Hi, I searched for this topic so hopefully this isn’t redundant.
I’ve lost a LOT of potential subscribers who have provided their email but never confirmed via the follow up email.
I understand the value of email verification, but isn’t there a way to do this better? Ideally a prompt at the time of signup, or at minimum a follow up email the next day if they haven’t confirmed. It’s really hurting my growth.
Thanks,
Jon
www.greenjuice.wtf
It’s not hurting your growth. It’s weeding out the spam. This is also potentially saving you money with Mailgun subscription costs. Why email fake email addresses, when you can deliver to real audiences? I think it’s doing great justice and should remain.
I feel many focus on the vanity number (gross total) versus real engaged readers. You want the real engaged readers to get maximum value.
Uhh maybe I was unclear in my original post, but I am talking about meeting people in real life, telling them about my blog, watching them subscribe in front of me, and then never getting the follow because they either forgot to confirm the email or didn’t realize what it was. I am very much losing legitimate subs this way.
Again, I’m not saying we shouldn’t verify, just that it needs to be either simpler / built into sign up / nudged after a day of not activating.
You can add them manually yourself. Otherwise, tell them to check their emails right after.
Or, they aren’t legit subscribers and did it out of courtesy with no intentions of committing.
“Just do it yourself” and “Bug them to check their email” is not a very scalable solution.
Nor is insisting people are pretending to sub out of courtesy? Really weird presumption! I meet lots of people at climate events around New York who by all accounts are genuinely interested in signing up – enthusiastic, even! I don’t force my blog on anyone, lol. And the fact that many of them never end up actually subbed is a legit problem. I can’t imagine I’m the only one who is encountering this.
My ideas – incorporating verification into the subscription flow, a la Substack, or adding an automated follow-up email after 24 hours – would actually address this.
In this situation, a QR code so that they can directly subscribe on your site is a great approach. (Maybe that’s what you’re already doing – I wasn’t sure from what you wrote.) Have them scan with their phones, and remind them right then that they need to click the link in email. They hopefully have /some/ email address configured on their phones and will be able to click the link right while standing next to you.
I’ve heard some level of receptiveness from the core team about Ghost sending a (single) follow-up email like you’re suggesting here.
Another thing that looks to be coming (based on Github gazing) is Ghost displaying the email address it is sending to when it tells the new sign-up to check their email. That’ll hopefully help with the would-be subscriber realizing that they have a typo and being able to fix the problem.
I agree, blindly accepting all emails may hurt spam scores and read/open rates.
However, I think it would be a nice feature to see the list of emails pending activation. Maybe with an option to re-send the email.