Hey Ryan, I was in a rush earlier. Thought I'd add a few more details. Basically, to insure good deliverability, the better autoresponders create what is called an "audit trail". It's just digital proof that someone opted in to your list. This is so that if ever you get too many spam complaints and deliverability suffers, aweber (or whoever) can show the email provider that blocked your emails, that the opt ins are in fact legit. So to prevent people from simply uploading a whole bunch of scraped emails and polluting the pond, most quality autoresponders require an audit trail if you want to import with the double opt in turned off. My guess is that band camp does not have a way to provide this. It sometimes requires letting aweber login to your account and see what you are doing. You would do bets to call them, if there is any hope.

Conventional wisdom says that if people don't want to confirm, they weren't really engaged with you anyway, but it's still a tough blow and it's a tough call.

Also, just to clear up any confusion... People aren't opting in twice. It's called a double opt in, but they only click one confirmation link. There are times where it makes sense to turn off the double opt in, such as with certain paid advertising campaigns to assure maximum exposure to your offer, but for the most part, I personally think the double opt in is a good idea for anyone hoping to maintain good deliverability over the long haul.

I don't think Mail Chimp will let you do it either, but I believe Constant Contact will. I have an account with them as well and they are fine as far as deliverability but I hate their control panel and I don't know that their features are as robust for marketing as Aweber and mail Chimps. I see them as a good service for corporate newsletters. Much less so for direct response marketers like us.

Not totally clear what you mean? Are you saying that you are going to create an aweber account and want to possibly turn off the double opt in? You still need to have it on if you are importing and cannot provide aweber with the audit trail.

If it's teh former then I would personally not turn it off with my main list. Any list I have that has the opt in off seems to perform poorer in the long run. I sometimes do it on paid campaigns where I am going for a quick sale, but that's it. But as long as you understand the risk, you are certainly free to try it. You wouldn't be alone. Many businesses turn it off. I just want the best delivery rate possible as so much of what I am doing is based on email.