Half your signups never make it onto the list

Happy Thursday!

Last week I opened the Klaviyo account of an eight-figure brand. Within the first hour I found something strange. About half the people filling out their signup form were never making it onto the list.

The cause was a single checkbox called double opt-in. Nobody on their team knew it was on.

Let me explain the setting first, because most brands never look at it.

What the setting actually does

When someone fills out your signup form, there are two ways they can end up on your list.

Here's the part most people don't know. Klaviyo turns double opt-in on by default for every new list. Unless someone on your team went in and turned it off, it's probably on right now.

That's how it happened at this brand. Nobody chose the setting. It shipped that way, and it sat that way for years.

That default costs money because of what shoppers really want. People fill out your signup form because they want the discount code. And they want it right away, so they can use it on the order they're about to place.

With double opt-in, the code doesn't come until they click the confirmation email. So the shopper is sitting on your site, ready to buy, and no code shows up. You lose the sale at the exact moment they wanted to give you money.

And the leak is bigger than one lost order. Almost half the people who fill out a form never click that confirmation email. They typed in their email, waited a bit, and moved on with their day.

I put a rough number on it while I was in this brand's account. For them, the missed confirmations added up to about six figures a month in lost revenue from the welcome flow alone. That's before counting the other flows and campaigns those people never got.

The honest default

I don't want to tell you double opt-in is always wrong, because it isn't. There's one case where it earns its spot. That case is a real spam problem: bots filling your forms with fake emails.

The confirmation step filters bots out. A fake address can't click a confirmation email, so it never lands on your list. If bots are hitting your forms, the extra step is doing real work.

That's the only case. For everyone else, the answer is simple. Turn double opt-in off, and remember, Klaviyo turned it on for you.

That's what we did for the brand I audited. We turned the checkbox off, and the list stopped leaking. The signup form itself never changed.

Go check your list settings today. It takes thirty seconds to see whether that box is checked in your account.

If you want help checking that double opt-in is off across your lists, or you want to see how much money it could be costing you while it's on, book some time below. I'll show you the projections.

- Raymond