2 builders who never spoke to each other
Check what your signup flow silently loses
A confirmation step quietly drops a tenth of the people who genuinely tried to join, and the only fixes are signing them up through the provider's API or paying a tool to handle it. The same audit applies further along: a welcome email that trips an abuse threshold, or a provider rewriting links and dropping parameters, breaks things you will not otherwise see.
The method
- 01
Audit the unconfirmed pile in your email provider, because double opt-in silently loses a meaningful share of people who genuinely tried to subscribe.
- 02
To avoid losing subscribers to a confirmation step you must sign people up through the provider's API rather than its stock forms, or pay a third-party tool to do it.
- 03
If your welcome email trips your provider's abuse threshold, cut the personal digressions and the swearing and state plainly which page the subscriber used to join.
- 04
If your email provider rewrites links to count clicks, test what survives that redirect before you send the next campaign.
What it returned
- 50
Across about 50 signups Zue found as many as 10% had failed to complete Mailchimp's confirmation step despite clearly intending to join.
Zue notes there is no way to switch off Mailchimp's double opt-in from the normal forms, and warns that adding people without consent risks account suspension.
Mailchimp warned Paul Jarvis that his welcome email drew more abuse complaints than allowed; he removed a story about his tattoos and one deliberate swear word, named the exact signup URL, and the spam rate fell to zero.
Some providers route clicks through their own URL and back out to the destination, and depending on the provider that hop can drop parameters.
Sources
- The enemy - Fathom AnalyticsPaul Jarvis · usefathom.com · The enemy · 2019-11-17
- How to Enable and Use Link Tracking Protection in iOS 17 - Fathom AnalyticsPaul Jarvis · usefathom.com · Does this mean click data won’t be available for email marketers? · 2023-11-08
- Getting People out of MailChimp LimboCory Zue · coryzue.com · Getting People out of MailChimp Limbo · 2017-04-10
the second source
Three plays a week, for the phase you are in
No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.
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