List Building – Double vs Single Opt-In

List building when marketing on the internet is a very prudent and cost efficient way of growing your business. When working online much time and effort is needed to generate traffic so it only makes sense to capture the contact information of people visiting your site when you can. In doing so many use a double opt-in system to 'verify' whether the person really wants to be a member of the list.

When building an email marketing list for your business is this really necessary or even advisable?

Here are 3 strong reasons as to why using a single opt-in system for building your email marketing list makes much more sense.

Capturing Information is Invasive

To begin with people in general are not very comfortable giving out any personal, especially to strangers. Make no mistake you are a stranger that is attempting to build an email marketing list by asking anybody who lands on your page to give you their contact information. Working online it takes time to build relationships with people due to the 'remoteness' of 'contact by internet' so this should be kept in mind when collecting names. Remember what we were all taught growing up, never talk to strangers!

Not As Irritating!

When ever somebody agrees to leave their contact information you can always consider yourself fortunate. You obviously want to make the entire experience for these people as comfortable as possible since as we have already discussed what is being requested is actually invasive and therefore uncomfortable. Asking these people to 'jump through another hoop'  is pushing your luck and their tolerance. More times then not they will choose to walk away! They lose nothing and you lose a list member!

Bigger Is Better

Obviously there will be quite a number of people who have 'second' thoughts or possibly did not even see the confirmation email in order that they may opt-in again. When marketing on the internet not everybody will be receptive to what you have to offer and this is just a simple fact! Therefore the greater the number of people you can offer something to the greater your income, just another fact! It stands to reason that the bigger the list, the bigger your income, period. Why sabotage your own efforts by irritating people with a double opt-in system? Capture their name and  be grateful!

There is little argument that list building is one of the smartest things anyone marketing on the internet can do. By capturing the contact information of people who visit your site you now have easy access to folks who have already shown an interest in what you do. Anyone working online can tell you that to generate traffic it takes time and effort so having an email marketing list will help you work smarter. And in the spirit of working smarter it makes little sense to use a double opt-in system for collecting contact information. The 3 reasons reviewed above for using a single opt-in system emphasize being less invasive or irritating to people. After all you do want a large list, right? By using double op-ins it seems as if you are asking subscribers to unsubscribe or at the very least, driving them off before you can even promote to them. In the end it is ultimately going to be your choice, but when it comes to your email marketing list, size does matter!