Want to customize the confirmation email with a button in Infusionsoft? Here is How to create custom Double Opt-in Email sequence with Button in Infusionsoft by Keap.
Here is the deal. You have an Opt-in webform to collect email addresses. Someone on the internet wants your free ebook or an evergreen webinar.
When that someone fills out their details along with the emails to get the service you are offering, they are opting in and it is called Single Opt-in.
But when you send them a confirmation next, asking-"are you sure, you really want to opt-in?" and they say yes by clicking a certain link, it is called Double Opt-in.
When you go for Double opt-in, you are explicitly getting the permission from the users to send them promotional stuff to their email addresses. So double opt-ins are always better than single opt-ins.
Email marketing companies also rewards the marketing efforts targetted towards the doubly opted users by improving the email deliverability by using a better part of their servers.
Also, Double opt in is not just a good practice, but also required by law in many parts of the world.
So in short Double opt-ins are the way to go, whenever it is possible.
Of course, Infusionsoft has all the tools to create double opt-in email confirmation sequence. But before getting into that, lets also look at what could go wrong with a Double Opt-in confirmation campaign.
Someone wants a free e-book you are offering. They sign-up using your form and they expect to get it immediately.
They don't want to wait, they don't want more steps to get their free stuff.
Yes, the internet has really spoiled the people! They want things instantly and without much resistance. If you add more steps to reach a goal, you will lose them.
This 'Click to confirm your email before you can download' could be that extra step that might deter a person from enjoying the free stuff you are offering. So in that case, double opt-in can be a bit of a hassle.
Though, worry not. There are work arounds to fix that. So lets look at how to achieve that using Infusionsoft now.
If you go to Marketing >> Campaign Builder >> Create Your Own Campaign / Edit a campaign, you will see an option like this
This is infusionsoft's built in confirmation sequence and it is a bit restrictive as well as pretty limiting when it comes to flexibility.
When you go inside the Email confirmation request sequence, you can find these elements.
You can see inside this sequence, there is a confirmation email and a timer. You have limited flexibility to edit this confirmation email.
Learn how to edit Infusionsoft's built in confirmation email from this detailed post.
The timer allows to move the users who doesn't take any actions out of the sequence after a certain period of time (In this case, after 3 days)
So if someone comes into this sequence and doesn't click on the confirmation link, they will stay inside this sequence for 3 days. After 3 days, they will be moved to the next sequence if there are anything connected to it.
They will also be pulled out of the sequence if "Confirm email" goal is achieved.
So this is Infusionsoft's way of ensuring double opt-ins and you can see that its got pretty limited flexibility, especially if you have checked out how to edit the confirmation email.
But there is a better way, a method where we can add confirmation links, buttons and even images. Lets see how that can be done.
"Click here to confirm" links are basically automation links. The one we used earlier in the built in confirmation sequence was the default link infusionsoft has created. But we can also create our own links. Here is how to do that.
Go to Marketing >> Setting
Go to Automation Links >> Create Confirmation Link
Then give it a name and click 'Save'. That is all you have to do. If you want to play around and add other things but that won't be necessary.
You can also change the Header Colour in the 'Confirmation Page Appearance' tab to 'black text and white background'.
Once you click 'Save', you will see a third tab appears on top called "action".
From here, you can add a new action like adding a tag or sending an email etc, to those who click on the confirmation link.
Adding a new Tag is the suggested action as it will help later in the steps.
You will soon see that, this tag will become useful in the next steps. So DO create a new tag for those who clicks on the confirmation link.
Once these steps are done, Save and close the window.
Our Opt-in link is Ready!!
The link is ready, but how can we use it?
One way to do it is by going to Marketing >> Templates and access any template and edit it.
When you are on the edit page of the template scroll down to close to 70% of the screen and you will find a dropdown with the word 'Merge' and when you click on it, you will see Links.
Click on the links and you will find the 'Confirmation Links' on the right side and you click on it to Insert it into the email body.
When you click that you will see something like ~OptIn_XX~ where XX is a 2 digit number. It could be ~OptIn_10~ , ~OptIn_1~ something like that depending on your infusionsoft.
When you include this merge field (~OptIn_XX~) in the email and send it someone it becomes a clickable link.
Another way to find this merge field is by finding the newly created Confirmation link and clicking on 'Edit'.
When the edit window pops up look for the ID='xx' at the end where xx is a number. It will be 'ID=10' in our previous case. Once you have this number, all you have to do is replace the XX in ~OptIn_XX~
But the problem with this merge field is that, you can't add this to a button as it is. In order to do that, you will have to create a clickable url. Here is how to do that.
Now that you know how to find the merge field and copy it,
(eg: ~OptIn_XX~) you can add this to an email and do a test email to yourself.
When you receive the email copy the merge field will magically become a confirmation link something like this
https://ab123.infusionsoft.com/app/optIn/10/abcde12345/12345/abced12345
This is an imaginary link. But when you see the real link, it will follow a similar but more complex pattern.
But when we analyse this link carefully we will be able to learn more about it.
https://ab123.infusionsoft.com/
You will be able to find that, this is your infusionsoft username right after https:// and the whole link is your personal infusionsoft link address.
/app/
Well, this is just part of the pattern and tells this is part of infusionsoft app.
/optIn/10/
You remember the merge field format. ~OptIn_10~
When it becomes a url it transforms in to /optIn/10/
Though do remember in your case the number might not be 10. This is only for demonstration purpose we have used 10 here.
/abcde12345/
This is called Unique hash and you need to copy this exact number when you copy the link.
/12345/
This number is auto created from a merge field. So you don't really need to copy this number. Instead we will use the merge field in our link.
The merge field that we are looking at is this
~EmailSent.Id~
So in our confirmation url we will use this merge field like this ~EmailSent.Id~
/abced12345/
Last part of the link is also a merge field and the number pattern is auto created from this merge field. This merge field is called ~EmailSent.PartialHash~
So we will use this as it is.
Now lets combine all elements of our link
https://<Your_Infusionsoft_userID>.infusionsoft.com/app/optIn/<Opt_in_number>/<Unique_Hash>/~EmailSent.Id~/~EmailSent.PartialHash~
Whatever is within the <> you have to enter the value from the link you have copied from your test email. And you have to keep all the merge fields as it is.
This will give you, your clickable confirmation link!
Now that you have a confirmation link ready, you can use it anywhere you want.
If you want it as a button, drag and drop a button element to your email template and use this url as its link.
You can also add this link to an image, if that is what you want to do.
Getting this url makes our lives easy as well as makes the emails looks pretty and functional.
Hope this helps. If you have any questions please add it in the comments.
