3 Steps to Power your Magento Double Opt-in Newsletters

There are many requests for store upgrade to Magento 2.0 these days. Still, majority of Magento shops are running using earlier Magento versions (for example, Magento 1.9.x). Running a fully optimized and updated shop isn’t enough if you don’t use additional tricks to boost your sales. Sales are, on the other hand, determined by specific time of the year, product types, and so on. However, bigger holidays such as Christmas include major marketing and sales efforts.

Your goal is to clear up the stock during Christmas or other promo periods. One of the best ways to inform your customers about great discount options, loyalty programs, vouchers and many other options that are possible to redeem ONLY on your Magento webshop is to send them email newsletters. For example, the average open rate for e-commerce, according to Mail Chimp benchmark, is 16.77%. This information is good, since some 20% is considered to be the average good open rate for email newsletters.

There are 2 types of newsletter lists: single and double opt-in. Single opt-in option does not require confirmation of recipient’s email address. This is good for not bothering your customers to confirm their email addresses, but is also not so good for various reasons. The main reason is that you can’t be sure if the email address is correct, i.e. really belongs to a customer interested in your products, etc.

The second option is double opt-in newsletter list. It’s good for, again, various reasons. The first is: email address needs to be confirmed. Secondly, the recipient has to open your email in order to confirm the subscription. This is the first touch between you and your customer. You can attract him from this step and then continue with great newsletter updates. Furthermore, the open rate for double opt-in newsletters is much higher than for the single opt-in ones.

Having that in mind, let’s set up double opt-in newsletter for your Magento webshop.

3 steps to set up double opt-in newsletter for your Magento webshop

Step 1: Configure Newsletter 

Go to Magento Admin Panel and choose “System” menu. After expanding, click on the last option “Configuration”. Then, from the left column bar, choose “Customers” > “Newsletter”. On the right you will see the box entitled Subscription options. There are a few options to configure. The main are: 1) Success email, 2) Confirmation email and 3) Unsubscribe email.

However, the most important option in order to configure double opt-in newsletter is to choose “YES” besides “Need to Confirm” option. In this way, subscribers get email with the link to confirm their valid email addresses.

Step 2: Create a Newsletter Template

Magento offers a great option to create & save as many newsletter templates as you need for your business. For example, you can create Christmas newsletter or a special promo for your business anniversary or so. It is always convenient to remind your customers in a subtle way that there are many advantages of shopping online.

In Magento Admin Panel, there is a special menu for newsletter lists – “Newsletter”. The first option is “Newsletter Template”, where you can create as much templates as your business / marketing department requires. To make a new template, click on “Add new template” button on the upper right corner. Like for every usual newsletter template, you can fill the following fields:

  • Template Name: give a specific name to your newly created template. This will ease the process of re-finding your template once you need it for the same or similar promo season.
  • Template Subject: specify the subject of the template. For example: “Christmas 50% off”, or “Specials for Our Anniversary”.
  • Sender Name: you can be free to choose a name for your newsletter campaign. It doesn’t necessarily need to be the name of your business. It can be the name of your promo campaign, event, or something that will attract your customer’s attention.
  • Sender Email: enter the email you wanted to be displayed as message sender.
  • Template Content: a great option in Magento is that you have a full WYSIWYG editor available for checking how your email template looks like. Even better, a built-in link for unsubscribe to receiving a newsletter is there, so you don’t have to worry about this option at all.

When you finish setting up your template, click on “Save Template” button.

Step 3: Consider Newsletter Queue as Option for Many Recipients

Newsletter lists often consist of many recipients. These people can all be customers who purchased something from your webshop; or, some of your clients and even competitors can subscribe to receive your email newsletters to see what’s going on from your marketing side. Big newsletter lists have to, therefore, be sent in stages. These stages are, actually, queues in which the emails are waiting to be sent to the corresponding addresses.

This option is also available in your Magento Admin Panel – just go to “Newsletter” and choose “Newsletter Queue”. There you will set the start and end date, as well as the subject for the specific queue (for example: Newsletter-1 sending).

Still, for a really large number of subscribers on your Magento webshop, we advice you to use a third-party email newsletter provider. One of them is Mail Chimp, which also offers double opt-in procedure for receiving emails.

Email newsletter is one of the most powerful, but also affordable marketing tools. Here you determine its frequency, analyze the open rate and success of your promo campaigns. Magento community edition, as we saw from the steps above, allows sending double opt-in newsletters to customers who have confirmed that they want to receive news from your online business.

Double opt-in procedure has many advantages, such as: less spam (emails go to inbox folders of recipients who really confirmed to receive updates), more real subscribers (email confirmation means no false email accounts) and less bounce rate (once a customer applies, he/she is ready to open and read the offer you send).

 

We are always happy to see our clients being successful in their marketing efforts. A good webshop is not only about quality development – it’s also about quality and attractive promotion. We can discuss these and many other possibilities. Feel free to contact us and we’ll share some great ideas.

 

 

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