August is here and we’re ready to begin celebrating! It’s the end of summer, a crisp of fall in the morning air, and that time to get everything back in order. Unless you’re living in the south, then it’s the hottest month of the entire year and for that, I am sorry. I lived in middle Georgia until the age of 22 where I remember how scorching the sun was in August and I never believed that anything could be hotter than July. But August trumps it, BIG Time. Now that I reside in the mid-West, I don’t miss it and I love how it doesn’t get that hot here and by August, everything is cooling down.
Speaking of August, can you REALLY believe it’s here? I sure can’t! I feel like three weeks ago, June was just starting! Crazy!
Enough about time flying and weather, let’s get on with the show. This month in August, I am talking all about Opt-Ins! If you’re new or have been hearing this strange word going around the entrepreneur world but are still trying to figure out what opt-ins are and how they work, I want to spend this entire month telling you ALL about it and how YOU can begin building your email list quickly and effectively using opt-ins! I am dubbing this theme, Opt-In August! Clever, right? I thought so.
Let’s start with the basics first and foremost to get you understanding what an opt-in are and how to begin working one easily.
What is an Opt-In?
An Opt-In, in its most basic form, is where you exchange a gift for an email address to your potential readers. This email address will be stored onto your email marketing campaign, such as Mailchimp, Aweber, or ConstantContact, just to name a few. Opt-ins are a great way to build your fan club and build know, like and trust with an audience you want to be in front of every time you send out an email.
That is what opt-ins means in the entrepreneurial world anyways. But I want to go through the different types of opt-ins so you can fully understand, and appreciate what different opt-ins look like and which ones you don’t want your own to look like.
Unconfirmed Opt-Ins/Single Opt-in.
A single opt-in or unconfirmed opt in is where a person will give their information on a web page, but without double checking that this is, in fact, a real person’s email address (there are spammers out there), your newsletters may go into the spam folder, which is the death of all good intention emails.
Confirmed Opt-In/Double Opt-in.
In this practice, when someone, say you, sign up to get on a newsletter or download a free gift from someone’s website, you’re sent to a confirmation page after giving your name and email address. On this page, it says, “Please check your inbox to confirm your email address.” This is the Double Opt-In. It’s a way to make sure that the person who has put their email address in the box is a real person and not some spammer or goofy teenager being annoying.
The confirmation will be in your inbox and once you have confirmed that this is really you, you can proceed to receive your free gift and get on the person’s email list. Its simple, but yet effective.
Typical Conversion Rates of Double Opt-Ins.
Okay, now that we know what single and double opt-ins are, let’s look at the statistics of how many people actually do confirm their email addresses after they have opted-in to receive an newsletter, free gift, or something else. According to Mad Mimi, she found that only 40% of people actually will confirm their email address, so she encouraged her readers to aim for 10-15% to actually go through with the confirmation process.
What happens when someone does not confirm?
When someone does not confirm their email address, they will not appear on your email list in your email marketing site.
How do you know your opt-in works?
Sign up yourself! This is what I do with all my opt-ins. I sign up myself to make sure the process is smooth and understandable. Plus, I want to make sure that when someone does opt-in, they are getting their free gift or instructions on what to do next. I want the process to be easy, and to make sure my email list is updating itself when someone does opt-in.
That’s it! That is the basic of opt-ins and what they are all about. You may understand that an opt-in is to have someone get on your newsletter or receive a freebie, but how do you use your opt-in effectively? How can you maximize your opt-in strategy? I’ll talk about that next week!
For now, I want to ask you what does your opt-in look like right now? Do you make sure it’s a double opt-in or a single opt-in? Share in the comments below!
