Posted by John Vinson

When starting out your email marketing campaign, one of the first major decisions you’ll make is how to setup subscribers. There are two avenues which you can take, each with a list of pros and cons. You can decide to make your campaign opt-in (where users sign up for your newsletter), or make it opt-out (where a newsletter is signed up for when someone sets up an account on your site).

Obviously, depending on who you talk to you’ll hear a wide variety of answers concerning which system is best. The truth is neither system is full proof, and you have to be willing to accept consequences depending on which you choose. Here’s a list of strengths and weaknesses.

Opt-In Strengths

- Establishing trust with your users, allowing them to decide to receive emails or not.

- Obtain quality response from your campaign, as people who sign up obviously are interested in what you have to say or sell.

- Less complicated to track.

- More apt to have users spread the word about your site. The stronger the loyalty, the better word of mouth.

Opt-In Weaknesses

- Lower subscriber rate

Opt-Out Strengths

- Higher Subscriber rate

- A better chance for brand image to spread among the community

- Chance for customer loyalty to be earned, especially for those who may not have returned to your site otherwise

Opt-Out Weaknesses

- Harder to track

- Chance that users might be turned off from your site, if they must sign up for a newsletter

- Word of mouth could come back to bite

Looking at both lists of strengths and weaknesses, you might be apt to simply say ‘Opt-In’ is the best option. For your particular situation this could be correct, but perhaps not. First, you should throw out any pre-conceived notion that an opt-out system is evil. Quite the opposite in fact; having an opt-out email campaign could end up helping you gain customer loyalty.

When you’re first starting out, the safe route is to provide your users the option to sign up for emails. People like to feel in control, and to receive an email they don’t want from a new site or service could do some massive harm. Establishing a strong core of loyal users should be the road you start out on. The key to running a successful opt-in campaign is to be patient. Subscribers might seem to come slow at first, and they probably will. Keep going strong and provide incentives to sign up.

Leading an aggressive opt-out campaign is for those who like to take risks, or has a highly established presence in a particular community or in general. The first rule of having an opt-out system, is to make the option of stopping emails to be made as simple as possible. You’re already taking a risk by sending emails which may or may not be wanted; you don’t want to lose any more points for a difficult unsubscribe system.

Something most people forget when concerning opt-out campaigns, is they can often lead to stronger loyalty. People visit all kinds of sites throughout their day, many times at a fast pace. They might look over an email signup, even though they might end up wanting to subscribe. It happens more often than one might think, and simply having them automatically added to your list after signing up for your site or service could gain you healthy returns.

Before deciding on an email campaign, take an inventory of your site. Find where your assets are, and what your weaknesses are. If your site is at an alarming low, perhaps an aggressive opt-out campaign might drive the numbers back up. Just don’t jump into anything without weighing the consequences.

About the Author: John is a staff writer for WebProNews.