This, Friends, Is Why You Confirm Opt-Ins

 

One of the routine tasks performed by our Support team is the investigation of Spamcop complaints.  With our Terms of Service allowing only the use of opt-in mailing lists, these complaints should be (and are) infrequent, and not all of them have merit.  However, each of them must be investigated.

A recent complaint drew some extra attention because of where it came from: sjobs@apple.com.  I’m willing to bet that Steve Jobs doesn’t personally check that mailbox!  However, it’s apparently a valid address, and whoever monitors it objected to receiving a mailing sent by one of our clients.

We responded by removing the address from all the mailing lists on which it appeared.  But Mr. Jobs is not the only celebrity to ever appear among our clients’ subscribers.  For example, we’ve seen quite a few occurrences of “president@whitehouse.gov” and “vice_president@whitehouse.gov”, and various forms of addresses for Bill Gates.  How did these luminaries come to be enrolled in these mailing lists?  Let’s dispense with some of the more obvious answers:

• They actually signed up to receive those mailings. As a famous philosopher once said, “you cannot be serious!“  If Steve Jobs has time to personally read marketing emails, then the shareholders of Apple should march on 1 Infinite Loop with torches and pitchforks.

• The mailing list was harvested from address found online. They’d better not be harvesting addresses!!  To paraphrase another well-known philosopher, I pity the fool that brings a tainted list like that into our system.

No, the more likely explanation is that people subscribed with false addresses on purpose. Perhaps they did it as a prank–that happened to me once, when an eBay seller mistook me for someone she held a grudge against; I spent days unsubscribing from all sorts of lists.   Whatever their reasons, confirming opt-ins would largely prevent the problem of bogus addresses being subscribed.  Confirmed Opt-In, or COI, is the process of sending new subscribers a message, to the address they provided at signup, containing a link they must click on to confirm that they really do want to hear from you.  Some people refer to this practice as “double opt-in” or “closed loop opt-in.”  By any name, COI is the surest way to demonstrate, in response to spam complaints, that your mailing list consists only of people who have requested to be part of it.

Other than pranksters, why would anyone want to give you a fake email address?  Maybe they don’t really want to receive email from you, and are only providing an address because you require it in order to sign up for some other service or offer.  Or perhaps they just don’t understand how you plan to use their email address, so they fear giving you a real one.  Either way, there’s a weakness in your opt-in process that can be addressed, whether you switch to COI or not.  Make sure your opt-in process is clear about why you are collecting their address, and how you plan to use it.  And make sure that the user feels comfortable that they can give you their valid email address for transactional purposes, without also opting in to unwanted marketing messages.

I don’t care how insanely great your products or services are, I promise you Steve Jobs didn’t sign up for your newsletter, if for no other reason than that he’s got people to do that for him.  So if I he shows up on your list, take a good, hard look at your opt-in practices.

Chris Broshears | Product Development