Email Verification: Definition, Steps to Verify, Benefits, Challenges, Tools, and Role in Email Marketing

What is email verification?

Email verification is the process of validating if an email address is valid, in use, and open to receive emails. The process of this verification is to clean out the email list especially when sending out mass emails to ensure that the emails are sent only to people with valid emails. This reduces the chances of spam complaints and helps proceed with a healthier email campaign.

For businesses that are planning an email marketing campaign to reach their leads, email verification is the perfect step to ensure better deliverability, improved engagement rates, better send reputation, and compliance with legal regulations.

What is the difference between email verification and email validation?

The difference between email verification and email validation is mainly related to their purpose. Email verification refers to the process of confirming if the email address is valid and active or not. However, email validation is the process of making sure that the email addresses are formatted correctly and are as per the proper email address standard.

While email verification revolves around confirming if the email address has a functional mailbox and is used mainly by marketers to improve their mass email deliverability, email validation requires proper checking of letters and characters present in the email and is used during the email collection process to ensure only the right emails are being collected.

How to verify your email list?

To verify your email list, you can create an email list, choose a reliable tool, create a lead list, upload the list, choose Integration, collect results, clean the email list, and start your campaign.

The main steps involved in verifying an email list are listed below:

Create an email list

Create a list of emails that you want to verify and wish to send a mass email to before starting your email verification process.

Choose a reliable tool

When you have a list ready, choose a reliable tool available online to help you verify the emails. There are several reliable online tools available for email verification like Bookyourdata, Never Bounce, Hunter, DeBouncer, and Zero Bounce. Check the features and pricing to know which tools suit your requirements well.

Create a lead list

Get your lead list ready as per the platform requirements. Some platforms prefer the list in CSV form whereas some require an Excel form. Before uploading, check the list for potential errors like extra spacing, spelling errors, etc.

Upload the list

Once you have your list ready, go to the verification tool and upload the list over there or if they have the option for it, you can also paste the email addresses directly.

Choose Integration

The emails will be verified in real time if the tool is integrated into your CRM. The verification tool will then begin the automated checks by analyzing different data points like syntax, domain, server, mailbox, or role-based addresses.

Collect results

The tool will provide you with a categorized email list after the verification is done which will include active emails, inactive or invalid emails, and spam-related risk emails.

Clean email list

Once you have all the verified emails, make sure to clean your email list by removing all the invalid emails from it. This will help you ensure that the email is sent only to the verified emails.

Start your campaign

Upload your final list to the email marketing platform and start your campaign. Monitor the results and compare your previous results like open rates, conversion rates, and spam rates to the new campaign with verified emails.

How does an email verifier work?

An email verifier works by syntax check, domain check, catch-all domains check, simple mail transfer protocol (SMTP), spam risk check, role-based address check, and offering final results.

Some steps involved in the way email verifier works are listed below:

• Syntax check: Syntax check is the first step involved in the verification process. The verifier examines the email address format whether it’s formatted correctly including checking the username, the @ symbol, the domain name, the dot character, and the top-level domain. 

For example, a proper structured address format will be [email protected]. If there’s any misspelled character, spacing, or missing data the verifier will identify it as invalid.

• Domain check: The verifier carefully examines the domain present in the email address to ensure that it is real and working. The domain name like gmail.com or company.com must be valid, registered, and active. To ensure that the domain is operational and real, the verifier will check the internet to double-check if it is associated with a platform or not.
• Catch-all domains check: The verifier will check and flag an email address if it is associated with a catch-all domain. While a catch-all domain is a mailbox that accepts everything, it might not be ideal for email marketing campaigns. So to ensure that your emails are landing in the desired mailboxes, the verifier will separate the catch-all domains.
• Simple mail transfer protocol ( SMTP): SMTP helps to verify whether a specific email account or mailbox exists or not. The verifier simply pings the email address without actually sending an email to verify whether there is a positive response from the mail server or not. This helps to determine if the mailbox is active or not.
• Spam risk check: The verifier helps to find out the email address that has the potential risk of getting the email landed in the spam folder. To verify spam risk, it checks risk patterns, and false-looking domains. Checking spam risk helps to maintain a good sender reputation.
• Role-based address check: The verifier checks and separates the role-based email addresses that are associated with a platform for general queries like [email protected]. These addresses are often associated with a team overlooking operations rather than a single contact. Moreover, sending mass emails to these accounts might increase the risk of spam landing.
• Final results: Once all the data points are checked and verified, the verifier creates a list of final emails that are considered valid, active, and correct. It also categorizes invalid, catch-all, and risky email addresses that were flagged during the check. With the verified emails, you can now start your mass email campaign.

