Jordan Skinner said
Thanks for the reply. So when targeting cold traffic through Facebook i should turn opt-in off moving forward?  

Hey Jordan,

I don't really have a definitive answer for you simply because there are pros and cons, as well as risks associated with either option.

On most of my new campaigns I tend to turn the confirmed opt in off. But I have a lot of lists running both ways. If you don't mind the risks associated with not having an audit trail then you might choose to turn it off. 

The only thing to be aware of is that this could cause an issue if you ever wanted to move your list to a new company that required proof that you had opt-in on. It probably wouldn't but it theoretically could. Just saying that to cover my butt more than anything.

Hi Jordan,

Steve here.  John will likely chime in too, but yes, I think there's a downside to using only email.

Because you're most likely sending plain text email, you won't have social sharing options in your email messages, which pretty much kills anything from gathering steam and potentially bringing in new interest.  Don't forget, you eventually want to bring in new subscribers, which means your content needs to be able to be shared.  You can do this with html email, but a squeeze page is where they find the reason to subscribe, and is the preferred method to picking up subscribers, rather than someone subscribing to your list by email (sorry if that sound's complicated, but you can subscribe to an Aweber list by sending an email to the list's address).

When you have a short, snappy email that entices people to click to your site, now you've got another metric to look at.  In other words, you can look at open rates all day long, but you'll never know how much a person has read.  Plus they can't leave you a comment (they can reply, but again it's private, unlike site comments).

By introducing a click, you can see which subscribers are most engaged, but also what about your copy seems to be working.  This can be really important when re-mailing people who don't open a particular email message, then sending same message again, under a different subject line.  You might see a some of those people opening because of the new subject line, but because you also have the click metric, you'll be able to see what good it has done you, in terms of additional page visitors/ content viewers.

The whole idea is to get people to move.  Whether it's to download a song, view a video, read a story, leave a comment, or to buy an album.  Just sending them emailed stories, then occasionally a "buy my album" email, is far less engaging and I believe you give up the ability to really see how responsive your list is that way.

Just my two sense, for what it's worth.

Let us know how you're making out.

Hi Jordan,

Like Steve pointed out, Filezilla would have nothing to do with that at all. I suspect you are seeing an anomaly because you are doing your own testing. Perhaps Aweber has some kind of an anti-spam setting where it won't send a welcome email to the same IP twice (I'm just guessing here). With anything like this I would contact Aweber to ask why that is happening as it;s ultimately a delivery issue. However you can also post a link for Steve to test as well.