Double Opt-in Signup Forms

Contacts Updated on July 25, 2022

A double opt-in is a two-step process for new signups, that allows site visitors to join a mailing list. The visitor must initially sign up and then respond to a welcome email containing a confirmation link. Using a double opt-in signup form helps ensure your contacts are interested in receiving your email content, and it also avoids robot email signups and improves email deliverability.

Here’s how it works:

First, someone signs up to receive your newsletter via the signup form you created. Then, Benchmark immediately sends a welcome email to this person on your behalf. The email includes a link that the customer must click on to confirm that they would like to receive emails from you. Only after they click on the confirmation link will they be added to your email list.

Contacts who don’t finish the opt-in process get filtered to a segment of your list titled Not Opted In Yet. Contacts in this section are not active contacts, and therefore cannot be emailed. On some occasions, contacts end up here due to a misspelling of their email address or in the best-case scenario because they were not legitimate signups. If a contact misspelled their email address, they will not receive the Welcome Email.

Sometimes subscribers forget about the Welcome email, and if you think this is your scenario, you can resend the email to them.

To resend the welcome email follow the steps below.

1. Go to the list connected to your signup form.
2. Click on the Not Opt-In Yet contacts.
3. Then, select them all, and click Resend Email.

Double Opt-in contacts are considered to be the best type of email subscribers. Since they have specifically requested your email campaigns and have verified their interest. Lowering your chance of them reporting your email as abuse, aka SPAM. When subscribers report you the sender as a spammer, this drops your sending reputation, which ultimately makes it harder down the road to make it to your recipient’s inbox. You can manage the opt-in settings of any signup form on the Opt-in Settings page.

You can locate this page in Step 2 Design of creating a signup form:

In the Opt-in Settings page you can find:

• Opt-In Process  Select the Single or Double Opt-In method.
• Welcome Message: Once a subscriber signs up, a Welcome message is automatically sent to their email address. You can customize the content on the email as well as the email name and email address. 
• Thank You page: Subscribers will be redirected to this URL after they have completed the signup form on your website. Benchmark provides the Thank You page. If you would like to add your own custom page, click on the dropdown arrow and select Custom “Thank You” page. Then add your URL.
• Confirmed Opt-in page: Users will be redirected to this URL after they have clicked the confirmation link in the Welcome Email. Benchmark also provides this URL. If you would like to add your own custom URL, you can do so by clicking on the dropdown arrow and select Custom “Email Confirmed” page. Then add your URL. 
• Alert Notifications: You can get notified about the number of signups you receive. Here you can specify the frequency of how often you’d like to be notified.

Additionally, we offer a Single Opt-in option too. In which subscribers can skip the confirmation link and have their email address added to your email list immediately. Single Opt-in has become far more popular in recent years; however, as you now know, it isn’t the best option. To learn more about Single Opt-In signup forms, click here.

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If you have any questions regarding the Double Opt-in process, feel free to contact our support team.