What are the benefits of email verification for business?

The benefits of email verification for business are decreased bounce rate, better email deliverability, better sender reputation, cost-cutting, better ROI, and brand credibility.

Some of the main benefits of  email verification for business are listed below:

• Decreased bounce rate: Email verification processes help to bring down the bounce rates while sending mass emails. The mass emails are often sent for conversion or ROI purposes and if the emails are getting bounced, the purpose won’t be fulfilled leading to resource losses. Moreover, high bounce rates result in a damaged reputation and might even suspend the email sender's account. This can be avoided by ensuring that all email addresses used in the mass email campaign are verified initially.
• Better email deliverability: There is a higher chance that all recipients will be receiving the email in their inbox if all emails within the campaign are verified. Otherwise, emails are likely to land in a spam folder, leaving it unread on the recipient end. So, to ensure that emails are being read and acted upon, make sure they are verified beforehand.
• Better sender reputation: The sender's reputation remains intact with better engagement rates during email marketing campaigns. If more emails are being sent to invalid or inactive email accounts it will instantly drop the reputation and would likely lead to a risky email account or even account suspension. To make sure that the behavior monitored by ISPs is correct and consistent, clean out the email address every once in a while to reduce the risk of spamming.
• Cost-cutting: Email marketing campaigns take up resources like monetary resources, time, and man hours. If the majority of emails are being sent to invalid or inactive emails, it will result in resource loss especially leading to high costs with no ROI. To ensure a cost-effective email marketing campaign, do check if the emails are being sent to valid inboxes and that no resource is being wasted on the wrong email addresses.
• Improves engagement rates: When you’re sending emails to verified addresses the likelihood of the emails being opened and the receiver taking a desired action is higher. In this way, your engagement rates increase and improve your expected ROI associated with your email marketing goal.
• Clean email list: Email verification helps to create a cleaner email list with only verified email addresses and clears the inactive or invalid emails from the list. The data quality increases and you can have an improved targeted approach with personalisation. The cleaner list helps to keep up with the legal regulations and compliance like GDPR.
• Better ROI: When you are putting in resources for email marketing campaigns, you would expect it to bring some good return on investment (ROI ) from it. If your email is reaching real people, it improves the chances of conversation and better customer experience leading to higher conversions and ROI.
• Creates brand credibility: An email marketing campaign targeted to verified email accounts increases engagement rates with the professional approach. A good reputed sender email helps to build trust among the customers and creates public credibility.

What are the challenges of email verification?

The challenges of email verification are cost, time-consuming, less reliable, data security risks, potential overlooking, no CRM integration, varied results, and legal regulatory compliance.

Some of the main challenges of email verification are listed below:

• Costly: You would require more credits or a premium account offered by the platform you are using if you’re verifying a larger number of leads. This might be a bit costly for you, especially with businesses requiring a higher number of emails to be verified like 250,000 to 500,000 emails. To avoid costly services, make sure to choose the tools that have cost-effective pricing as per your requirements.
• Time-consuming: It can take some time when you’re verifying a large list of emails, especially if there are fewer features available on the platform you have chosen. To avoid any delays in the process, make sure to choose a platform that has fast automation features and gives results in less time.
• Less reliable: It might result in unreliable processes if you have not chosen a good platform for email verification. Choosing email verification platforms like Bookyourdata that offer 97% accuracy rates can help you get results that are expected to give a high return on investment (ROI). Monitor the end results including conversion and engagement rates to ensure the credibility of your service provider.
• Data security risks: Providing a list of emails to a third-party service provider with no reliable source of credibility might pose the risk of data breaches. To avoid the potential risk of your data being misused, choose verification tools that have credible data protection policies and compliance with local and international laws.
• Potential overlooking: Email verification tools might often result in potential overlooking results and false positives while valid emails are marked as invalid or inactive. To avoid this potential overlooking, make sure to regularly monitor the results of your marketing campaign to check the credibility of your tool.
• No CRM integration: Some email verification tools do not offer integration options with existing systems or CRMs. To ensure better integration, choose an email verification tool that can be easily integrated into your desired CRM like HubSpot or Salesforce. API integration can help with better communication with the systems.
• Varied results: There is a possibility that different email verification tools might provide different results to a single email list. Especially if there are some very close or difficult-to-identify cases. Try to test various tools to ensure you select the one that offers satisfactory results as per your requirements and goals.
• Legal regulatory compliance: Dealing with large-scale data requires critical compliance with data protection and privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA. Some platforms might not comply with legal regulatory compliance. While choosing the tool, make sure you go through their compliance and data privacy policies.

