MailChimp Switches to Single Opt-In
Graham Cluley (via Hacker News):
The only saving grace is that the better-managed newsletters ask you to confirm that you really really want to receive emails from them. They do this by sending a single email - normally with a clickable confirmation link - to the email address entered on their subscription form.
If you don’t respond to the confirmation email, you don’t get any follow-up emails. That’s how things are supposed to work. And it’s called double opt-in.
Yesterday, out of the blue and without explanation, users of the service received an e-mail saying Mailchimp will in seven days change a default behavior affecting how people subscribe. They have previously described the current behavior as a safeguard against malicious spambots and scammers. By their own account the new default behavior will contribute to reducing list engagement, reducing clicks and increasing unsubscribes.
[…]
Not only will Mailchimp change default behavior, they will also make this change to all existing lists without any intervention by the list owners. Read that again. They are automatically removing safeguards from all lists without my consent.
We know that some of you are curious about why we’re moving to single opt-in as a default, after having been double opt-in by default for so long.
[…]
Rather, as the majority of companies have moved to single opt-in, recipients have become re-educated on how email marketing confirmation works. Today, most people don’t expect or look for a double opt-in confirmation message when they subscribe to a newsletter.
Indeed, we’ve seen double-opt in rates within MailChimp slip to 39%. This means 61% of people start but do not finish the double opt-in process.
[…]
So while we’ll continue to support double opt-in, we’re shifting the behavior of native forms in MailChimp to default to single opt-in. We’re making this change now because we have stronger, more intelligent data-backed systems in place to prevent spam for all of our hosted forms—double and single opt-in—so we don’t expect this to impact deliverability.
For what it’s worth, nearly all the newsletters I subscribe to still use double opt-in.
