CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I'm having a problem with the civiCRM double opt-in process, but unfortunately the problem is with users, not civiCRM.  I'd be interested in hearing other people's experiences with this.  The problem is a large percentage of users simply cannot manage to get through the double opt-in process.  Then they complain and ask me to do it, via administrator privileges.  Or they say nothing and get stuck in "pending".  Or don't even get there.  I don't think this is a civiCRM issue . . . I tried to get my board signed up on a yahoo groups list for internal board communication, and only ONE (out of 12) even managed to get themselves signed on.  They just don't respond to e-mail . . . or they can't use the computer . . . or who knows what . . .   frustrating. 

I decided I should turn off all civiCRM double opt-in features because there is a higher cost to pissing off my constituents from the double opt-in process then from the (low) possibility that I'll be sending spam to people who don't want it.  However I haven't been able to find easy controls for this sort of thing, so I dropped it.

Any thoughts and suggestions and changes that worked for other people to increase the numbers of successful subscription attempts?

I'd be interested in hearing other people's experience of this, since industry standard best practice is to use double opt-in.  Am I the only one finding that people can't handle it?  I'm wondering if I just haven't found the right words to hand-hold people through it.

My experience is double-opt in, while "correct", actually filters out 30-50% of users who actually DO want to subscribe but don't have the patience, knowledge or computer savvy to understand what to do.

I think our approach was to use profiles to gather subscriptions, then generate lists based on the profile submissions (including topic selection) and use CiviMail to those. This avoids the need for double-opt-in, and lets people unsubscribe.

It does leave us open to "malicious subscription" (eg, a random person subscribing billg@microsoft.com) but as long as the unsubscribe procedures are clear and simple - which they are with CiviMail - we're providing people the tools they need to opt out easily.

I don't believe that double-opt-in is a legal requirement here.

Thanks, that change to civicrm.settings.php appears to work fine. Nice one Kurund.