User Story:

As the Growth team,
we want newcomers to receive a warm and helpful welcome email that encourages them to verify their email address,
so that they feel more supported in their early Wikipedia experience and are more likely to remain engaged and return to contribute.

As the Product Safety and Integrity team,
we want a higher proportion of accounts to have a verified email address,
so that we can improve account security, and ensure users have access to recovery options like password reset.

Related:

• Related engineering task: T396155: Improve verification email
• Previous related product analytics task: {T204785#4604347}
• previous investigation into email activation rates on enwiki and cswiki
• Notes

Goals and Rationale:

• Drive higher email verification rates by including a clear call to action with context about why verification matters.
• Support positive onboarding by making the email feel personal, welcoming, and action-oriented.
• Strengthen account integrity across the platform by increasing the percentage of accounts with verified contact information.
• Reduce burdens related to account recovery and forgotten credentials.

Industry Benchmarks:

• For verification (confirmation) emails, the open rate is very high. Verification emails often get 80–95% open rates, because recipients expect them and see them as necessary to complete an action. - 1
• A double opt-in flows tend to see confirmation rates between 60–80%. - 2

Goal: Aiming for a 60–80% verification/confirmation rate is reasonable, based on industry baselines.

Acceptance Criteria

• On a representative sample of wikis, compare email verification rates pre and post rollout. Wikis:
  • Enwiki
  • Wikimedia Commons
  • Wikidata

• Basic data visualization, similar to the two graphs here. Share results in this task

Deliverables

• 12/19/25: Provide a brief two-sentence summary of the first 10 days of pilot-wiki post-release performance to flag any early signs of unexpected impact; Nice to have: include a simple chart if time allows.
• 1/15/26: Deliver comparative pilot-wiki email-verification rate charts of pre- and post-release performance (MoM, 2024 YoY, 2023 YoYY), using the previously shared visualization style. Include an assessment (text) of email-verification rates before and after rollout. Findings submitted in this task.