicked that confirmation link.
Now there’s a couple of reasons why this might happen. If it’s Gmail, your email may have ended up in the Promotions tab and they may have missed it or it could be in their spam folder if they’re using some kind of filtering. They could have just missed it or deleted it by accident. You don’t know why they didn’t confirm, so I would say yes – go ahead and contact those people and ask them “Hey we saw that you did not confirm to your subscription to our email list, would you like to do that please let us know”.
Tell them to check in their Promotions tab or in the spam folder and see if you can find that email. I would recommend doing that from a different address than you’re using on AWeber. That way you kind of give yourself a better chance of not triggering that same spam filter again. Nothing’s stopping you, you just want to be careful because you don’t want to harass people.
If someone has unsubscribed from your list then you probably don’t want to contact them anymore, but if you have people that have given you their email and they’ve just not confirmed their email address yet, then yes if you’re just starting out, you can try and find those people. If you can get 25% on your list then it’s going to be well worth the effort.
JOCELYN: And another thing we would say is to make sure the page people go to when they sign up to your list says something like “Be sure to check your spam folder because the confirmation link may go there and if you want to make sure you receive emails from me, be sure you click the confirm link” because I think a lot of people miss that step.
We have people reply to my emails and say I confirmed so people don’t really understand that all the time. Just make sure you make that clear in the page after they sign up.
Another thing I wanted to point out to you is that a lot of people really miss opportunities to get people to either like their Facebook or Twitter page. The Thank You page after signing up for your list is one of the best places to do that. Don’t just make that a wasted opportunity, like “Thank you for signing up for the list.” Make it something like “…and by the way, have you followed me on Twitter or Facebook or Pinterest?” or whatever social media platforms you’re involved in.
It might even be a good place to put a special offer right there – ex) “Since you subscribed to my email list, here’s a special discount coupon for you!” Don’t overlook the small opportunities to connect with someone. That may be the last time they visit your site if they don’t get any more emails from you, so make sure you’re taking opportunities for them to interact with you or your brand.
SHANE: If you want to see an example of how this works go to FlippedLifestyle.com and there’s a button to the right which says Click here to learn more and you can click on that and join our email list. Even if you’re already a member of our email list you can go back and check this again and it will send you to the same page.
You’ll see that when we send an email we redirect you to a list that says “Hey don’t forget to check your spam folder for the confirmation link and all of the free things you wanted” and you’ll see there also says “By the way if you just gave us your email go ahead and like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter” because you don’t want to just totally focus on your email list. It is the most important asset that you’ve got, but as Jocelyn said, if you can get them to like you on Facebook and follow you on Twitter, you’ve already got momentum, they’re already excited about your brand and give their email. Use that Thank You page not only to instruct them but to get them to like you in other places. That way if they’re not opening your emails then maybe they’ll check their Facebook or Twitter and you can still contact those people.
That was a great question. Email lists are so important and we want to stress that. Like John says, he uses AWeber. It’s a great company and if you’re not collecting emails right now using some kind of other service, we highly recommend you go and check out AWeber.com for all your email collection needs and make sure you’re building it.
You can connect with S&J on social media too!
Thanks again for listening to the show! If you liked it, make sure you share it with your friends and family! Our goal is to help as many families as possible change their lives through online business. Help us by sharing the show!
If you have comments or questions, please be sure to leave them below in the comment section of this post. See y’all next week!
Jackie Johnson says
I’m excited to share that I just signed up for AWeber today, and it really is as great as you guys said it was! I have a lot of email marketing experience with other platforms (Constant Contact, MailChimp, Campaign Monitor and Act-On…I work in marketing), but AWeber was by far the easiest for setup and usability.
I also just finished my first opt-in freebie and sign up form on my site and now I feel like I can really offer something helpful for my audience beyond just blog posts (my niche is helping people start and grow a boutique store).
Your podcast has been instrumental in helping me get to this point. Sometimes those of us in marketing over think things, and you guys just keep it so simple. Thanks!!!