Opt‑in Email Strategies Every Marketer Should Know

What is an opt-in email?

An opt-in email is an email that’s only sent to subscribers who willingly provided their email address to join your mailing list. Opt-in emails are a form of inbound email marketing, which means you aren’t reaching out to random customers to try to drum up interest in your brand or product. Instead, you’re giving your customers the right to choose whether they want to receive marketing emails or not. If a customer opts to receive marketing emails, that means they’ve taken an interest in your company or its products or services.

Opt-out email marketing is the opposite of opt-in email. With opt-out marketing, you’re sending emails to a mailing list you’ve built without the consent of the people on your mailing list. The idea is to get people interested by sending them effective marketing emails, but that doesn’t work very well if people aren’t interested in what you’re trying to sell. If people aren’t interested in your business, they’ll simply click the unsubscribe button at the bottom of the email and move on with their day.

Keep in mind that many businesses provide one-time discounts and other special benefits to people who voluntarily join a mailing list. Even offering something as simple as a 10% or 15% coupon code can give people the incentive they need to join your mailing list. Once you’ve got a large list of subscribers built up, you can use newsletters and other marketing emails to keep them up-to-date on any new products and updates about your business.

Opt-in email best practices

As is the case with any type of email marketing, there are a number of best practices you should follow when it comes to opt-in email marketing. The goal is to build a loyal mailing list without your subscribers feeling like they were tricked into joining. Here are some of the opt-in email best practices you should keep in mind.

Tell people what to expect

Opt-in email marketing is a two-way street; the idea is to build a mailing list of subscribers that you can maintain. When you’re inviting people to opt-in to your newsletter or mailing list, make sure you let them know what they can expect from you. What kind of marketing emails do you plan on sending? How often should members of your mailing list expect to receive an email from you? Setting these expectations early on is important.

When you ask customers to opt-in to your marketing emails, you should offer a brief description of what they’re opting into and what they can do if they no longer want to receive emails. You can also use this section to thank people who choose to join your mailing list.

Keep signups simple

At the end of the day, the internet makes a lot of things more difficult. When it comes to opt-in emails, try to keep the signup process as simple as possible to make it easier for people to subscribe. All you really need to get somebody to join your mailing list is their email, so don’t make mailing list members create an account or provide a bunch of information you don’t need.

For many businesses, the easiest way to build a mailing list is to make a simple request through their website. You can use a pop-up or you can simply include a section on the homepage where visitors can sign up for marketing emails. The easier you make it to sign up for your mailing list, the more people are likely to subscribe.

Ask for feedback

If there’s one thing every business owner needs to know, it’s that things don’t always go perfectly the first time around. There’s nothing wrong with giving something your best shot and making changes based on the feedback you receive, especially when it comes to your email marketing campaign. Marketing emails should be focused on providing value to the reader, so you want to design your emails around what the customers want. You should also listen to customer feedback about joining your mailing list, that way you can make everything as simple and customer-focused as possible.

When you send new subscribers a confirmation email thanking them for joining your mailing list, you can provide a link for feedback or encourage them to send any feedback to a particular email address. Giving people an easy way to provide feedback makes it easier to perfect your email marketing campaign.

Offer something of value

If you want to build a solid mailing list, you need to give people a reason to opt-in. Offering an incentive is a great way to grow your mailing list, and these incentives can even help drive sales. You don’t have to offer anything crazy; even a simple coupon code is enough to give people a reason to join. Alternatively, you could offer a free sample of a product or a trial for a service you offer. Anything you can do to incentivize joining your mailing list is a step in the right direction.

Keep in mind that some people will sign up for your mailing list for the incentive, only to unsubscribe once they’ve used their coupon code. While it’s important to get people to sign up for your mailing list, it’s also important to focus on retaining those subscribers.

Let subscribers customize their subscription

In the digital age, internet users want as much control as possible. The more users can customize settings and preferences, the better products and services can be tailored to fit them. One way to make your opt-in email process a little better is to let subscribers customize their subscription with opt-in settings. You can let people choose what information they share with you, what types of emails they receive, and more. Giving consumers more power makes it easier for you to build your opt-in email list and deliver quality content to your readers.

Opt-in email setting in Mailchimp

With Mailchimp, you get more control over opt-in emails and your mailing list thanks to a wide variety of settings. You can choose whether you want to use a single opt-in or double opt-in, and you can update these settings separately for a new audience, an existing audience, or for multiple audiences. Mailchimp even provides you with a signup form for each of your audiences, so you can put this form on your website to grow your mailing list.

Single vs double opt-in

So, what’s the difference between single opt-in and double opt-in? With a single opt-in email, subscribers only have to opt-in once to start receiving your marketing emails. With a double opt-in email, subscribers will need to opt-in twice to start receiving emails as part of your mailing list.

If you’re based in the EU, double opt-in is generally considered the best practice for email marketing. That being said, there’s no law that states that double opt-in emails are required in the EU. Ultimately, your focus should be on keeping your subscribers happy.

Opt-in emails are always a good idea

Building a mailing list is a good way to market your company via email, but you don’t want to send unsolicited emails to people who don’t want to read them. With opt-in email marketing, you can build a mailing list of people who agreed to receive marketing emails from you, that way you don’t have to worry about sending unwanted spam.

When it comes to email marketing, Mailchimp is the simple solution. With Mailchimp, you get access to tons of tools and resources that make email marketing easier, including email automation tools. Try Mailchimp today and see how opt-in emails can give your mailing list a boost.