Are my contacts opt-in?

Email is a personal channel, and as such, our inboxes are personal too.

That’s why email marketing is one of the most effective marketing channels (when used properly). That’s also why most countries have strict guidelines about which email addresses may be included in your marketing campaigns.

What are opt-in contacts?

“Opt-in” contacts are those who:

  • Explicitly requested to receive emails about your brand or organization
  • Made this request within the last two years
  • Are expecting to hear from you about this topic

SendinBlue users may only upload opt-in contacts. Why? Because it’s the right thing to do. And because campaigns sent to opt-in contacts are proven to provide the best results!

Opt-in contacts checklist

Still not sure if your contacts are opt-in? Use this quick checklist to determine if it’s safe to upload your contacts to SendinBlue:

You can import these contacts

You can’t import these contacts
  • People who subscribed via a signup form on your website
  • Customers who made an online purchase and intentionally checked an opt-in checkbox
  • Clients who have agreed to receive information about your brand
  • People who visited your booth at an event or tradeshow and specifically asked to receive your email campaigns
  • Members of your association, nonprofit or organization who agreed to receive regular updates from you
  • Customers who visited your store and gave their contact information to receive promotional updates
  • Friends, colleagues, relatives who may know you, but did not explicitly agree to receive your campaigns
  • Visitors of your website who didn’t subscribe to your newsletters
  • People who opted in to receive emails about a different brand or subject matter
  • Contacts that were purchased or rented
  • People who are on a list that you accessed by sponsoring an event, joining a chamber of commerce, or another means
  • Contacts acquired by copying publicly visible email addresses from websites or social networks, such as LinkedIn (a.k.a. “scraping”)

Want your emails to be received, opened and clicked?

Follow these three steps to build a good sending reputation and reach the inbox!

  1. Only upload email addresses that you are certain are spelled correctly. If you collected email addresses using a handwritten form, be very careful to avoid typos and consider using a list cleaning service to check for invalid email addresses before uploading contacts to SendinBlue. Sending campaigns to email addresses that don’t exist is a quick way to build a poor reputation with ISPs like Gmail, Yahoo and AOL.
  1. Only upload contacts that explicitly agreed to receive marketing emails from your brand. If contacts are expecting to hear from you, they will probably open your email and are less likely to mark your message as spam.
  1. Send campaigns when and how your contacts are expecting to receive them. Very simply, your emails should reflect your subscription offer. If your contacts subscribed to receive weekly deals, it’s important to send sale or coupon content once per week. When contacts receive campaigns that they want, they’re very likely to act on them, and everyone wins.

Building a recent and accurate opt-in contact database is essential to a successful email marketing program. Not only does it help you reach the inbox, you’ll build a positive relationship with your customers when you do.

 

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