Confirmation Message

[tsp]

Hello,

I have set up a new campaign with double opt in.

The confirmation mail my subscribers get are more confusing then ever.
They are confronted with all kinds of infos they have never heard of before.
From my new campaign only 50% do the confirmation (same website, same theme)
than before.

I get emails all day long with questions like:
- what is getresponse.com?
- I didn´t opt in for get response...
and so on.

I do all campaigns in german language and I have to admit that it is really "unlucky"
forcing me to start the sentence with:
"You decided to opt in a autoresponder from..."
They new form uses also:

List
Ip Adress and so on.

All those things could be placed below my message to the customer.
I am not willing to accept confirmation-rates that are under 95%.
I have spent much time and effort to get the subscription and I am very disappointed
that this is destroyed by an relatively "unprofessional" "welcome-message" so to speak.

I would appreciate it if you could discuss this problem in your team.

All the best from Germany

Rene

[forumadmin]

Hello Rene,

PRO account users may disable the confirmation for email and
web subscriptions. This can be done from Campaign Settings >>Subscribers>>Opt-in Settings.

If you wish to keep your campaign double opt-in, you can
edit the confirmation message. There is a 300-character
paragraph where you can enter your personalized information.
Please also note that we provide two German templates that
you may use. These can be found at Campaign Settings>> Personalization>>Change Language.

Best Regards,

GetResponse Customer Support Team

[sikertervezes]

Dear Rene,

I read your post - and I am also confronting similar issues.

My site - and my messages - are in Hungarian and I also believe the template offered is confusing. Sad, that GetResponse does not allow full customisation of the confirmation template (in case of double opt-in subscribtions).

What is your experience now?
To what extent were you able to localise (use German language) within GetResponse?

Specifically, I have trouble with these:
1. Subscribtion confirmation message - as you mentioned, it is somewhat confusing to subscribers. Would be nice if we wrote it entirely as we want it to.
2. English removal link at the end of every AutoResponder message. This is always there and cannot be changed. I can add another removal link in Hungarian though. (in this case why keep the English one?)
3. Unsubscribe/Stay-on-the-List page, where the two push-buttons are presented (Unsubscribe button and Stay-on-the-list button). The text on these buttons can not be changed to any other language.

I am curious about your experience - were you able to overcome these difficulties? If yes, how?

Thank You, Freundlichen Grüssen,

Tamás
Budapest

[forumadmin]

Hello,

If you are using a sign up form, and wish to direct your
subscribers to your own confirmation page, you need to
set up this option in the HTML code of your form.

Please go to Subscribers >> Build Subscribers List >>
Capture Subscribers and check the "HTML Form" option.
Click on "Start Capturing" and you will be taken to a
page where you can enter the confirmation URL you
would like to direct your subscribers to. Please enter
this URL into the space: Confirmation URL and regenerate
the HTML code. Once this is done, please replace the
existing code on your website with the newly generated
code.

It is true that at the moment the buttons on the default
unsubscribe page as well as removal link are available
in English only. However, we have been reviewing the
ideas and needs you posted and I can assure that we
will do our best to enable in the future links in the
languages in which confirmation messages are sent,
that is - Spanish confirmation message - Spanish
removal link etc.

At the moment we may only advise you to insert
manually the removal link in your language and
use merge word [[remove]]. [[remove]] tag will
be automatically replaced by our system with an
actual removal link.

Best Regards,

GetResponse Customer Support Team

[mediakomplett]

Hello tsp, hello sikertervezes

I've read other threads regarding this problem and I think it is the policy of GetResponse NOT to remove their adverts like "Sie haben sich gerade für die Aufnahme in eine
"Opt-in" Liste von Getresponse.com Autoresponder entschieden."

I think it is very poor and our own customers will not agree to opt in to Getresponse.com.

So this system is -- at least for non english markets -- simply not usable.

Best regards
Karl

[forumadmin]

Hello,

PRO account users can remove the marketing campaigns
by going to your Campaign Settings >>Personalization >>
Common Personalization Options >>and check the box next
to "Hide Marketing Campaigns." Then be sure to scroll to
the bottom of the page and click on "save settings."

As per the confirmation templates, it is the company's
policy to include the name of the service that is involved
on the mailings and this may not be changed.

Best Regards,

GetResponse Customer Support Team

[bromley21]

I am a PRO subscriber, and I've been very disappointed with the confirmation templates since I signed up with you over a year ago. Like the original poster, I have a lousy confirmation rate, and the poor templates are largely responsible for this.

I just tried disabling the double-opt in on a brand new campaign, and I received the following message:

"Confirmed opt-in is superior subscription method and once switched on, it cannot be switched off. Please save your settings again without changing that."

So I don't think even PRO customers can do away with this template problem.

You could so easily improve the templates - just a few changes to the default one would make a big difference. There are a few specific problems with the templates as they are:

1. Most of the templates mention GetResponse. Our subscribers don't know that we're using an email marketing service, and I don't think there's any need for them to know it. They will have signed up to our newsletter from our website - seeing another company mentioned in the confirmation email is only going to confuse them - most likely they'll junk the email because it will look to them like spam. (Your import domain feature and customization features are great for hiding the fact that we're using GetResponse, but the confirmation message templates aren't.)
I can see that you want to raise awareness of your company, but making your paying customers happy (with good confirmation templates) is likely to bring you much better results than trying to raise brand awareness in the messages that your paying customers send out (in most cases, to people that are very unlikely to have any need for email marketing services).

2. Many of the templates mention the campaign code name, which isn't user friendly. People understand things like "Our Company Newsletter", not things like "companyxxxlist3". Code names just look scary, and again, they make the confirmation messages look like spam.

3. The first paragraph is very important - we definitely want control over that. Many of your templates give this, but not the default one (which is the closest to being usable in other respects).

4. We need any automated text to make sense in relation to what we're offering. This isn't to say that, because we're offering a "newsletter", we need the automated text to use that specific term - the current default template is very good at using general terms such as "subscription" or "list" that would be applicable to most cases.

I've looked at all your confirmation message templates, and a number of them satisfy some of the 4 criteria above. However, none satisfies all of the 4 criteria. The default template would be great, *if* the first paragraph was removed - hence my suggestion to create a second default template that doesn't have the first paragraph. That would be so easy for you to do.... Please...?

Incidentally, last time I looked, Aweber allowed you to write your own confirmation template, including a custom title... Now that is very appealing. Is an improved template really too much to ask for from you guys?

[forumadmin]

Hello,

Please feel free to submit this idea in the Idea
GoldMine section from your GetResponse account.
The ideas submitted by users are reviewed and
discussed by our development board.

As you requested, I have set your account to
unconfirmed opt-in for email and web subscriptions.

Confirmed opt-in is mandatory on the import and
manual subscriptions.

Best Regards,

GetResponse Customer Support Team

[bromley21]

Thank you forumadmin - I'll give it a go without the confirmed opt-in to see how it goes. Hopefully there won't be any issues with people signing up fake addresses and that leading to spam complaints.

I submitted my confirmation template suggestions as an idea about a year ago, but I didn't get a reply and the templates didn't change, so presumably my suggestions didn't go down too well.

I honestly do think that the current selection of confirmation templates are disadvantaging your customers, and costing you business. It's a shame that something so easy to fix should remain unfixed. Just looking at the number of posts in this forum that say the same thing makes it pretty clear to me that it's an issue that's important to many of your customers.