Set up the double opt-in system

Article
05/15/2018
10 minutes to read

Applies To: Dynamics Marketing

Important

Microsoft Dynamics Marketing has been discontinued and is no longer available. All customer data related to this product has been permanently deleted from all Microsoft servers and is no longer available for extraction. This documentation is being provided for historical purposes only.

This topic explains how to set up double-opt in for inbound marketing.

Inbound marketing and organic lead generation are great ways to add new leads to your contact database. These represent people who are already interested in your products and have signed up for newsletters, online services, events, downloads, etc. They are customers who are quite likely ready to buy.

To make sure that leads such as these are legitimate and represent real customers with real email addresses, many organizations implement a double-opt-in process. This means that new contacts must first submit their email address and then click a link in a message sent to that address, thus confirming both the address and the contact’s interest. Double opt-in is a good idea in all countries/regions, and in many countries/regions (especially in Europe), it’s required by law.

Microsoft Dynamics Marketing provides a comprehensive double-opt-in feature that is fully incorporated into marketing emails, landing pages and company configurations. A full auditing trail is also maintained for when evidence of double-opt-in compliance is required.

Prerequisites

The double opt-in system touches on many elements of Dynamics Marketing, which means that the user setting up the system will typically be an admin but at least requires all of the following privileges:

Results
Marketing Companies
Email Marketing
Landing Pages
Marketing

More information:Work with user accounts and staff contacts

The double-opt-in customer experience

The double-opt-in process works as follows:

A new potential marketing contact sees an article or some other promotional material offering a free download, webinar, discount, newsletter, etc. To receive the offer, the potential contact must visit a specified landing page, where they must fill out and submit a form that includes their email address.
On submitting the form, the new potential contact is shown a page that tells him or her to check their email for a confirmation message, which includes a link that the contact must click on to confirm their address and consent.
Dynamics Marketing stores the new contact details, but marks the contact as “do not email”. It then sends a confirmation email to the address specified by the potential contact.
The potential contact opens the opt-in email and clicks the link. This opens a web browser, which registers the click with Dynamics Marketing and immediately redirects to a thank-you page.
Dynamics Marketing records that the contact has completed the double-opt-in process and clears that contact’s “do not email” status. It then delivers a welcome email, possibly with instructions for collecting a promised perk.

Tip

The confirmation email will only be sent to contacts that have their “do not email” flag set. Existing contacts that submit the landing page and do not have this flag set will not receive the confirmation email, but they will still receive the welcome email. This means that you can freely use the same landing page to register both new and existing contacts.

Enable a company for double opt-in

Double opt-in is enabled at the company level, and is available for both the site company and/or for each client company that requires it. This means that you can have a mix of double opt-in and single opt-in clients if required.

Important

Once you have enabled double opt-in for a company, then all new landing pages created for that company will require it. Landing pages created before the option was enabled will continue to function using single opt-in, but if you open the maintenance page for one of these landing pages, you will be required to configure it for double-opt in before you can save it again.

Do one of the following:
- To enable double opt-in for the site company, go to Settings > My Company > Company Settings.
- To enable double opt-in for a client company, go to Marketing Execution > Clients > Client Companies, then find and open the client company you wish to work with.
Note

You can enable double opt-in for any or all of your site/client companies. Repeat this procedure for each company that requires it.
Mark the Enable double opt-in for email marketing checkbox. This setting will apply from now on to all inbound contacts that register through a landing page that belongs to your selected client or site company. You will be prompted to confirm your setting.

See also Company settings and configuration for complete details about finding and working with the site- and client-company maintenance pages.
Go to Settings > Campaign Management > Email Marketing Plug-ins and create a double-opt-in-link plug-in for the same company. The purpose of this plug-in is to create the opt-in confirmation link to be included in marketing emails; it generates the confirmation URL, establishes display text for the link and also specifies the redirect-URL that contacts will be shown immediately after Dynamics Marketing registers the opt-in. More information:Create a double opt in link plug-in

Tip

If you are supporting more than one language on your site, then you probably need to create a new double-opt-in-link plug-in for each language to make sure that the link text and the page it redirects to show the correct language for each customer.
Create an appropriate welcome/thank-you page on your website at the redirect URL you specified for each double-opt-in-link plug-in (Dynamics Marketing is not able to host this page). This page should typically thank the contact for registering and/or give information about how the promised perk can be obtained (e.g., by announcing that a follow-up email is on its way).
Create a check your email page on your site that tells contacts who have submitted a landing page to check their inbox for your confirmation email and to click the link it contains in order to complete the registration (double-opt-in) process. Maybe also mention that they should check their “junk email” folder for this message, just in case. This page will be the target of the Redirect URL setting for landing pages you will associate with your inbound marketing campaigns and will appear immediately after a new contact submits the form. See the next section for details about setting up double-opt-in landing pages for inbound campaigns. Create a page for each language, as needed.

Repeat the above procedure for each company that required double opt-in.

