What is "confirmed opt-in" (COI)?
What is "confirmed opt-in" (COI)?
Confirmed Opt-In (COI) is considered to be the industry gold standard. It is a simple and powerful method of building and maintaining a clean, high-quality contacts database.
- A potential customer submits their email address via a website, form, or at point-of-sale
- The marketer then sends a confirmation email to the provided address, which contains a link that must be clicked to confirm consent and contains information that sets the recipient expectations.
- If the recipient does not click to opt-in, he will receive no further email of any kind from that marketer.
While this method requires more work and investment than others, the payoff in list quality more than offsets it.
- It increases the integrity and reputation of the sender in the eyes of the recipient.
- If a recipient’s inbox and time are treated with respect, recipients are less likely to report that email as spam, less likely to unsubscribe, and happy customers tend to make more purchases.
- Spam traps do not interact with email, so the likelihood of a contact list being poisoned by traps is greatly reduced.
ISPs often block email that generates a lot of spam complaints, or that hit their traps, resulting in a loss of inbox delivery, reputation and revenue. Confirmed opt-in provides a low risk, high ROI method of reaching clients.
When an ISP, filter vendor, or reputation provider refuses a sender’s email, as part of the investigation they often require proof of consent. This cannot be provided if consent has not been sought and granted via COI. They also can require a ‘re-permissioning’ pass, which demands that all subscribers be offered the chance to opt out, or to remain subscribed, and that those choices must be honored.
Note: while this is Spamhaus’ recommendation for confirming permission, it is not the only method. Any process that confirms that the email address belongs to the person giving permission, and confirms that permission, will meet this standard.
A corollary question: “If the recipient is given the choice to opt-out or remove, is it still spam?”
Yes, it is. If clear, informed consent to send marketing mail to an individual is not gained at the point of collection, prior to any email being sent, it is not COI and therefore considered spam.