When people first start a new email list, they tend to measure their success in terms of how many subscribers they have.

Having subscribers on your list is important, to be sure, but it’s not the only, or even the best, measure of a successful opt-in email campaign.

Mark Brownlow has published an excellent article discussing our obsession with list size. He makes several good points:

• There are other metrics that we can and should measure: message open rates, clicks and conversions, for example
• Subscriber quality is far more important than subscriber quantity
• It’s “much easier to do what we’ve been doing — with adequate results — than change things and risk a disaster” (in this case, any drop in your list size)

This seems particularly relevant for people who are hesitant to use Confirmed Opt-In. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard people say “I’ll lose half my list!” (it’s invariably “half”) when talking about using Confirmed Opt-In.

Of course, there are things you can do to maximize your confirmation rate. But the fear that any address may not confirm seems to shut off the creativity of even some of the most innovative marketers.

The New Year is a perfect time to break old habits and out of our comfort zones. Brownlow’s article is a great motivator for anyone hesitant about Confirmed Opt-In or worried about list size.