First things first !
When we speak of double opt-in mechanism, it means that a contact who has submitted his email adres to become part of your contact database has to validate his subscription.
In this case we will describe how you can setup this complete mechanism in our application and use your self-made landingpages and emails for this.
These are the different 'objects' that are part of this subscription flow :
2. The confirmation page after people have 'subscribed' themselves.
3. The Double Opt-in validation mail
4. The confirmation page after the contact have validated their subscription.
5. The confirmation mail that the contact is now subscribed into our newsletter database.
6. The mechanism to let our application use these pages as a subscription flow.
Let's start !!
The first step is to activate the double opt-in mechanism. In our application to your account settings. Click here to see how you need to set this up !
The next step is to create the different landingpages.
In our application you can create landingpages.
The most vital part of the subscription is the html form. How you need to create a subscription form is described here.
Here is our example of a simple html form with the needed fields
<form action=" method="post" title="Subscribe form">
<label class="title">Firstname<span class="required">*</span></label>
<input name="firstname" required="required" type="text">
<label class="title">Lastname<span class="required">*</span></label>
<input name="lastname" required="required" type="text">
<label class="title">Email adres<span class="required">*</span></label>
<input name="email" required="required" type="text">
<input name="type" type="hidden" value="2">
<input name="action_subscribe" type="submit" value="Subscribe here">
</form>
*Note : formatting your form isn't describe in this example.
This line defines <input name="type" type="hidden" value="2"> that the subscription form needs to be handled as a double opt-in form.
The subscribe action is defined by this line
<input name="action_subscribe" type="submit" value="Subscribe here">
Make sure that the fields which your subscribers need to fill in are already inside the Fields section. If the fields ins't known in your contact database the field will not be saved into the details of that contact.
Here we describe how you add fields to your contacts database.
If you have created your subscription form it will look like this for the end-users.( We have used formoid application to create nicely designed forms ).
2. The confirmation page after people have 'subscribed' themselves.
The confirmation page is the page which opens up after the contact has submitted his details ! It is a simple landingpage which tells the contact that his submission was well received !
You can design you own page and put your own text on it. Our example is shown below.
3. The Double Opt-in validation mail
This is the mail that is sent out the contact to validate his subscription. In this mail the contact needs to click a link to confirm his subscription.
The application tag you need to use for this link is <?add_double?>. This will create a unique link for each contact.
Inside the source of this mail you need to add that tag as your link source
Once the contact has clicked this link he will be flagged as a double opt-in confirmed contact.
The mail looks like this when he arrives in the mailbox.
4. The confirmation page after the contact have validated their subscription.
This is the confirmation page when the contact has clicked in the Double Opt-in validation mail.
Here is our example :
5. The confirmation mail that the contact is now subscribed into our newsletter database.
This is the mail which is send to the contact to let him know that his subscription is now complete done ! And he will be part of our contacts database.
6. The mechanism to let our application use these pages as a subscription flow.
This is the most vital part of the complete setup as this will combine all the different emails and landingpages you have created in step 1 through 6 into a custom double opt-in flow.
In order to use these pages as default pages for the double opt-in flow, they need to be launched on the highest level inside the application and also make sure that you can launch subtypes. How to enable the launching of subtypes is described here.
This is easily done by launching these emails and landingspages without a campaign. Click the 
button, once clicked the launch without a campaign needs to be choosen.
In the launch wizard you now need to setup the different subtypes of each email and landingpage. In our screenshot we have used the same numbering as described here in this case.
- The subscribe form --> subtype to use Subscribe Form
- The confirmation page after submission ( in case of double opt-in ) --> subtype to use Double Opt-in
- The validation mail which is send to the contact --> subtype to use Double opt-in
- The page which opens up after the validation link is clicked --> subtype to use Subscribed
- The mail which is send after validation --> subtype to use Subscribed
Fill in the correct headers for each email and landingpage.
Then you need to test your 'campaign' and as final step you can launch your campaign.
Once launched you can test the complete flow.
If you want to use only for example Confirmed Opt-in, you just have to leave step 2 and step 3 out of this loop.