Using confirmation to get good email addresses

For 25 hours the group De La Soul is releasing their entire catalog for free online. What none of the articles are mentioning is that they’re using this to build their database of email addresses in a way that’s going to result in a clean database of high value email addresses.
How are they doing that? By making sure the addresses belong to their fans before they actually give fans access to the catalog. Yes, they are using confirmation as part of their signup process.
If you go to their website: wearedelasoul.com you’re asked for an email address so they can send the downloads to you.
dls_website
The fine print is the interesting bit:

Once you click submit you’ll need to confirm your email address and we’ll send you the download links as soon as we can.
There are lots of people wanting the music so it might take a few hours!

After you submit the mail, you’re taken to a webpage that tells you what to expect. The interesting bit here is the suggestion to look in your promotions tab if you’re using Gmail. Although I’m hearing that it turned up in the updates tab rather than the promotions tab.
dls_confirmationmail
Thanks to Mailchimp’s awesome infrastructure, the confirmation email arrived by the time I switched windows to look at my mail client.
Another clear, well branded message that gives explicit instructions on what to do.
dls_confirmationmail
Finally, I got through the confirmation process and am now waiting to be emailed a link to what, I’m assuming, is my custom download site.
This is a great way for De La Soul to step onto the email stage. They now have a confirmed list of email addresses belonging to fans. They can use that list to keep fans updated and announce promotions. They don’t have to worry at all about sending any future emails to people who didn’t agree to receive the mail.
Fans get access to their music and songs. It’s a win-win all around and a great example of how confirmed opt-in can actually work.

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Confirmation is too hard…

One of the biggest arguments against confirmation is that it’s too hard and that there is too much drop off from subscribers. In other words, recipients don’t want to confirm because it’s too much work on their part.
I don’t actually think it’s too much work for recipients. In fact, when a sender has something the recipient wants then they will confirm.
A couple years ago I was troubleshooting a problem. One of my client’s customer was seeing a huge percentage of 550 errors and I was tasked with finding out what they were doing. The first step was identifying the source of the email addresses. Turns out the customer was a Facebook app developer and all the addresses (so he told me) were from users who had installed his apps on Facebook. I did my own tests and couldn’t install any applications without confirming my email address.
Every Facebook user that has installed an application has clicked on an email to confirm they can receive email at the address they supplied Facebook. There are over 1 billion users on Facebook.
Clicking a link isn’t too hard for people who want your content. I hear naysayers who talk about “too hard” and “too much drop off” but what they’re really saying is “what I’m doing isn’t compelling enough for users to go find the confirmation email.”
This isn’t to say everyone who has a high drop off of confirmations is sending poor content. There are some senders that have a lot of fake, poor or otherwise fraudulent addresses entered into their forms. In many cases this is the driving factor for them using COI: to stop people from using their email to harass third parties. Using COI in these cases is a matter of self protection. If they didn’t use COI, they’d have a lot of complaints, traps and delivery problems.
The next time you hear confirmation is too hard, remember that over 1 billion people, including grandparents and the technologically challenged, managed to click that link to confirm their Facebook account. Sure, they wanted what Facebook was offering, but that just tells us that if they want it bad enough they’ll figure out how to confirm.
HT: Spamresource

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