Building an email list can be one of the biggest assets online. Whether you know it or not, email has the highest ROI. Email is the king of the all marketing channels which gives you a whooping 4400% ROI and $44 for every $1 spent. Here are few amazing stats you must know about email marketing. So if you’re interested in building an email list of “verified subscribers”, this post is for you. What happens if your subscribers don’t verify their emails? There are few email marketing software tools that legally don’t permit you to build an email list without verifying their emails. So you’ll need to make them verify their emails if they are going to receive updates from you. Apart from that, here are few things that will happen if your subscribers don’t verify their emails.
They won’t receive your emails. It’s as simple as that, if you’re providing a double optin form to confirm your signups, if your subscribers don’t verify their emails, they simply don’t get your emails. It affects your email marketing campaigns, signups and performance. It affects your email deliverability rates, click through rates and so on It also results in lack of getting more traffic and sales from your email list
Enough said about the consequences of unverified subscribers. So how do you get your unverified email subscribers to easily confirm emails? Let’s talk about it now.
5 proven ways to get unverified subscribers to confirm their emails in 2023
Here are few PROVEN ways to get your unverified email subscribers to easily confirm emails and they work like a charm in 2023 and beyond.
1. Create an explainer video to confirm emails
Creating an explainer video is probably the easiest way to get unverified subscribers to confirm their emails. Here’s how it works; Create a 30 seconds to 1 minute (keep it really short) explaining what your email subscribers should do after entering their email address. Explain about how to click on their email inboxes to see your verification link and click on it to confirm their emails. Here’s how an example explainer video looks like;
2. Use images or Gifs to confirm emails
Just in case if you’re not a fan of explainer videos or if you feel your audience might not prefer videos or for any other reason, you can use images or gifs to explain your subscribers about how they can confirm their emails. If you’re wondering how it works, it looks something like this; If you look at the above gif, you’ll notice that the gif is clearly explaining how one can send their email address to the primary tab on GMail. That kind of easy to explain gifs or animated images can be really useful to make your audience easily understand how to get their emails verified. Quick tip: You can use email verification service in case if you want to verify email lists.
3. Use a countdown timer
Did you know that you can easily increase your verification of emails by using a countdown timer? Adding a countdown timer on your subscribe page can instantly create a sense of urgency which helps your subscribers to take immediate action. Here’s a classic example of how Ramit uses a countdown timer on his email confirmation page to get his subscribers to immediately verify their email addresses. If you look at the above illustration, Ramit has used a countdown timer along with so many other call to actions and reasons to verify his subscribers emails immediately. Most online people are lazy. They subscribe to an email list and often forget to verify their emails, it oftens with us almost all the time. That’s why using a countdown timer helps. If you’re a WordPress users, there are so many countdown timer plugins available which are mostly free to use. Just install any of those plugins and put the time limit to 5 minutes or less on your email confirmation page for better results. Read: Leadpages Review: Stop Wasting Your Website Traffic, Use Leadpages in 2023
4. Provide freebies
If you’re just asking your website visitors to sign up for your email list without giving any solid reasons, no one will actually be interested in signing up for your newsletter. But if you’re providing a solid reason such as freebies in exchange of their emails, they will mostly glad to be a part of your email list. You can consider the following freebies to boost your email list and also persuade your subscribers to verify their emails.
