Recently I was involved in a debate over the pros and cons of having people double opt in, also known as a confirmed optin, versus using the single optin method. I’ve thought about this quite a bit over the five years I have been working online, and decided to share the implications of this with you. Please read through to the end and then leave a comment to let me know which method you are using and why you prefer that particular one over the other.

This is the situation in a nutshell:

When someone visits your blog or other site your goal is to have them join your list. This is referred to as having someone opt in to your permission based list. The question that then arises is whether or not to have them confirm their name and email address, known as the double optin method, or to simply allow them to opt in without doing any further confirmation. There are arguments for and against each of these marketing methods.

With the confirmed optin your prospects must then check their email to find the message that allows them to confirm that they have indeed requested to join your list. They click on the link embedded within this email message and are then take to another page that thanks them for confirming and tells them to go back to their email account to await the next message. There are some variations with how this all can be set up, but this is the most common way I have seen it done.

The problem arises when someone forgets to check their email, or simply cannot check it because they are away from their computer or otherwise engaged. As time passes this particular email message moves further down the list, and many times your prospect will completely forget they ever signed up at your site. Another problem is that many of these messages go straight into the spam or junk folders, never to be seen again. Either way the result is the same; your prospect is not on your list and you may never see them again.

The other method allows visitors to sign up to request your information and adds them to your list. When they check their email account at a later point in time they will begin to receive regular messages from your autoresponders and broadcasts you are sending out to them. They still may miss some of these messages from time to time, but overall they will soon realize that you are writing to them.

The drawbacks with this system are that you will have difficulty moving your list to another company, should you choose to do so in the future. I have been with my same service for six years and do not foresee making any changes in the next few years. Also, someone may opt in using someone else’s name and email address, either as a prank or a joke. That has never happened to me in all these years, but it could happen and would definitely make someone very upset.

Ultimately, I believe that the single opt in system is best. You do not lose any prospects for the reasons I have mentioned here, and your list will grow much faster. You must ultimately make your own decision about this.

What are your thoughts on this topic?

Email marketing is a crucial piece of the puzzle in your online business, so use it as an opportunity to build a relationship with your prospects. Most of us have never written emails in this way, so it is a skill that must be learned. In fact, writing emails that get people to take action is a form of copywriting. In order to be effective with this, you must write email copy that jumps out from the rest, speaks directly to the person reading it, and gives a call to action that makes them click. Here are some ideas on how you can do this right now.

We all receive so many emails each day that it is easy for us to just scroll through to the ones we want to read. What makes us read one email over all the others? The first thing we all look for is to see who it is coming from. Even if there is no subject line at all, if it comes from someone we want or need to hear from we will open it right away. Make sure your prospects know who you are by always using the same name when you write to them.

The next thing to consider is the subject line. It has been proven that people are much more likely to open an email that is

This idea was hard for me to grasp, but now it is a solid part of my marketing strategy. Setting up a series of autoresponder messages for each topic and product you create gives you the opprtunity to stay connected with your prospects and clients for an extended period of time, rather than for just a short time after they sign up with you initially.

When someone first signs up, send them a message every day for the first ten days. Then go to once a week or so, making sure to stay on topic. This gives you a reason to send them more information and appropriate offers over time. If they stay on your list for a month, they are more than likely to stay with you for an undetermined period of time.

When I was just starting out, the idea of setting up a year’s worth of autoresponder messages seemed like an impossible task. Now I just set them up for the first 30 days, and then add to that during the next month or so. The result is that I now have sales of both my own and affiliate products every single day. Many of those sales are from products and services I have recommended. The idea is to create a system where you do not have to do any additional work in order to profit for years to come. The most popular system to send out these autoresponder messages is Aweber. They are currently offering the first month for only $1.

You gave your prospect something when they originally signed up with you. It may have been a special report on your topic, an eBook, an audio recording, some tips, or any of a varity of other things. Even if you gave them helpful tips, give them some more.

Set up a series of 10 autoresponder messages to go out over a 20 to thirty day period. This means they will receive a new tip every 2 to 3 days. Number them, and make sure they are helpful and informative so your prospect will be able to put them into use right away.

By numbering them, people will look forward to receiving each one in sequence. End each message with an action step or call to action, such as asking them to

When you are marketing to your list you will want to make a schedule for what types of messages you want to send. In the beginning I recommend setting up three messages at a time. One should be a helpful tip or other information on your niche topic. The next one can be a link to an article or a blog post you have written that is about a topic that would be of interest to your prospect. They may not be aware that you have a blog or are writing articles, so this is an excellent way to share that with them. The third message can be more promotional, where you are telling them about an affiliate product they may be interested in, or one of your products or services.

The first two emails earn you the right to send the third one. My experience has been that my list

All of us are on someone’s list. Every time you give your name and email address in exchange for a free report or other gift, you are added to that person’s list. Yet no one likes to be thought of as just another number. We all want to think that the person is truly interested in us as individuals. So, how do you achieve this?

Personalize your messages. Use your prospect’s first name in the subject line and within the body of the email. Speak to them as though you were writing to only them, and not to a hundred or a thousand people at once. The greatest compliment you will ever receive is

Are you confusing your prospects with your autoresponder messages? When you email your list, remember to only include one message. The biggest mistake you can make is to try to talk about two or more things in one short email. Remember that a confused mind will always say no.

Instead, write a short, three or four paragraph message that gets to the point about what you are wanting to share with your list. Tell them the details. Be specific. Ask them to

An autoresponder is a message that is set up in advance, with the intention of having it delivered at some point in the future. This was very confusing to me when I first got started, so I made a study of it to learn how to set it up correctly.

When someone opts in to your list, they will receive an autoresponder (AR) message welcoming them to your list. That first message is extremely important, as I have discussed in a previous post. But what happens next? You should have a second and third AR message already set up in your system. In fact, I recommend that you set up 10 messages to be delivered to your new prospects over the first 30 days.

The first message