Ezine Advertising

If you missed the previous parts of our “Quality Ezines Checking Map”, please go to How to identify top quality ezines for your ezine advertising needs? (Part 1).

Question # 5 – What type of opt-in subscription is used? Double opt-in or single opt-in?

Let me clarify the terms “single opt-in” and “double opt-in“.

Single opt-in subscription is when all you’re required to do in order to subscribe is to fill in some pieces of information about you (usually your name and your email address) in an online form.

Double opt-in subscription is when you’re required to fill in the same information in an online form and in addition you’re required to confirm your subscription. Such confirmation is made by replying to an email message automatically sent to the email address you indicated in the online subscription form, or by clicking on a link from that email. If you don’t confirm your subscription, you’re not added to that mailing list and you won’t receive that ezine.

From the advertiser’s point of view, a top quality ezine will always use the double opt-in form of subscription.

Why? Because in case of a single opt-in subscription, these facts can happen:

i) the ezine can be sent to people who actually never asked themselves to receive it. The opt-in subscription form can be filled in with OTHER person’s email address and the publisher doesn’t verify anything but sends her or his ezine to that email address. You don’t want your solo ad to be reported as spam by such a person who didn’t subscribe to the ezine but receive it.

ii) if a potential subscriber fills in incorrectly the online form and misspells his or her email address, then the publisher will send his ezine to no one or … even worse … to someone else who didn’t ask to receive that ezine. Since the cost for the ad space is based on the number of subscribers, you don’t want to pay for such “subscribers”

iii) The spam filters are not publishers’ friends. When they use the double opt-in form of subscription, they know that at least their first email arrived at the right destination. In case of an opt-in form of subscription, the publisher doesn’t know anything. You don’t want to advertise in an ezine that arrives in subscriber’ Spam folders, do you?

What is the conclusion when the subscription to the tested ezine is single opt-in? Add a “minus” on your Checking Map and keep running the test. In case at the end of the test you decide that a single opt-in ezine has an overall good score and it worths to be used for your ezine advertising, then ask a reduction of price for the ad space. Explain to the publisher that some of the subscribers may be “dead” subscribers (use in your explanation the facts described above at i, ii and iii) and that’s why it’s not fair to charge you for such “subscribers”.

[to be continued]

Update, March 30, 2009: the article continues here – How to identify top quality ezines for your ezine advertising needs? (Part 5)

This entry was posted on Monday, March 16th, 2009 at 12:47 pm and is filed under Ezine Advertising Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.