Using Marketing Automation to create a double opt-in subscription

With SendinBlue’s Marketing Automation platform you can – among other things – set up double opt-in confirmation for your subscription forms. First of all, here’s a little reminder about how double opt-in confirmation works. The double opt-in process consists of sending an email to a new subscriber asking them to confirm their email address. This way you can be sure that the email address they provided is valid, which improves your deliverability. Double opt-in confirmation has many advantages. If your subscription form was created in SendinBlue, click here to find out how to set up double opt-in confirmation. If your subscription form was not created in SendinBlue, you can still use double opt-in confirmation. We suggest that you create your confirmation emails in SendinBlue so that you can add them to a Marketing Automation workflow. The double opt-in subscription workflow in our example consists of sending a confirmation email after your contact has completed a subscription form. In this email, the new subscriber has to click on a button to “confirm their email address”. They are then redirected to your website and added to the contact list of your choice. Here we have called it "Double Opt-in List". They then receive a final email confirming their subscription. Your contact's journey is as follows:

1. The contact subscribes via your website or your app
2. They are automatically added to a SendinBlue contact list
3. They enter a Marketing Automation workflow
4. They receive a confirmation email asking them to click on a button in the email to confirm their email address
5. Once the contact has clicked on this button, they are redirected to your website and added to the list (in our example, "Double Opt-In List”)
6. The contact then receives a final email confirming their subscription.

Setting it up in 6 easy steps

Before you start, you need to make sure that your contacts are automatically added to the same SendinBlue contact list. This can be done using our plugins, our API or with Zapier.

Here are the steps you need to follow to set up a double opt-in workflow using Marketing Automation:

1. Go to the Automation tab in SendinBlue and create a Custom Workflow. Give your workflow a name and add a description if you wish.

2. Add an entry point to your workflow by clicking on "Add an entry point". The entry point we are using can be found in "Contact Details" and is called "A contact is added to a list". Select the list to which you will automatically add your contacts and click on the "OK" button.

3. Add the new action "Send an email" by clicking on the "+" button and select or create the email template of your choice. In our example, we have called the email "Double Opt-in Email".

• The email template must contain a button that is clearly for confirming the email address. For example, "Confirm my email address".
• This button should send the clicker to a page on your website, e.g. your home page. In our example, we have chosen "https://example.com".

4. Add the new condition Wait until, and select Transactional Email Activity.

4.1 For this condition, you can choose between 2 actions for your users: opened an email or clicked in an email. Choose "Clicked in an email" and select the email template sent previously. You should also indicate the correct URL of the webpage you have selected in your double opt-in confirmation email. In our example, we have chosen the email template “Double Opt-in Email” with a click redirecting to https://example.com.

5. Add the new action Send an email and choose the Double Opt-in confirmation email. In our example, this email is called "Opt-in confirmation". Generally, this email confirms that the user has subscribed to your newsletter and suggests that they return to your website.

6. Final step: add the contact to a new list containing all the double opt-in contacts. In our example, the list is called "Double Opt-in List".

And that’s it! Now you can use Marketing Automation to manage your double opt-in subscriptions. You can, of course, continue this workflow by sending a new email 30 days later, for example.