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Coming Soon — Double opt-in is currently in closed beta with a small group of users. Please reach out if you’d like access.

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What is Double Opt-in?

Double opt-in requires new contacts to confirm their subscription before you can send them marketing emails. This improves list quality and deliverability by ensuring only engaged contacts are added to your audience.

Improved Deliverability

Higher engagement rates lead to better inbox placement and sender reputation

Quality Contacts

Only contacts who actively confirm their subscription are added to your audience

Compliance Ready

Meets strict email marketing regulations and anti-spam requirements

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How Double Opt-in Works

1

Contact submits a form

When someone fills out a signup form, they receive a confirmation email with a link to a branded confirmation page.
2

Confirmation page

The confirmation page displays “Confirm subscription” and “No thanks” buttons, allowing contacts to choose their preference.
3

Contact status

Contacts appear in your audience as “Pending” in the Double opt-in column until they take action.
4

Confirmation or rejection

  • If they click “Confirm subscription”: They’re subscribed to your audience and any selected subscription groups. This also triggers any applicable automations.
  • If they click “No thanks”: They remain in your audience but are marked as unsubscribed.
  • If they don’t respond: The contact continues to appear as “Pending”.
Unsubscribed contacts do not count towards your plan’s limits, helping you stay within your subscription boundaries.

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Important Considerations

This feature only applies to marketing sends (campaigns and automations). Transactional emails are never restricted by double opt-in, ensuring essential communications like password resets and order confirmations are always delivered.
Double opt-in is currently only enabled on form endpoints. API endpoints like Create contact and Update contact are not yet gated. Coverage will expand to these endpoints soon.
Contacts can request a new confirmation email from the same page if they clicked “No thanks” by accident, providing a second chance to confirm their subscription.

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Setting Up Double Opt-in

1

Enable double opt-in

Go to Settings → Sending and scroll to the Double opt-in section. Turn the Double opt-in setting on.This creates a special transactional email that is used to confirm the subscription, which you can customize in the Transactional page in the Brew dashboard.
2

Customize the confirmation email

The opt-in email is a special transactional email that is created automatically when you first turn on double opt-in in your account.Requirements for the confirmation email:
  • Keep the email short, clearly branded, and focused on the confirmation action
  • Include the required data variable optInUrl (added automatically when the email is created)
  • Other data variables are not allowed
Click “Edit Draft” to edit the email. Make sure to click “Publish” after editing to make your changes live.
3

Monitor pending contacts

Track contacts with “Pending” status in your audience dashboard and manually re-send confirmation emails if needed.

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Managing Double Opt-in Contacts

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Viewing Contact Status

In your audience dashboard, you’ll see a “Double opt-in” column that shows the status of each contact:
  • Confirmed: Contact has completed the double opt-in process
  • Pending: Contact has not yet confirmed their subscription
  • Unsubscribed: Contact declined the subscription

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Re-sending Confirmation Emails

You can re-send a confirmation email to a contact from their profile page. This is only available for contacts who are currently “Pending”:
  1. Navigate to the contact’s profile page
  2. Click the ••• menu icon
  3. Choose “Request opt-in”
Only re-send confirmation emails to contacts who are genuinely interested. Excessive re-sending can damage your sender reputation.

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Webhooks and Double Opt-in

When double opt-in is enabled, the contact.created event will only be sent for contacts created via forms once the contact has confirmed their subscription. This ensures your integrations only receive data for fully opted-in contacts.

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Benefits of Double Opt-in

Better Deliverability

Higher engagement rates improve your sender reputation and inbox placement

Reduced Spam Complaints

Only engaged contacts receive your emails, minimizing spam reports

Compliance Assurance

Meets strict email marketing regulations in various jurisdictions

Quality Metrics

More accurate open and click rates with genuinely interested contacts

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When to Use Double Opt-in

Double opt-in is particularly valuable for:
  • High-volume email programs where list quality is crucial
  • Compliance-sensitive industries that must meet strict regulations
  • Brands building long-term relationships with their audience
  • Companies experiencing deliverability issues due to low engagement
Double opt-in is a best practice for email marketing that significantly improves list quality and deliverability. While it may reduce your initial subscriber count, it ensures that every contact in your audience is genuinely interested in your content.

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Need Help?

Our team is ready to support you at every step of your journey with Brew. Choose the option that works best for you:
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