Confirmation Emails

Confirmation emails play an extremely important part in retaining your new subscriber. A new sign-up does not mean a regular loyal subscriber. In this competitive world, where all of your competitors have email newsletters, you have to continually earn your way into the subscriber's inbox. This begins with the first email they receive from you - the Confirmation Email.

The Confirmation Email plays an important role for 3 main reasons:

1: Brand Confidence.
As suggested above, you are being judged. Just as your website is continually being evaluated by future customers for ‘ease of use’, helpful support, product information and (hopefully), giveaways or specials…so is your email newsletter.
If somebody has taken the time to enter their details it is wise to respond immediately with a comprehensive confirmation email that provides them with the assurance and confidence that you reliable organization.
And follow the old saying: "Start as you mean to continue".

2: Deliverability.
This is an ideal time to ask them to add you to their contacts, thereby "whitelisting" you. "Wait", I hear you say - you've already asked them to whitelist you on the "Thank you for Subscribing Page". That's fine…in fact, that's great. The more times you ask them, the more likely they will do it. Make a point of asking them in every newsletter as well. If they "whitelist" you here and now, after receiving the Confirmation Email, then it increases the likelihood that they will receive every newsletter - many factors contribute to e-mails not getting through to your members (see next months article for tips on how to ensure the highest deliverability rate)

3: Soft Sell.
Yes, soft sell. Why not? Email Marketing is a great relationship builder tool. Why do you want to build a relationship with your client? So, you can sell/up sell to them.
Obviously, this doesn't apply to every business, but it does apply to most.
Don't take your subscriber for granted. If they are reading your email newsletter, then make the most of this. However, this is a fine line, as you also don't want to abuse the relationship. A soft sell is just that. Ask them if they would like to download a whitepaper. Offer them a special, a coupon or a discount. Try and keep the communications going. Email is a two way communication tool - so make the most of it.

Include:
I believe you need to include the following factors in your Confirmation Email:

Ask the subscriber to "whitelist" you by adding you to their contacts. To make it easy for them you could give them instructions. For spam filter reasons, I would advise linking to these instructions rather than explicitly detailing them within the actual confirmation email.
Use the same "From" address as your newsletter. No use sending the confirmation from admin@yoursite.com when the newsletter is sent from "newsletter@yoursite.com". If you have no choice but to do this, then you need to ask the subscriber to "whitelist" the domain rather than the email address.
Full contact details - including physical/postal address, phone number etc
Instructions on how to unsubscribe. Whilst you don't want them to unsubscribe, you need to assure the subscriber that they are able to unsubscribe easily, whenever they feel the need to.
A link to your Privacy Policy. It is best practice to have a link to this at the point of subscription, but by doing this in addition, you again are assuring them that you have no hidden underlying intentions.
A description of what they have signed up for and how often they will receive it.
If relevant, a 'taster' of what is to come.
If relevant, some type of soft sell such as a link to download a whitepaper etc

Most ESP's (Email Solution Provider) provide a text confirmation email; however, you want to be able to customize this Confirmation Email. Don't settle for an ESP who only allows you send the standard "Thank you for your subscription" email. If you send an HTML newsletter, you may want to send an HTML auto responder Confirmation Email to your subscriber instead of the standard text email, thereby giving the subscriber a taste of what is yet to come…..

Remember; Start as you mean to go on - provide timely and relevant information, starting with the Confirmation Email.

Kath Pay is Marketing Director of Ezemail, an innovative company that provides comprehensive email marketing solutions including a fully re-brandable Agency solution. For more information on how easily email marketing can be implemented, please contact Kath at kath@ezemail.com