Protecting your opt-in forms

Introduction

Opt-in forms is an essential tool for building your email list and engaging in email marketing with your audience. However, they are frequently exploited by bots and malicious actors, leading to various challenges.

• Automated bot signups are automated scripts that fill out the forms rapidly, leading to a surge of fake subscribers, flooding your database with fake entries, wasting resources and skewing analytics.
• Malicious signups are intentional attempts aimed at causing harm, with potentially severe repercussions such as damaging your domain's reputation, injecting harmful content, or distributing spam.

Understanding these risks is crucial to building a healthy list and maintaining the integrity and efficiency of your email marketing effort.

How and why it happens

• Bots are programmed to exploit vulnerabilities in web forms, automatically filling in fields and submitting them.
• Malicious actors may use sign-ups to inject spam, conduct phishing attacks, or simply inflate your list with fake addresses.
• Competitors might use it to sabotage your email campaigns (less likely).

Why you need to protect your opt-in forms

Protecting your opt-in forms is not just about keeping your list clean; it's about safeguarding your email marketing infrastructure and strategy. Unprotected forms can lead to a number of negative consequences such as,

• Bounces and negative effect on domain reputation: a high bounce rate, caused by invalid or non-existent email addresses, signals to email service providers (ESPs) that your list is poorly maintained. This can damage your sender reputation, leading to your emails being flagged as spam or even blacklisted.
• Deliverability issues: a compromised sender reputation directly impacts your email deliverability. Legitimate subscribers may miss your messages if they land in the spam folder or are blocked altogether.
• Increased costs: many ESPs charge based on the number of emails you send. A bloated list with fake entries increases your expenses.
• Waste of resources: dealing with bounced emails and cleaning up your list consumes valuable time and resources that could be better spent on engaging with genuine subscribers.
• Compromised data integrity: malicious sign-ups can introduce incorrect or harmful data into your database, potentially affecting other aspects of your business. nuevoMailer prevents such attempts by filtering and cleaning potentially harmful data.

Available protection methods in nuevoMailer

nuevoMailer offers several methods and tools to safeguard your opt-in forms. If enabled, they are applied in the opt-in process with the following order:

• Honeypot hidden field (Spam trap):
  • A hidden field to your form that is invisible to human users but visible to bots.
  • Bots, unaware of the field's purpose, will often fill it in.
  • nuevoMailer can then detect and reject submissions with data in this field, effectively trapping spam bots.
• Rate Limiter:
  • This feature allows you to set limits on the number of submissions allowed within a specific time frame from the same IP address.
  • For example, you can restrict sign-ups to a maximum of X attempts within Z seconds.
  • This prevents bots from flooding your form with rapid-fire submissions.
  • The Rate limiter can be used together with either of the following two CAPTCHA methods.
• Google reCAPTCHA v3:
  • reCaptcha v3 provides a seamless user experience by analyzing user behavior in the background.
  • It assigns a score based on the likelihood of a user being a bot.
  • nuevoMailer can use this score to determine whether to allow or block a submission.
  • This is a very good method, as it is very unobtrusive to the user.
• Classic numeric CAPTCHA:
  • A simple yet effective layer of protection, where users must type a specific number in order to be able to submit the form.
  • Experience has shown that it is highly effective. Even better when used with the Rate limiter.
  • The numeric codes are not reusable. They expire immediately.
  • Cannot be used together with reCAPTCHA v3.
• Use Double opt-in for verification (and make it clear)
  Clearly state on your opt-in form that you require double opt-in to confirm subscriptions. This discourages bots and malicious actors, as they would need to access and verify email addresses. This is not a first-level protection mechanism but it will help as a second line of defence.

Best practices: Double opt-in & more

Protecting your forms from bots, spamming and malicious signups is an ongoing process that requires both proactive and reactive measures.

Not all websites have form spamming problems at the same degree. So the protection you choose should strike a balance between fluid user experience and effectiveness.

Double opt-in, besides being a legal requirement in some countries, is a robust method for validating new signups ensuring that only genuine subscribers are added to your list.

• If you do not use double opt-in, send at least a Welcome email. If this email bounces then remove the related email from your list.
• With double opt-in a Confirmation-required email is sent with a unique link that users must click to confirm their subscription. This ensures that the email address is valid and that the user genuinely wants to join your list. If they never click this link then they remain in your list as Unverified or Unconfirmed.
• The Confirmation-required email may land in the subscriber's spam folder. This means that the subscriber will not see this email right away or may never see it.
  Therefore, after opt-in it is a good idea to inform the subscriber what to expect. You should do this in the landing (thank you) page where the subscriber is redirected after submitting the form.
  If the Confirmation-required email bounces then remove this subscriber from your list.
• nuevoMailer has several utilities to isolate or delete unverified subscribers. But before you do that you may want to send a Re-confirmation campaign or even better automate this process.
• Monitor bounce rates: if you see that this form generates a high number of bounces then evaluate and adjust your form protection methods.
• Monitor your opt-in log: nuevoMailer keeps a log of all form submissions. In this log you can see detailed form activity including blocking actions and reasons.
• Automate list cleaning:
  • Properly configure your bounce manager and have its cron job running at regular intervals.
  • Enable automatic suppression settings so that each time the bounces cron job runs it automatically suppresses subscribers.

Conclusion

By leveraging the protection methods available in nuevoMailer and adopting best practices, you can safeguard your database, maintain your domain's reputation, and foster stronger connections with your audience.

Investing time and resources in these measures today will pay dividends in the form of a healthier, more engaged mailing list tomorrow. This is essential for maximizing your email marketing investment and ensuring the long-term success of your campaigns.

User's guide: Opt-in forms