Email Validation. Manual or Automatic

3 min read

The success of your email marketing campaign depends on many factors. The most vital metrics include open rate, conversion, click-through rate, spam return and bounce rate. Almost each of these parameters is closely tied to your email list. To be more precise, these depend on the relevance of all addresses in your database. Experts say that up to 22% of all emails become inactive every year and another 30% of users change their addresses regularly for a variety of reasons. A high percentage of inactive recipients can seriously hurt the deliverability level of your emails.

What is the value of email validation?

No email marketing campaign will be fruitful without a proper audience. Mailing to an unreliable database is a pure waste of money. Moreover, the sender risks being blacklisted, blocked by email service providers, and simply ruining the brand’s reputation. It is considered acceptable to have 2% of messages returned. This soft bounce usually happens due to temporary technical issues – overloaded inbox or excessive email body. But when the portion of your undelivered messages reaches 5%, it is a hard bounce and a critical sign to take some action to bring it down to avoid further complications. Now, more serious reasons stand behind it – non-existent addresses or domains, spam filters, inactive recipients. Fortunately, you can prevent this situation and reduce the potential risk to almost zero with the help of email validation.

How an email address can be validated?

Email validation in marketing is the process of checking all addresses on your list for suitability. Your database should contain only addresses that are active, correctly written and not involved in suspicious activity. That is, you should send your messages only to those who can receive mailings. Regular cleaning of your mailing list will allow you to:

• Filter email addresses with a high risk of getting into spam;
• Get a higher domain rating due to increased trust in the domain;
• Boost your email deliverability.

Address validation is carried out at the collection stage and it is advisable to repeat the verification at least once every six months. If you continuously add new addresses to your list, it is obvious to increase the frequency of checks.

Benefits of email validation services

You can always test email addresses manually. This approach is budgetary but, at the same time, requires lots of effort and does not often bring the desired results. You will need to export emails from your list and upload them to the email checking processor. It can work if you need to check only a few emails but it is more efficient to use special software for bulk email validation. These include various online services and SaaS products, for example, Mailcheck.

This particular service allows you to test its performance for free. Once you are on the Mailcheck home page, you will see a box where you can validate any email address in just a few steps:

• Type in email in the empty box;
• Click on the arrow symbol to start the check;
• In an instant, you will see the result of the check based on several parameters: validity, trust rate, SMTP, belonging to catch-all domain and disposable addresses.

The validation software is more convenient as it can be easily integrated with your working platform and will save you a lot of time. Such services use artificial intelligence and work according to a complex algorithm that usually includes several crucial stages.

Syntax validation

A valid address must match a specific format and contain the local part, the at-symbol (@) and a domain name with a dot symbol. The program will easily check the appropriate placement of dots and allowed characters. This step will immediately filter out a large number of invalid emails that contain mistakes. However, a syntax check will not show whether a particular email and domain exist.

Domain check

As you know, domain is a part of the email that goes after at-symbol. Email checker will immediately determine whether it is valid and active. Why is this step important? Everything is simple – websites expire and so do addresses linked to them.

DEA verification

DEA or Disposable Email Address is often used to avoid disclosing your personal details on public resources. As a rule, such mail is fully anonymous and is deleted immediately after activation. Internet users create DEA for various one-time subscriptions. The validation software will easily spot such addresses as they do not use the domains of reputable providers.

Catch-all check

Some domains are known as catch-all or accept-all domains. They will receive all emails no matter what you will type before at-symbol. Not a single email is going to be rejected in this case but it is not going to be read either. Such inboxes get over flooded with spam very quickly and become inactive. With email verifier tools, you will easily identify catch-all domains.

MX record check

What is an MX record? It is a special record in DNS for registering mail servers. It allows the mail agent (MTA) to route emails to a specific domain. The email validating program will recheck whether the email exchange entry in the address is really valid. Without an MX record, the domain will not be able to accept messages.

SMTP server check

The SMTP server is a simple communication protocol used to send emails from a sender’s server to a recipient’s server. When it comes to validation, the program checks whether there is a flawless connection with the SMTP server. It proves that the mail server works fine and receives mail.

Email activity

It is not a rare case that providers block email addresses for a variety of reasons. These include suspicious activity, the attempts to break passwords and log in from new locations. The program will immediately understand whether the email is active or not by the responses of the SMTP server.

It is not so difficult to keep your mailing database clean if you have proper software at hand. Email validation programs exploit the latest technologies to weed out invalid recipients with maximum accuracy. Investments in such services will immediately maintain your bounce rate within acceptable limits and boost your sender’s reputation.

The benefits of email validation are huge – you will improve your deliverability and email marketing ROI. You only need to find the service that best matches your requirements.