If you are an email marketer, you should know the importance of metrics. They allow you to measure every step of your campaign. Among all the metrics, delivery rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates are the most important. They determine the overall success of your campaign.
All of these metrics depend upon the quality of your list.
How do you check the quality of your list?
Email verification and validation allow us to determine our list’s quality and hence, our campaign’s overall success.
Let’s start with email verification.
Email verification
It’s a process where all the email addresses in a list get checked to ensure they are valid and active. Email verification services like Email verifier uses multiple mechanisms for this purpose. Among all the tools, the processes like syntax check, MX record check, and email address ping are the most common ones.
Email verification is mandatory because:
It keeps your email list fresh
Your lists need to be fresh. Every year, more than 20% of email addresses become inactive. It is due to various external factors like change of company, death of the owner, or suspension of the email address, etc. It means that if you have a one-year-old list, more than 20% of email addresses have already become inactive.
If you use this list, there will be a high bounce rate, and your domain reputation will always be under threat.
You get a better deliverability rate
Email verification helps you detect and delete the invalid email addresses. Only those email addresses are kept in the list, having capable of receiving your email right in the inbox. It increases your deliverability rate.
Once the deliverability rate is high, there are fewer chances of getting into a blacklist. Hence, your domain reputation remains good.
It reduces the hard bounce rate
If an email returns to the sender because the recipient doesn’t exist, it is known as a hard bounce. Spammers usually have high hard bounce. If your hard bounce is high, ISPs will consider you a spammer.
If your hard bounce rate continues to grow, your sender reputation will be damaged. Your account will be blacklisted once the rate crosses a threshold. The presence of your domain and IP in multiple blacklists means your reputation is at risk.
Your sender's reputation is maintained.
Various factors determine the sender’s reputation. It includes the frequency of the emails and the recipients’ reactions. The bounce rate, deliverability rate, complaint rate, and the number of blacklists having your IP also determine the sender’s reputation.
Email verification helps in maintaining a good sender reputation. It also enables you to avoid blacklists.
How to validate an email address?
There are different methods to check whether the email is valid or not.
Following are some of them:
- Sending a mail to test the validity is a straightforward process. If the recipient doesn’t receive the message, you will get the notification. But, it’s not possible to check every email address. It will also increase your bounce rate if there are many invalid email addresses.
- You can ping the mail server to test the validity. You can use tools like PuTTY or Telnet. This method is entirely accurate but requires time and infrastructure.
- You can do a Google search for the email address. Of course, it won’t tell you whether the email address is valid or not. If somebody has mentioned the address anywhere on a website or a forum, you will get the result. You can use an email checker for this purpose. It’s easy to use and requires a few clicks only. You will get relatively accurate results.
How do email verifiers work?
Every email verifier has a different algorithm, but their general processes and aim are common. Our email verifier uses the following algorithms to make sure the given email addresses are active, valid, and verified.
Syntax verifier: It looks for those email addresses containing the invalid syntax. It includes checking for email address standards, the number of symbols, special characters, and the appropriate placement of dot (.) and @ symbols.
Domain checker: It checks whether the domain exists or not. Is it correctly spelled or not? It also looks for invalid, inactive, or parked domains.
MTA validator: An MX record shows the mail server, which accepts the email of a specific domain. MTA validator checkers whether an MTA has a correct record.
Risk validator: It checks the keywords and TLDs. If the keywords and TLDs are spammy or risky, the email is removed from the list.
Duplicate email remover: It removes all the duplicate email addresses in the list.
Spam trap removal: The spam trap email addresses in the list are identified and removed. It helps you achieve the zero spam rate.
Complainer’s verifier: It checks for the complaints against the domain. If an email matches those having a record in the database, the complainer’s verifier tool deletes that email address.
Disposable email checker: Disposable email addresses are inactive email addresses used for a short period. The disposable email checker looks for these and removes them to make your list perfect.
Real-time bouncing: As we already discussed, a high hard bounces rate means the domain reputation is at risk. The real-time bouncing tool uses an SMTP checker to remove invalid email addresses, which are the sole reason for hard bounces.
Anti-grey listing tech: Last but not the least, the anti grey technology helps us to remove those email addresses which are difficult to verify due to a number of reasons.
Conclusion
It’s important for a digital marketer to build an email list. But a list alone doesn’t guarantee that the recipients are real or there is no typo in the list. Email verification ensures that your message will be conveyed to a real human being.
Here is the secret formula for your success in digital marketing.
Build an email list. Use an email list verify service. Get the list cleaned and verified. Protect your reputation. Deliver your message. Make more sales. Earn more profit. Expand your business. Repeat!