members with unconfirmed emails

I was about to send out an email to all my members when I realized that 563 of my 3,533 members don't have confirmed email addresses. That's about 16% of my registered users who've never posted and are unable to do so.

Is this a normal amount, or is it exceptionally large? Would you recommend sending emails to those who haven't confirmed their email address asking them to confirm?

 

it is perhaps a good idea to prune unconfirmed users which are older than x weeks/months. so users simply can re-register when they want to post and its possible to free usernames which other user can use.

 

I'd say 16% is normal...maybe a tad above average.

 

Agree. If they delayed replying to the confirmation email and it's been a month or so, quite likely they've lost it and are better off to start over.

I have suspected that there are people who surf the web and register for a lot of things they later decide they aren't that interested in.

And lots of spambots stack up in the unconfirmed email status.

 

Mine is currently 73 out of 422... That's 17%.

 

Wow. Only 20 of my 573 members have unconfirmed e-mails. That's 3.49%.

I never noticed I had such a low rate. :p

 

I don't make them confirm their email addresses. If they bounce I ban them.

 

I do make them confirm their e-mail. And even then if they bounce, I place them into my Retired Members group.

 

Do you require members to register to view content on your site? If so then this is why. Either don't require them to register or tighten permissions on the people still required to validate their email addresses.

I would say that small samples are going to be easily skewed. Take for example my local city. In January they announced that the murder rate in Lancaster dropped by 50% in 2008. In 2007, we had 2 murders. In 2008, there was only 1. While a 50% reduction, its not a large enough sample to be representative of actual fluctuations. There was only 1 murder in 2006 and so far this year there have been 4 (three in a single incident). I doubt in January 2010, they will advertise that there was a 400% increase in murders in the city.