Using double opt-in

With double opt-in, new subscribers get an email asking them to confirm their subscription, and only start receiving your newsletters once they do. It protects your sending reputation by making sure only real people who meant to sign up join your list: it filters out bots, typos and accidental submissions, and helps prevent spam complaints. It’s on by default.

Turning double opt-in on or off

Double opt-in is one of a channel’s Audience Policies, under that channel’s Settings → Sending emails. It’s set per channel, so changing it on one channel doesn’t affect any other. Channel settings are usually for administrators; if you don’t see the option, ask yours.

• If your account sends through company-wide audience sending, double opt-in doesn’t apply and you won’t see the setting. New signups aren’t held in Pending Confirmation there.
• The setting only appears while double opt-in is on. Once you turn it off, the toggle goes away, so contact support if you want it back.

Turning double opt-in off means anyone who submits an address, including mistyped or fake ones, joins your list straight away. If you do, consider pairing it with Recipient Validation to protect list quality.

Pending Confirmation

Until someone confirms, they sit in Pending Confirmation status. Once they confirm, they’re subscribed and receive your welcome email.

They stay in Pending Confirmation until they confirm, or until you change or remove them. The confirmation link itself may expire, but the status won’t change on its own.

Resending the confirmation email

You can’t resend the confirmation email from the app, either for one person or in bulk. Our support team can help:

• Contact support to check whether a confirmation email was delivered and opened. If it wasn’t delivered, support can resend it.
• Lots of people stuck in Pending Confirmation? Support can confirm them in bulk where appropriate, always in line with CAN-SPAM.

A careful workaround

You can switch a pending contact to Subscribed yourself (see re-subscribing a contact), but we don’t advise it: some people deliberately choose not to confirm.

If you decide to reach out anyway:

1. Export the contacts in Pending Confirmation status.
2. Re-import them with a status of Subscribed and a tag such as Pending-confirmation so you can identify them. Keep every other field as it was in your export, since the import updates every field.
3. Build a segment from that tag and send a one-off email explaining that they subscribed to your newsletter, with a clear note that they can unsubscribe with the link in the footer if they didn’t mean to sign up.

This gives them an easy way out before your next regular edition.

Related

• Letting contacts unsubscribe
• Managing Your Channel Settings