Are fake signups ruining your mailing list?

Spambots aren’t just annoying. They’ll end up costing you money and sabotaging your efforts to run successful email marketing campaigns.

Fortunately, adding a Google reCAPTCHA to your email optin forms prevents spam from creeping into your mailing list.

In this article, we’ll look at the easiest way to add a Google reCAPTCHA to your email optin form.

What is Google reCAPTCHA?

reCAPTCHA is a Google Tool that helps you to identify spam traffic on your site. It’s built to root out suspicious web traffic while letting real visitors browse your site.

Now, chances are you’ve completed some type of reCAPTCHA. Maybe you needed to identify an object or a string of letters.

Did the entire process ever result in a frustrating user experience?

You’re not alone if you were forced to work your way through tough puzzles to prove you were an actual human. The internet is filled with captchas that seem impossible to solve.

And the harder is it to complete an email optin form, the more likely the site visitor will abandon their registration process for good.

To provide the best possible experience to users, our reCAPTCHA system will work invisibly in the background. That means your legitimate users would never see the captcha on your campaign.

That way…

• You know your optin forms are protected against spam traffic
• Your visitors don’t need to waste time completing complicated captchas

But these aren’t the only reasons why you should set up a Google reCAPTCHA on your email optin forms.

Why Set Up reCAPTCHA on Your Email Optins?

Here’s how a Google reCAPTCHA benefits your email marketing:

• Ensure that every email on your list is vetted
• Improve email deliverability because you’re not sending messages to fake addresses

Let’s dig a little deeper into some of these.

When you send emails to fake addresses, you’re going to end up with hard bounces.

A hard bounce happens because:

• The email doesn’t exist
• The domain doesn’t exist

Over time, too many hard bounces harms your sender reputation. The result is that email servers will begin to block your emails. So, you’ll even struggle to reach real recipients.

And spambots don’t only rely on fake emails. They might add actual addresses.

Though that sounds good in theory, those people may not want to receive your emails. So, if someone gets an unsolicited email from you, they’re probably going to send your emails straight to the spam folder.

Again, as more and more people start flagging your emails as spam, your sending reputation will decline.

Adding a reCAPTCHA to your optin form will prevent all of these issues.

And ridding your email list of fake signups also means you’ll have more trust in your data. You’re free to celebrate new subscribers because you know your content’s connecting with real people, not bots.

Using OptinMonster With Google reCAPTCHA

So, where does OptinMonster fit into all of this?

If you want to learn about adding reCAPTCHA to your optin forms, you know you need to take email marketing seriously. You’re aware of the potential it has to grow your business.

And OptinMonster makes it easy to increase your subscribers and sales.

Kennedy Blue grew its sales by 50% using OptinMonster’s popup campaigns.

That’s because OptinMonster comes with:

• Attractive pre-built templates for any type of campaign
• Display rules that let you control exactly when and where your site visitors see your popups
• Analytics to identify which campaigns are working

The result is email popups that capture your visitor’s attention because they’re relevant and eye-catching.

Publishers and ecommerce stores use OptinMonster to grow their email lists and increase their sales with:

• Highly targeted campaigns based on site visitor behavior
• Relevant offers that appear at just the right time

For instance, an ecommerce store might show a discount for the exact product a visitor is looking at.

And it’s all simple.

We took under ten minutes to create this popup.

Adding reCAPTCHA to Your Email Optin Form

Ready to protect your email list?

Let’s begin.

Step 1: Sign Up for reCAPTCHA

To start, you need to sign up for Google reCAPTCHA using your Google account.

Once you’re on the reCAPTCHA site, select Admin console.

Step 2: Register Your Site

Now, you’ll need to register your site.

Start by adding a label. This is any term to help you organize your sites.

Choose reCAPTCHA v3.

Add your domain. And, make sure you’re listed as the owner.

Accept the Terms of Service.

Scroll down and click Submit.

On the next page, you’ll find confirmation of your site registration.

There are two codes here:

• Site key
• Secret key

You’ll come back and copy those codes in a moment.

Step 3: Integrate reCaptcha with OptinMonster

Now, you’re ready to head over to OptinMonster for an easy Google reCAPTCHA integration.

Once you log in to your OptinMonster account, head over to your account dropdown.

Select Sites.

Do you see your site? If not, add your new site.

Or, if your site is already there, click Edit.

Scroll down to the Google reCAPTCHA fields.

Copy the Site Key and Secret Key you received in Step 1. Add these codes to the corresponding fields in your OptinMonster dashboard.

That’s it.

Now any email optin form you create for that website will be protected against spam.

We hope you found this article useful.

Looking for more ways to grow an engaged email list?

Then, you should check out these resources:

• Learn more about using OptinMonster’s double optin forms. With single optin forms, mistyped email addresses can easily end up on your list, resulting hard bounces.
• Find out how to you clean your email list regularly. Use email scrubbing to remove unengaged subscribers from your list, so you’re only marketing to people who want to hear from you.
• Try these proven ways to grow your mailing list. This post offers 73 practical, simple strategies to explode your mailing list.

Ready to add more subscribers to your email list? Go ahead and sign up for OptinMonster.