Tip

In many cases, you will only need one double-opt-in-link plug-in per company and language; however if you wish to use a different redirect page for some (or all) campaigns, then you must create new double-opt-in-link plug-ins for each of them.

Set up an inbound campaign with double opt-in

Inbound campaigns with double opt-in require a landing page, a confirmation email, and (optionally) a welcome email. More information:Set up an inbound marketing campaign. To set these up:

Make sure that the company for which you are creating the inbound campaign is configured for double opt-in and has the required plug-in(s) for your campaign. Your admin has probably already done this for you but if not, see the procedure outlined above.
Go to Marketing Execution > Email Marketing > Email Marketing Messages and create a new message. Configure this message for use as a double opt-in confirmation email as follows:
- Company: Set to the company for whom you are making the campaign.
- Designation: Set to “Double opt-in”.
- Double opt-in link: Select the double opt-in link plug-in that you created for this company.
- Message content: Include a brief explanation of what is going on and also be sure to include the double-opt-in-link plug-in (plus the other required plug-ins, sender-address and subscription-center). Keep in mind that the goal here is for the contact to click the double-opt-in link, so make this link prominent and keep other content to a minimum.
Finish setting up your mail as described in Create or view email marketing messages and then Validate and Activate the message. More information:Validate, test and send messages
Create a second marketing email that will function as the follow-up welcome email. (This email is actually optional, but we recommend it.) Configure the welcome email as follows:
- Company: Set to the company for whom you are making the campaign.
- Designation: Set to “Commercial”.
- Send recurring: Mark this checkbox. This box is only available when Designation is set to “Commercial”. It makes the mail available to be delivered on an ad-hoc basis (as and when new contacts come along), which is what we need here because we intend to welcome many new contacts through this system.
- Message content: Include a welcome message and any other information related to the promised perks (such as download links, discount codes, etc.), if any. For example: “Welcome to our newsletter, you are now subscribed,” or “Click here to download your white paper. And by the way you are also subscribed to our mailing list, click here to manage your subscriptions.” (Also, be sure to include the other required plug-ins: sender-address and subscription-center.)
Complete the design and then Validate and Activate the message as in the previous step.
Go to Marketing Execution > Lead Management > Landing Pages and create (or edit) the landing page that you will use to enable new contacts to register with your site. Configure the landing page as follows:
- Company: Enter the name of the client or site company that the landing page belongs to. All marketing contacts created through this landing page will also belong to this company. This is probably the company you are already creating the inbound campaign for.
- Double opt-in > Confirmation email: The Double opt-in expandable section only appears here when the Company configured for the landing page is also configured for double opt-in. Expand this section if it is not already and then enter the name of the confirmation email that you created above (the one with the double-opt-in-link plug-in) in the Confirmation email field.
- Double opt-in > Welcome email: Enter the name of the welcome email that you created above (in which you might be delivering a promised link or discount code). This is optional, but recommended.
- Content > Form Details > Redirect URL: Enter the URL for a “check your email” page on your site, which thanks the potential new contact for their submission and instructions them to check their email and click the link it contains to complete the sign-up.
Continue setting up your landing page as described in Create and customize landing pages.

Tip

You can reuse your confirmation and/or welcome email messages with multiple landing pages and campaigns as is appropriate.

Tip

If your email messages include dynamic data (such as the contact’s name), then be sure to mark these fields as mandatory on the landing page form. This will help make sure that the dynamic content renders correctly in the emails.

Tip

Landing pages support multiple languages. This support extends to double-opt-in emails. To support additional languages, create confirmation and/or welcome emails for each language and then configure these for each language on your landing page setup.
Double opt-in is now fully set up in Dynamics Marketing. To complete the system, make sure you have the following pages available on your site:
- A “check your email” page (at the redirect-URL configured for your landing page)
- A “thank you for registering” page (at the redirect-URL configured for your double-opt-in-link plug-in)
- A local page that embeds the Dynamics Marketing landing page in an iframe on your site (optional; you could instead send potential contacts directly to the URL hosted by Dynamics Marketing)

You are now ready to start promoting your sign-up offer and landing-page URL.

Tracking and auditing opt-ins

Dynamics Marketing stores a complete record of double-opt-in registrations. This is useful both for marketing intelligence and for proof of regulatory compliance (in applicable jurisdictions). You can access this record in any of the following ways:

On Contact maintenance pages

Open any individual contact under Marketing Execution > Marketing Database > Marketing Contacts and then open the Email opt-in related-information tab. Here you can see a complete record of that contact’s opt-in and opt-out requests, together with request type (double opt-in, subscription center, manual (done by marketer), SDK, or Dynamics 365 Connector sync), and date.
On Landing Page maintenance pages

Open any individual landing page under Marketing Execution > Lead Management > Landing Pages and then open the Contacts related-information tab. Here you can see a list of each contact that submitted the landing page and whether each has also clicked on the double-opt-in link, plus the date for each interaction.

Usage fees

All of the emails sent by Dynamics Marketing as part of the double-opt-in process count against your organization’s marketing email quota.