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Removing the verification process for the mailing list
Question
When a user signs up to the mailing list, the email address isn't getting set to 'live' because the user has to click a link to confirm their address. This cuts down the number of people on my list so I want to bypass this and add anyone who signs up without a confirmation.
How do I do this?
Answer
The mailing list works through 'verified opt-in'. There is no switch to deactivate this because it is both inconsiderate and risky to operate a mailing list without such safeguards.
The reason is simple. Spam. Our system employs 'best practice' mailing list management to ensure that those who get added to the mailing list ARE the address owners. Only the address owner will receive the confirmation link and can confirm their membership. It is therefore IMPOSSIBLE for anyone other than the email address owner to add themselves.
Without this system, ANYONE can sign ANY ADDRESS up to your mailing list. Addresses may be added accidentally (typo in the domain for example) or maliciously (disgruntled person attempting to mailbomb victim).
When you send bulk mail you need to be really careful these days. If someone who receives your mail makes a complaint to your ISP (or forwards the mail to SpamCop who who forwards it to your ISP), the first thing your ISP will do is ask you to show the signup verification to prove that the address was added by the address owner. You will have no proof because you added the address without any attempt to confirm it was genuine.
Since spamming issues often result in mail servers being added to blocklists, your sloppy mailing practice has affected mail delivery for all your ISP's customers, as that mail server is listed as a source of spam and mail from it may get blocked by other ISPs.
Your ISP will not be happy. If you're lucky they will warn you to dump your entire tainted mailing list (because you have no way to know which addresses are bad), institute a proper list management process (like CactuShop's) and make you promise never to bulk mail unverified addresses again. At worst they will boot you off their system and charge you clean-up costs to fix the mess you've created.
These are not theoretical issues. We have seen customers who ran sloppy mailing lists (not derived from CactuShop) experience these problems. THIS IS WHY OUR MAILING LIST SYSTEM IS HARD-WIRED AS CONFIRMED OPT-IN ONLY.
Some store owners argue that any recipient added to the list in error can simply unsubscribe. This is not a valid defence against accusations of spamming. Why should a user have to unsubscribe from something they NEVER subscribed to in the first place? Why should they trust you to unsubscribe them when you added them without their consent?
How about if everyone just blasted off bulk mail to everyone else and required them to opt-out? You'd get several million mails each day - are you really going to click all those opt-out links?
If you really want to run an open-loop system that lets anyone signup, then there are plenty of systems that can probably do this. Just change the signup box on your CactuShop skin to point to whatever system you choose and it's sorted. But it's not something we can possibly condone.
Consider the benefits of proper confirmed opt-in as operated by CactuShop. You will be 100% certain that every address on your list is a genuine subscriber. You won't risk the wrath of angry recipients who did not signup and angrier ISPs who you've managed to get blocked. Sure, you might have fewer people on your list, but that's the whole point. The ones who did not confirm were quite probably bogus anyway.
If you believe that conversion rates are lower and that genuine recipients are not confirming their address, then think about changing the Config_Subjectline3 to something more forceful such as 'ACTION REQUIRED - please confirm your mailing list opt-in'.
Again, we can only warn of the risks and problems that will result from abandoning good mailing list practices in search of quick signup rates (puffed up with a good percentage of bogus addresses and unwilling recipients).