34 replies to this topic

[Scottie]

Looking at my mailing list, there are a lot of people who never confirmed. Do you think it is OK to send a follow-up confirmation e-mail to these people or should I assume they changed their mind?

[OldWelshGuy]

HI Scottie, I regularly forget to confirm registration. (great first mailing BTW)

I tend to surf in batches, and in clusters, and will sign up to a couple of newsletters at a time. I often forget to confirm, and when, in the past I have a had a gentle reminder saying 'did you forget to confirm' I then click on the link.

Personally I have no problem. I do have a problem with being bombarded after i unsubscribe etc.

So I say mail em out

[Steve Sardell]

Hi Scottie,

I am with OWG, I too forget to confirm, or the confirmation request may get picked off by a spam filte. I see nothing wrong with sending one reconfirm notice. BTB,I did not forget to confirm. Good fortune with your newsletter.

[qwerty]

If your first mailing has already gone out, I must have forgotten to confirm. I never got it

[Jill]

Absolutely, positively okay to follow up.

Spam filters kill those confirmation emails all the time. They signed up, and you have every right to follow up and ask if they're still interested, with instructions on how to confirm.

Personally, I'd get rid of the double opt-in if you can. I think you told me that your newsletter company requires it. I'd switch providers because you will lose a good chunk to those who never receive their confirmations.

BTW, Scottie, the server your hosting the new website on has newsletter list software on it, that is really easy to use from the little I looked at it. Until your list grows really, really huge, that might work fine for you.

Jill

[Grumpus]

Scottie - you gots ta fix your XML feed - it's throwing errors with the formatted text in the title and it doesn't work in my news aggregator. If you need help, let me know and I may be able to help you figure out what's up with it.

G.

[Scottie]

Stock are you talking about Right Click? I think that one does need fixing- I found an error on Jill's a while back and mine was set up the same way. It's in the date format. (I didn't realize anyone was using it! ) I'll go fix that now.

Thanks all! I thought Chris's article was great. My primary audience for this is small business owners with D-I-Y sites and I got good feedback from them.

Bob- I'll look but I think you were confirmed! So, that's not good at all. Maybe I do need to switch servers, Jill. I can't find a way to override the confirmation settings or an easy way to resend the validation. Would be better to move while the list is small. Hmnn... lots of bugs to work out.

[Minerva]

I think you SHOULD be able to, but this is what they say in the help files of Constant Contact, the service I use:

Q: Can I resend a confirmation email to a subscriber who has not responded?
A: No, you cannot send an email through Constant Contact or any other email delivery tool to those who have not responded to your confirmation email. Confirmed opt-in permission guidelines are very strict. If you attempt to email to any address that has not responded to your confirmation email while you are awaiting confirmation, your Constant Contact account will be terminated.

However, you may contact subscribers who fall in the "Awaiting Confirmation" category by telephone or direct mail. In your call or direct mailing, you can and ask that they re-subscribe to your list using your website's Visitor Signup Box. To view these subscribers please go to Subscribers & Lists>View and select "Awaiting Confirmation."

They make it pretty clear that you lose a lot of people with double opt-in. At a talk last week, they said that double opt-in works best with very tech-savvy subscribers, but that "best" is still only 60%. Pretty dismal.

[Scottie]

I know a lot of people still on the "awaiting confirmation" list are pretty web-savvy. My husband never got a confirmation e-mail! And I know he didn't because I didn't believe him and looked for myself.

IMO, I suspect the software more than the end user at this point. If they never got the confirmation in the first place, it's not an "additional" contact. That's a difficult spot to be in- if I knew the e-mail was received and ignored, well, OK. But if they never got it in the first place, that is extremely poor service.

Funny, 60% is about the number of confimed subscriptions.

I've got a tech support ticket in! We'll see. I'm very close to having them cancel my service.

[anthonyparsons.com]

Yep, that whole double opt-in sounds like a little bit of a pain in the behind. I use single subscription just with an autoresponder telling them that they have subscribed and if it was not them, to click on the link provided to unsubscribe. I like simple.

[Minerva]

I prefer single opt-in too, because you lose so many people with double. The down side though is that some ISPs, like RoadRunner, block all newsletters that aren't double opt-in. You need a service that lets you confirm people at those kinds of ISPs. Then you run into the same problem of people being confused about the confirmation message and ignoring it becase they think they already signed up.

[Grumpus]

I've got a tech support ticket in! We'll see. I'm very close to having them cancel my service.

I wasn't going to sign up for the newsletter (was just going to get your stuff in my RSS aggregator, but since that isn't fixed... - see below). I signed up and I can tell you exactly what's happening - and your support ticket isn't going to get fixed. Sorry.

You're triggering every spam filter between your host and the recipient. I have mine set up to store copies rather than delete them. One is on my host, and one is in my browser. It tripped both of them - because you have a bogus e-mail address in the confirmation mail. (It's not bogus, but it's got a freakin' session ID in it...)

FROM: conf.wsxs3czi72xt7qzi72xt2pi50xva23c7q9127@aweber.com

The link in the message itself is going to trip some filters, too:
aweber.com/z/c/?wsxs3czi72xt7qzi72x...i50xva23c7q9127

It's obviously a tracking ID of some sort and spam filters don't like it. You're going to need a new mailing list server. (Check your PM's in a bit...)

---

Stock are you talking about Right Click? I think that one does need fixing- I found an error on Jill's a while back and mine was set up the same way. It's in the date format. (I didn't realize anyone was using it!  ) I'll go fix that now.

Yeah - the one that's linked at the bottom of your subscription page. I use Netscape, which is handy because it shows where the errors are:

XML Parsing Error: mismatched tag. Expected: </description>.
Location: http://www.rightclickwebs.com/right-click-articles.xml
Line Number 44, Column 84:
      <description>Interview with Shari Thurow, author ofSearch Engine Visibility</a></description>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------^

If it doesn't line up right, that ---^ arrow is pointing to the </a> tag in the description. (There's no opening tag, but there is a closing tag).

G.

[Jill]

I wonder if maybe she can change the address?

Scottie you might check that in your settings or whatever. Good find, Grumpus.

I did get her confirmation stuff okay even with all my spam filters, for what it's worth. Unless the way it was sent has changed since I signed up. I think I was her first test subscription.

Jill

[Grumpus]

I think the way she has her tracking and signup script stuff all set up, that variable is not so much a session ID, but a specific identifier. It's not so bad that the value appears in the link within the body (though it'll still count as "points against" using Spam Assassin), but it's most definitely bad that it's in the e-mail address.

You don't see addresses like this in most list servers, though there are still some out there that use it. Usually this is for when you have the "reply to this e-mail" type confirmation set up rather than the "click this link" type that Scottie is using. Thinking about it - it may be the case that she has both confirmation types turned on in her settings. Scottie - have a look and if so, turn off the e-mail reply confirmation and then see if that fixes it. (It probably won't, but it's worth a shot to save you the hassle of switching).

G.

[DianeV]

I got one, and I opted in.

Have you checked out Dada Mail (formerly MojoMail)? The pro version is cheap ($50), intalls on your own server, and doesn't contain weird stuff in the email address.

You can manage your own lists online (or offline), use double-opt-in, and just about every other thing you'd like. Great online installation instructions, too, and pretty easy, all things considered. If you can run these forums, you'll find this a breeze.

<added> It also allows you to send a one-click unsubscribe link in every newsletter, subscription invitations, HTML/plain text newsletters, and has its own archive (though I'd suggest using intead pages in your website. You might like it.