I want to thank my friend Jay Extreme over at the Warrior Forum for bringing up this topic, even though he and I don’t exactly agree on it. That’s okay. That’s what makes Internet marketing so interesting. Everybody can have different viewpoints and still get along. So, what do YOU think about forced opt in after the sale? Like it, hate it, don’t care? Well, I’m going to give you my views on the subject. You may or may not agree with them, and that’s cool too.

In case you’re not exactly sure what forced opt in after the sale means, essentially what it means is that after the customer has paid for his product, before he is given the actual link to download it, you notify him, somewhere on the page, that he has to supply you with his email address and other info in order to actually get his product. If he doesn’t, well, he’s out of luck other than to go through his payment processor and ask for a refund.

Okay, so what do I think of all this? Well, let’s take an example in the offline world so you can see how wrong this whole practice really is. You go to a car dealer. Now, you know that buying a car is a bad enough experience as it is with all the paperwork you have to fill out to get a loan approval and all that great stuff. Well imagine you finally get the approval, make your first payment, and the finance manager says to you, “Before I can give you the keys to your car, you have to opt into my mailing list so that I can send you all kinds of offers. If you don’t opt in, you don’t get the car.”

This is essentially what forced opt in is. You’ve taken their money and then told them that they can’t have their purchase. Think you’re not going to have some ticked off customers? And the truth is, I’m not exactly so sure this is even legal. As a matter of fact, some payment processors, like Clickbank, specifically say that you are NOT allowed to make your customer do anything after they paid for their item. You MUST send them directly to the download page.

In my opinion, handle this one of two ways. Either make the opt in optional after the purchase, or tell them up front on the sales page that they will have to provide their email address to receive their product and THEN present them with the opt in form BEFORE you take them to the payment page.

Like I said, you may or may not agree with this, and that’s fine. Just make sure YOUR payment processor has no problems with forced opt in BEFORE you actually put it into operation.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Tired of not getting your emails delivered, read or opened? Sick of not making any sales from your email marketing efforts? Visit my site at http://www.stevewagenheim.com/emailmarketing/index.html and get your hands on 5 years of my personal experience with email marketing…experience that has earned me tens of thousands of dollars yearly.