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Please confirm your email address
- cpeterso 15y agoYou might also consider adding a web bug image to your confirmation email. If the user loads the confirmation email's HTML, you know it is a real email address even if they don't click the confirmation link. Admittedly, it might be someone ELSE'S email address, but they could manually unsubscribe from your mailing list later.
- moonlighter 15y agoUsing image links 'calling back home' isn't reliable, because email clients have options to prevent such images from being shown automatically, especially if those emails might be considered spam.
- philfreo 15y agoConsidering Outlook and Gmail block them by default, it's extremely unreliable
- robryan 15y agoIn this case though, it shouldn't hard confirmations, a possibly increase them a little. Unless people choose not to confim because they get a "images have been blocked" message.
- mkopinsky 15y agoIt will also give better data - you can see of the people who opened the email and displayed images, what percent actually clicked the link.
- nupark2 15y agoAdmittedly, it might be someone ELSE'S email address, but they could manually unsubscribe from your mailing list later. That's half the point of verifying e-mail addresses. Doing this is likely to engender significant ill-will in anyone who is an unintended recipient of your e-mails.
- blakeperdue 15y agoI have a different view. I hate having to confirm my email address when I signup for a mailing list. It's more annoying to confirm my email address 50 times, versus the 1 time I have to unsubscribe from a list that someone signed me up for by accidentally entering my email address.
- latitude 15y agoI am actually considering not sending a confirmation email. Every maillist message already includes an immediate unsubscribe list, and I thought perhaps to add a small note at the bottom of subscriber's first email, something like --- You are receiving this email because someone (presumably you) subscribed $(email) to the $(maillist-name). Subscription request was received from a network address of $(ip) on $(date). If you did not request this subscription, or would like to be removed from the maillist for another reason, visit this link to unsubscribe - $(link). A bit of a mouthful, but essentially this simply piggy-backs the confirmation request on an actual mailing list message. Thoughts?
- dennisgorelik 15y agoIt's better to use double-opt-in: 1) Enter email on web page. 2) Open confirmation link in email inbox. If you skip second step - there is a risk that email ends up in spam folder and is constantly delivered there. Another risk - user did not really request your subscription. That would often result in your emails being marked as spam.
- latitude 15y ago
- moeffju 15y agoFor one, I don't know of any client that still loads remote images without confirmation, much less 1x1 tracking images. Secondly, if I can sign someone else up without their knowledge and get you to send then unsolicited mail, you're risking legal problems.
- latitude 15y agoThat's my post there. It'd be very interesting to compare email confirmation rates. I am running on a private mail server that is configured according to all possible spam filtering guidelines and yet I am still at only 82%. I wonder if these 18% is just people overwhelmed with emails in their Inbox or if there's still some issues with being mis-categorized as a spam. Anyone else cares to share their numbers?
- moonlighter 15y agoNo scientific data here, but it sounds to me that 82% is pretty damn good. You'll never reach 100% because there'll always be folks who sign up and then simply don't follow thru. I know I'm guilty of that. It's like handing out Broadway show flyers... just because I take one doesn't mean I'm going to actually buy tickets to see the show.
- larrik 15y agoIf you are looking for confirmations... perhaps a percentage just didn't use valid emails? Possibly accidentally?
- latitude 15y agoYep, there are dupes and there are mistyped addresses. But plenty of unconfirmed @gmail.com (about 50%) as well as addresses personal servers (on judging by the domain names).
- philfreo 15y agoAre you tracking emails that bounce? Or people that have whitelists of who can email them? Then there's the people who always send signups to a special yahoo signup address they rarely check. You can probably do a little better than 82%, but I doubt you'll ever beat 95%.
- dennisgorelik 15y agoWhat's the best wording for email body with confirmation link? Currently I use: ==== Please open this link to confirm your email: http://www.postjobfree.com/a.aspx?k=c3d26a0fc5d145cf88898a92ea99cb20 http://www.postjobfree.com/a.aspx?k=c3d26a0fc5d145cf88898a92... This link will expire on: 8/19/2011 10:29:11 PM EST. ==== Thanks for the tip about subject for email confirmation! In the past I was using "Link to confirm your PostJobFree email", but your new version with clear call to action ("Please confirm your email address") should perform better.
