Why some subscribers remain pending

The best practice in email marketing is to use a double opt-in subscription method (also called "Confirmed Opt-in" or COI). There are many reasons:

• It's the only true way to confirm that all addresses in the list belong to people that do want to receive those messages: no one can confirm for someone else.
• It's the best way to ensure that the amount of invalid addresses is minimal: incorrect addresses will never be added to the list.
• It's the only way to ensure that spam traps are never added to the list: if a spam trap were added, it would never confirm its own subscription and would remain "Pending".

Sometimes, however, recipients that wanted to subscriber forget to confirm their subscription (or don't see the subscription confirmation request).

For example:

• They didn't see the message
• They saw it, but forgot to act on it
• An overzealous spam filter delivered the message in the SPAM folder
• Etc.

Using triggered messages to optimize the confirmed opt-in process

In the scenario described above (someone wants to subscribe, but doesn't confirm his/her intent, for whatever reason), triggered messages can come to the rescue!

An automated follow-up message can be the perfect solution, reminding the subscriber-to-be to confirm their subscription. In fact, a couple of follow-up messages could be sent at different intervals.

Let's see how this is done.

Creating the subscription follow-up message

First, create a new message in MailUp to ask the pending recipient to confirm their request.

1. Select Messages > Email > New
2. Write the message, inserting the subscription link into the body of the message. To create this link click on the "SUB" button after selecting the words that should become the link (for example: "confirm your subscription")
3. Clicked the Advanced button and turn on the "Confirmation Request" button
4. Save the message

Make sure that the message is short and to the point, and test it to ensure that it does not trigger a spam filter because of its content.

The subject of the message should also be clear about what the recipient needs to do. For example: "Your Company Name - You forgot to confirm your email address" or alike.

Setting up the triggered message

Now that the message is ready, you can easily configure your MailUp account so that it sends it automatically a day after the recipient has become Pending.

To add a new Triggered Message, click on Marketing+ > Automation > Tasks.

Set it up as follows:

• Name, description, time zone. etc. These are completely up to you. Keep it disabled until you are ready to go.
• Frequency: set it to run every day, so that MailUp checks for the condition every day, and check the Only run once
• Condition. Select After N days from ...
  • Enter: 1 as the number of days
  • Select "Email subscription requested (not yet confirmed)" from the drop-down
• Action: enter a sender email and name, and then select the message you created above as the email to be sent.

Use the simulation feature to simulate what would happen if the task were run at that moment: it should give you a number of recipients that equals those that signed up a day before, without confirming their subscription.

Here is a visual example of how the Event trigger section would look.

Best practices

We recommend that you follow these guidelines when implementing automated, follow-up messages to pending subscribers:

• Do not send more than 2 automated, follow-up messages
• Use a different subject line in each message
• Consider using a different sender email, in case there might be a deliverability issue with one of the senders 

 Test this with your own "seed list" (a number of different email addresses at different ISPs) or work with our Deliverability Team, if you subscribed to the Delivery+ service.

Related articles

• Viewing existing triggered messages
• Simulating the execution of a triggered message
• Viewing statistics
• About triggered messages
• About Marketing+