We live in a world where professional communication is primarily through email. Be it for marketing, customer interaction, or promotional operations. Therefore, the validity of the email addresses you use is crucial, both for the success of your campaigns and the reputation of your business. In this article, we will discuss the negative implications of invalid addresses and what to check in an email. We will also discuss the best methods to avoid having too many bad emails in your lists.
Brief Reminder on Email Validation
Email validation involves verifying whether a given email address is accurate and associated with an active mail domain. Its main purpose is to optimize message deliverability by detecting typos, malformed or nonexistent addresses. It also helps avoid spam, minimize bounce rate, and prevent certain fraudulent activities.
The Negative Consequences of Invalid Addresses on Your Emailing Campaigns
Increased Bounce Rate
When an email is sent to an invalid email address, it is returned to the sender with an error message instead of landing in the recipient’s inbox. This is called the bounce rate. The higher it is, the worse the deliverability and the more likely your sender reputation is to be compromised.
Negative Impact on Sender Reputation
If you send emails to a large number of invalid addresses, you could end up being marked as junk or spam by email providers, harming your sender reputation. You might also end up being permanently blocked or even put on a blacklist.
Decreased Open and Engagement Rate
If your mailing list contains many invalid addresses, it means that many emails will not reach their destination, resulting in a decrease in the number of opened emails and the engagement rate, and therefore less success for your campaign.
Waste of Time, Resources, and Money
Marketing or communication teams can spend time creating and planning email campaigns, not to mention the budget and material provided. If the addresses are not valid, these efforts and resources are wasted.
To avoid these major drawbacks, it is essential to regularly check email addresses to ensure they are valid and active before sending messages to them.
How to Check Email Validity?
Several methods can be used to verify the validity of email addresses. Here are some commonly used approaches:
Check Syntax and Structure
This involves checking that the provided address complies with syntactic rules, including the local part, the @ symbol, and the domain name.
Check the Domain
In addition to syntactic validation, also check if the domain name exists and is active. To do this, you can perform a DNS query.
Check the Mail Server
This method involves checking whether the mail server associated with the domain name is valid and active. To do this, you need to send a request to the mail server to check if the domain can receive emails. This verification can be done using the SMTP protocol.
Send a Verification Email
This method involves sending a test email to the provided address, checking whether the user receives it and takes a specific action, such as clicking a confirmation link. This ensures that the address indeed exists and measures the recipient’s engagement.
Use of Third-Party Services
There are online services like Captain Verify and APIs that offer email list verification tools (syntax, mail server, verification email). They not only combine several methods, but also help identify and remove certain issues like disposable addresses. Captain Verify is a specialized service that thus provides faster and more accurate validation.
How to Know if an Email is Valid? 4 Best Practices
1) Real-Time Validation
When users enter their email address on a form or at the time of registration, installing certain dedicated tools allows you to verify in real-time that the indicated email is indeed valid. This can prevent malformed addresses from being added to the list.
2) Double Opt-in
The double opt-in is very useful for avoiding invalid addresses in a contact list. Indeed, this two-step process asks the user to confirm their intention to subscribe to a mailing list after initially submitting their email address. It allows for confirmation of the accuracy of the entered email, fewer typos, and better protection against automated submissions made by bots or malicious software.
3) Use of Captchas
Captchas come in the form of small visual or interactive challenges that users need to solve when they submit an online form. By adding a captcha to your registration form or email collection form, you prevent automated submissions that may include invalid emails.
4) Regular List Cleaning
As we have mentioned many times, it is essential to regularly clean your contact lists to detect and remove invalid email addresses. To do this, you can use email validation tools like Captain Verify.
By implementing these four preventive measures, you will be able to effectively reduce the number of invalid emails and maintain cleaner, more targeted lists. A great way to improve the deliverability of your shipments, and reduce problems related to bounces and your sender reputation.