- MatthewPhillips 15y agoThese are the types of stories I like to see on the front page of HN.
- um3shg 15y ago+1
- yycom 15y agoIsn't this just obvious though?
- Tyrannosaurs 15y agoPossibly, but like many things that are "obvious" they seem not to happen as often as you'd think they should.
- 15y ago
- acangiano 15y agoFor AnyNewBooks.com I have the following thank you page: http://anynewbooks.com/thank-you/ http://anynewbooks.com/thank-you/ And the email I send has the subject: "Please confirm your subscription" Between the two, the message is fairly clear. Yet, I still receive emails from novice users once in a while, who aren't familiar with the concept of "confirming" a subscription. Usability isn't easy.
- cyhperpunks 15y agoNot to detract from your nice design, but wouldn't something like this be more effective? http://i.imgur.com/d98aC.jpg http://i.imgur.com/d98aC.jpg That is, downsized screenshot, with graphics drawn on top. I think the original looks too much like a real window.
- hdctambien 15y agoIt might be interesting to add a click event on the link in the image and track how many people actually "click here" on the image of an inbox. Maybe even have a popup that triggers if that link is clicked that says something like: "Sorry, this is just a screenshot. Please check your email inbox for this message"
- MicahWedemeyer 15y agoNor will it ever be perfect. No matter how friendly you make it, there will always be people who deftly dodge every piece of helpful info or design you throw at them.
- duck 15y agoI think it totally depends on your subscriber base, but with Hacker Newsletter I've seen about a 95% success rate. I have always used the default MailChimp subject which is "Hacker Newsletter List: Please Confirm Subscription".
- EGreg 15y agoWe had a cool thing. We let the user use our site once, but to "activate their account" and set up a password, they had to click the link in their email. Otherwise they would be reminded next time they tried to sign in (without a password) It gave people an incentive to verify their email! Check out blurts.com and qbix.com for examples
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- starpilot 15y agoUsing the imperative wording "please confirm" suggests the recipient must take an action, rather than passively receive information. This reminds me of a Mac OS X Human Interface Guideline: "Use a verb or verb phrase for the title of a push button. The title you create should describe the action the button performs—Save, Close, Print, Delete, Change Password, and so on." http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/Controls/Controls.html http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/UserEx... The difference between "Email confirmation" and "Please confirm your email" is like that between "Ok" and "Save."
- rickmb 15y agoI remember a talk by Terry Chay in which he showed that adding a smiley to the subject (don't remember the project) dramatically increased the response. Little details can make such a big difference.
- cema 15y agoThis is surprising to me. I would expect that I would more easily mis-categorize such an email as spam (than the one without a smiley).
- joshu 15y agoThis is good. I wish more people would talk about email praxis because it seems like voodoo a lot of the time. Do we even really need to confirm email addresses?
- moeffju 15y agoYes, at least in Germany, you have to show that the user confirmed their email, or risk a cease and desist when you mail them otherwise. Some lawyers send those for fun and profit.
- sudonim 15y agoWe use the Devise gem https://github.com/plataformatec/devise https://github.com/plataformatec/devise and the default subject line is: "Confirmation instructions". I can't say anyone on our team thought to change it. Good clear language like "Please confirm your email address" would be great to have as the default in gems like devise
- trustfundbaby 15y agoI bet the one with the title "Email confirmation" was going to spam folders ... I've seen a lot of spam with that exact title when I'm cleaning out my gmail spam folder
- pkamb 15y agoThis always bothered me about SEOmoz's new public analytics button on all their blog updates. The button says "Post Analytics". That makes me think "send analytic to SEOmoz". But what they really mean is "view this blog post's analytics".
- resdirector 15y agoI use usertesting.com. You get a ten minute video and audio of testers using your site. These types of small (aka big) problems are weeded out pretty quickly. Can't rate them high enough.
- Tilleul 15y ago78 comments so far, and not one mention of technical writing. I have to admit that I almost never hear about hiring or contracting with tech writers in early-stage startups. But it might be a worthwhile idea. I'm a tech writer, and I hope that not too much self-advertising for my first post here.