Do you have an email list that needs to be cleaned, but you have no idea where to start, what is it and why do you need to do it?
Email is currently the number one platform used by online marketers to stay in touch with their audience. Email will help you develop stronger relationships with your customers and, of course, sell your products and services.
A great deliverability is the key to successful email marketing campaigns. That means, in simple terms, getting your email in your subscribers’ inboxes in the first place. Otherwise, all those brilliant ideas you’ve implemented will simply go to waste.
What is email validation (also known as email verification or email list cleaning)?
Email validation is a procedure that demonstrates the validity and ‘deliverability’ of an email address. The process also confirms the service provider of an email address. Gmail and Yahoo! Mail are two of the most reliable providers available.
How does the email validation process work?
Email validation is a server thing. There's a simple protocol that was written decades ago to help define the rules for setting up email servers - SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) makes it simple for email servers to chat to each other about the state of inboxes and emailing.
In other words, email validation is the conversation between email servers when an inbox is 'pinged'. We step into their conversation translate their “number talk”. By reading the codes we know whether an inbox exists, if it's full, if it's set up to accept all emails or if a real person is likely to open it.
What’s the big deal with email validation? How does it help me?
Many email marketers don’t realize how email bounces and spam traps may hurt their business. The truth is, your sender reputation is going down when you send emails to an invalid email address time after time.
First of all, there are several factors that determine how many of your emails are delivered to the inbox. In more common language: how clean is your email list. A “clean email list” means that there are no spam traps, disposable, catch-all, abuse and role-based email addresses.
The most efficient way to clean (or verify) your email list is by using an email validation service. An email validation service can be used in two ways:
- Upload your email list on the platform, run it through the system and then download your validation results. Bulk email validation is a common practice nowadays. It takes a few minutes or a few hours, depending on the size and quality of your list.
- Use an email validation API. The API is a piece of software you can integrate on your platform to validate email addresses in real-time. It’s an effective filter that won’t allow invalid email addresses to sign up on your mailing list.
What is the purpose of email validation?
- Obtaining a clean & up-to-date email list.
- Reducing the risk of getting into the spam folder.
- Maintaining the mailbox (or the domain) trustworthiness.
- Increasing the delivery percentage.
What are the benefits of a clean email list?
First and most important, validating your email list allows you to communicate efficiently with your customers/subscribers. This is essential for the long-term viability of any email campaign.
Also, by removing bad data from your email list, an email validation service also removes the risk of poor-quality email addresses that could tain your reputation. In turn, when you maintain a good reputation (or sender score), your email deliverability will be better.
Validating an email list can also save you quite a bit of money in the long run. After all, why waste a significant amount of money marketing to people that don’t exist?
What can Verifalia do for you?
Here are some of the most important features we offer:
- Bulk email verification - It allows you to clean a whole email list at a time and make sure no bad data is causing you to waste money.
- Real-time email verification - You can install the API on your website and let it check every new subscriber’s email address.
- Spam trap emails detection
- Disposable Email Checker - Checks to see if an email address from a disposable email provider, such as Mailinator exist.
- Catch-All Domain Checker - We can identify catch-all domains, which return valid for all emails.
- Anti-greylisting Technology - Simulate a well-configured email engine to reduce the number of unknowns.
- Email Deduplication - If enabled, all duplicate email addresses are removed automatically.
- Email Verification API - Our API allows you to instantly verify email addresses on your platform.
- Selectable Download Options - Our interface allows you to only download the results you want.
- Syntax Checker - Email addresses with invalid syntax will return a specific status code.
- Domain Confirmation - Any email addresses containing inactive, invalid or parked domains are flagged.
- Mail Exchanger (MX) test - Detects email addresses that don’t have a valid mail exchanger.
- International verification - We can accurately verify all your contacts, even those using non-Latin alphabets, like Chinese, Arabic or Cyrillic.
- Yahoo! Verification - Verifies the existence of mailboxes @yahoo.com, @yahoo.co.uk, @yahoo.de, @yahoo.es, @yahoo.it, etc.
Hopefully, now you understand what are the benefits of email verification and how it works. You will be able to send better email campaigns with a higher ROI, and you won’t be hurting your sender reputation at risk.
Ready to clean your email list?
