This guide will help you to understand lists and the various options that come with it in detail:
Lists are simply a group of contacts based on certain criteria. So, for a SaaS company XYZ Corp they may be:
or simply All XYZ Corp customers
Note that lists can be both static or dynamic. You can simply import a CSV file or add users manually, in which case, list behavior is static. You can also integrate with forms or use API to keep on adding new contacts, in which case, list is dynamic.
Whensoever you are adding a contact to your list, you may decide to confirm his email address before starting to send him emails. The reason for this is two fold:
Having said that, there are some cases where such a confirmation may not be required. Say you are sending email to your old customers and have just created a new list based on some criteria for them.
Based on the aforementioned scenarios, lists have two types:
In case if you have selected double opt in you need to design the confirmation mail that the subscriber shall see.
Note that confirmation mail should have {{.ConfirmationUrl}} in the content of mail. This automatically gets replaced by unique URL while sending a mail to the user. When the user clicks the link his state is changed from subscribed to confirmed
Once a contact has joined a list ( or registered at your website ) you may decide to send him / her a welcome mail. Enabling thank you options helps you do that effortlessly.
You can design the page that user shall see after confirming to a list. Note that this is applicable only for double opt in lists.