Lists

This guide will help you to understand lists and the various options that come with it in detail:

• Introduction to Lists
• List Types
• Confirmation Mail Options
• Thank You Mail Options
• Confirm Success Page

Introduction to Lists

Lists are simply a group of contacts based on certain criteria. So, for a SaaS company XYZ Corp they may be:

1. Paying customers list
2. Trial customers list

or simply All XYZ Corp customers

Note that lists can be both static or dynamic. You can simply import a CSV file or add users manually, in which case, list behavior is static. You can also integrate with forms or use API to keep on adding new contacts, in which case, list is dynamic.

List Types

Whensoever you are adding a contact to your list, you may decide to confirm his email address before starting to send him emails. The reason for this is two fold:

1. This ensures that your quality of list is very high. This shall ensure that you are communicating with users who are receptive towards your brand.
2. Having malformed emails or addresses which bounce or sending mails to users who never subscribed for your service can be really harmful from company's standpoint. Users end up reporting emails as spammed if they are unsolicited. This in turn shall affect your domain's reputation with your ESP. Once bounce or spam rates are beyond a limit then your ESP shall eventually block you, preventing you from sending emails for your business.

Having said that, there are some cases where such a confirmation may not be required. Say you are sending email to your old customers and have just created a new list based on some criteria for them.

Based on the aforementioned scenarios, lists have two types:

1. Single Opt-in: This assumes that contact has given consent to receive your emails. As a result there is no confirmation required from user's end. He/She shall start receiving emails without further ado.
2. Double Opt-in: This assumes that contact's consent is required before you can start sending mails to him. This may be a case when you have subscription form on your website or blog. You want to ensure that only genuine contacts are being added to your lists and you are communicating with people who are interested in your brand.

Confirmation Mail Options

In case if you have selected double opt in you need to design the confirmation mail that the subscriber shall see.

Note that confirmation mail should have  in the content of mail. This automatically gets replaced by unique URL while sending a mail to the user. When the user clicks the link his state is changed from subscribed to confirmed

Thank You Mail Options

Once a contact has joined a list ( or registered at your website ) you may decide to send him / her a welcome mail. Enabling thank you options helps you do that effortlessly.

Confirm Success Page

You can design the page that user shall see after confirming to a list. Note that this is applicable only for double opt in lists.