eBooks Plugins Tools Giveaway something related to your industry (if you’re in to real estate industry, you can giveaway checklists or provide free consultation to pick great deals and so on)
5. Give a try to single opt-in sign ups
If above all methods fail, give a try to single opt-in sign ups once to see how better your email marketing campaigns are performing. Single opt-in is when you subscribers sign up using an email sign up form (or opt-in) and they are immediately added to your email list without having to confirm their email addresses. That means, if you’re using single opt-in sign up method, there is no need for further confirmation as your subscribers will start getting your emails straight away without even having to confirm their emails. The only biggest disadvantage with single opt-ins is high email spam rate because most people who get your emails might forget that they have actually subscribed to your list. When they receive emails from you, either they move it to spam or you’ll face a ton of spam emails signing up to your email list which affects your overall reputation as a blogger, email marketer and so on. So use it only when nothing else works. Here are few more quick tips for you Follow up your subscription emails Send in follow up emails after a significant period has passed after you sent the subscription email, when there has been no activity from the subscribers’ sides. Most analysts and even the email subscription services themselves claim that sometimes a little reminder can set the ball rolling. Read: An Honest Review Of Best Email Marketing Software’s Do not be too frequent with reminder emails The biggest risk about these mails is they can be perceived as spam emails. The alternative is to filter the frequency with which you send them in. Remember, you want them to be little nudges in the direction that you want. You do not want them to be annoying the subscribers so much that they cancel out on you. There is however, no set number of how many reminders need sending. Put in a CTA in the reminder emails The reminder emails should clearly spell out the action for your subscribers. If you are sending a reminder to a long-standing unverified subscriber, suggest them to check their junk folder for accidental filtering of the subscription offer email. Since there are no URLs that you can place in your reminder as verification for your clients, it is prudent to place in re-subscription links in your reminder emails as well. Keep a track of unverified subscribers to take timely action If you leave the problem unattended for a long time, you will risk failure in your efforts. However, for timely action on the details you need information and on time. You can control whether you want to send in reminders or deactivate a stagnant unverified account. You can also store this information in spreadsheets after exporting the details from the subscription details. Set the tone of your reminder email Whether it is a long-standing unverified client or a new one over just a short time period, you want to convince them that verifying their subscriptions is an advantage for them. You do not want to come across as pressurizing or desperate. Draft your reminder email and read it.
Do’s and Don’ts
Make sure to keep the following important things in mind before getting your unverified subscribers to confirm their email addresses. Do’s of getting unverified subscribers to confirm their emails:
Do make it extremely easier for your audience to easily verify their emails. Most people are not tech savvies or might be signing up for an email list for the first time, so they might not have an idea about checking their inboxes to verify their emails in order to get emails or freebies from you. So it’s your job to make it simple. Do send couple of emails to those who haven’t verified their emails even after a couple of days or weeks. Either your emails got into their spam or they got jammed up in a flood of emails in their inboxes. So sending multiple emails for confirmation is always a good idea. If possible, create an article around how your website audience can subscribe to your email list and include videos, images, screenshots, gif (as mentioned above) to tell them how to easily subscribe and verify their email addresses. Do check out how your competitors are making their subscribers to verify their emails. You never know what strategy works great, so keep an eye on your competitors websites for best results.
Don’ts of getting unverified subscribers to confirm their emails:
Try to avoid single opt-in sign up process as much as you can just to increase your email subscribers count as it often leads to spam and you’ll often face email deliverability issues. Don’t ask too much details. Avoid asking personal information such as phone and address as much as you can. Most people don’t feel comfortable in filling up too many details to sign up for an email list. It also affects your overall verification count.
3 better email marketing solutions for unverified subscribers
If you want to get more out of unverified emails in terms of quality, make sure to give a try to any one of the email marketing solutions mentioned below.
- ConvertKit: The reason why we put ConvertKit #1 in the list is because it doesn’t count those emails that aren’t verified yet whereas most of the other email marketing tools such as AWeber take into account even those emails that aren’t confirmed their subscriptions yet. Read: ConvertKit Review: Is it The Best Email Marketing Software?Read: ConvertKit Free Trial: How to Create A Free Account With ConvertKit?Read: ConvertKit vs Mailchimp: Which is Better?
- Drip: Drip is the email marketing solution that we’re currently using at Bloggers Passion (we tried things like ConvertKit, GetResponse, MailChimp and what not) and we’re really satisfied with its features. You’ll get exceptional deliverability rates and open rates with Drip because of its powerful features.
- GetResponse: GetResponse is another amazing email marketing automation tool used by millions of people worldwide. The great thing about using it, it provides you all kinds of email marketing tools such as newsletters, webinars, landing page builder and so on at affordable pricing. Read: GetResponse Review 2023: Is It Worth Your Money Here are few important questions tailored just for you if you want to get better understanding about confirming emails from those unverified people in your list. Browse more Blogging Resources: Another less known yet most effective way is to put a countdown timer (as explained above as Ramit Sethi used) on your subscription page to persuade your subscribers to immediately take action to verify their emails. So overall, double opt-in is the best choice if you want to build a high quality email list who’re actually responsive in clicking your links, reading emails, taking action and so on.
Final Thoughts
Getting verified email subscribers is bit tricky especially if you’re dealing with non tech savvy people. That’s why you need to get creative and use the strategies and tips mentioned in this post to get unverified people to confirm their email addresses. Let us know if you’ve any thoughts about the post in the comments below. What other tips do you have for us in getting more unverified people to confirm their email addresses?
