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When Are Double Opt In Leads Really Double Opt In Leads?
By Joe Reinbold

I have had an autoresponder service for several years and one of the most frequent questions I get from a potential client is - Why does your system require me to have my list opt in again when I just purchased a double opt in list?

Our system is a confirm opt in system. What does that mean? When you import your list of names and email addresses into the system, they are all sent a confirmation email which contains a link. The individual must click on that link in order to opt in to your autoresponder and become a subscriber. When an individual does that, he or she is added to the autoresponder's active subscriber list and is immediately sent the first message that you set up.

If the individual does not click on the confirmation link, they remain in a pending file until the system removes them after a set amount of time and they never receive the information message. Why is the system set up this way? When we first set up the system, we did not require that they opt in. As a result we were continually responding to spam complaints from our hosting company and ISP, receiving irate emails from people who were tired of receiving unsolicited mail and continually writing justifications in order to get us off black lists.

When the federal government passed anti-spam legislation, we conformed to that law and converted the system to opt in. Since that time we have received very few complaints.

So why, if you buy a list which the seller says is double opt in, can't you just load it in the system and mail to it? Why does it have to go through the opt in process again?

First of all, when the person on that list opted in to that list you purchased they were interested in receiving some type of information from that company or some type of free product. And they received it.

Then all of a sudden they started receiving hundreds of emails as a result of requesting that information because the original company started selling their name and email address to many other individuals/companies.

So you buy a list from that company, load it into an autoresponder and mail to it. Did they opt in to receive the information that you want to send to them. Not really! They opted in to receive the original information. If the mailing list company sold that individuals name and address many times, they are going to start receiving a lot of email.

Do you get upset when you start receiving a ton of unsolicited email? Of course you do and so do I!

Secondly, who is going to be the better buyer? Someone who is really interested in your service or product or some cold prospect you are sending unsolicited email? I think it's the interested person you want to deal with.

I have clients who import a list of a thousand names they purchased and they will get five or ten who opt in to receive their information and become active subscribers. Sometimes they get less. Then they are contacting me to find out why they are not getting a response to the list they imported.

One, maybe the people they mailed to are not interested because they didn't request the information. And two, there is a good chance that their email address is no longer good since they have gotten so much unsolicited email that they either cancelled it or it was cancelled by the service they had due to too much mail coming in. Many individuals use free email addresses such as hotmail, yahoo, gmail or others brcause they know that once they sign up for something free, they are going to get bombarded with email.

So what is the answer. We stopped buying opt in list several years ago because they were not worth it.

The best way is to build your own list of interested people. Get yourself a web site, place a form on it to your autoresponder offering some free information or free newsletter and drive traffic to that page through some of the following:

- Use a signature file on all your emails.
- Visit forums and use a small signature file with your postings (where they allow it).
- Start a blog and register it with the blog search engines.
- Join some free traffic exchanges like TrafficSwarm.
- Start writing some articles and upload them to article directories. Make sure that you have your bio at the end with a link to your web site.
- Join some social networking sites like DirectMatches.com

The bottom line is when you have your own list of interested individuals who really opted in to receive your information, you can mail to them whenever you want and no one can complain. They are worth their weight in gold!
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About the Author:
Joe Reinbold has been conducting business on the web for over 14 years. He publishes a free weekly newsletter Home Income Quarterly E-dition and offers home business resources and services at HomeBizLink.com and 123Response.com .



 

  

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