What are the best email verification tools?

The best email verification tools include Bookyourdata, ZeroBounce, NeverBounce, and DeBounce.

Some of the best email verification tools are listed below:

• Bookyourdata: Bookyourdata is a highly reliable email verification platform that gives real-time verification in seconds with a 97% accuracy rate. With just one click, Bookyourdata verifies a bunch of emails with an eight-step verification process. The platform is compliant with CCPA and GDPR with a pay-as-you-go price model starting at $99 for 250 credits.
• Zerobounce: Zero bounce is an advanced email verification tool that gives a fast and accurate email verification service. The platform offers up to 99% accuracy for real-time validation and deliverability tools. You can simply upload your email list or verify individual emails and get your results instantly in compliance with GDPR and CCPA. The pricing for Zero Bounce begins at $18 per month.
• NeverBounce: Never Bounce is an email verification platform that offers real-time verification while providing high deliverability scores. To use Never Bounce for the email verification process, you simply have to upload your existing email list, let the platform audit your list, and download the final results. The platform offers easy integration with other platforms. in just a few minutes. They offer pay-as-you-go pricing starting at $0.008 per email.
• DeBounce: DeBounce is an affordable, fast email verification tool that verifies email addresses in bulk. The platform helps to detect invalid, spam traps, and deactivated emails. They offer a three-step process including cleaning email lists, offering reliable output, and the ability to download lists for effective email marketing campaigns. The pricing begins at $10 for 5000 verifications.

How to tell if an email is valid?

To tell if an email is valid make sure to check syntax, domain, and results, and use email verification tools.

There are some ways you can tell if an email is valid:

• Syntax: Initially make sure that the email has a proper and standard syntax. A username, an @ symbol, operational domain, rightly formatted.com. Make sure there are no spaces or missing elements.
• Domain: Make sure that the domain present in the email address is valid and operational. For this, look up the domain on the internet to check if it’s related to a real entity or not.
• Test email: Send a test email to the email address to make sure that the email address is valid. It helps to verify if it bounces back or not.
• Results: When you start an email marketing campaign, check results for open rates and engagement. This will give you an idea about the emails that ended up being invalid.
• Use email verification tools: Check results to confirm validation of emails, try using email verification tools that will give you perfect results within seconds with higher accuracy.

What is the role of email verification in email marketing?

The role of email verification in Email Marketing is that it helps to improve delivery ability and sender reputation, cuts cost, enhances engagement and conversion rates, reduces spam complaints, offers compliance with legal regulations, creates credibility, and improves overall email marketing campaigns with better results.

Is email verification important for the email list used in email marketing?

Yes, email verification is important for the email list used in email marketing because it helps to ensure that the email is being sent to only valid and active users reducing bounce or spam rates and increasing engagement and deliverability.

How often should the email list be verified?

The email list should be verified occasionally, especially before starting a new email marketing campaign, and after every 4 to 5 months. Occasional email verification helps to keep your email list clean and updated.

Does email verification improve deliverability rates?

Yes, email verification improves deliverability rates by making sure no invalid email is included in the list and your emails are reaching only real and active receivers with a greater likelihood of emails being opened and responded to.

Does email verification help increase the ROI of email marketing?

Yes, email verification helps increase the ROI of email marketing; hence, it increases your chances of making money with email marketing. It increases the engagement and conversion rates resulting in more responses and actions from real accounts that are targeted with a personalized approach. 

Can email verification reduce bounce rates?

Yes, email verification can reduce bounce rates as it removes any invalid email present in the list and sends emails only to those accounts that are active and operational and landing in their main inbox.

Does email verification comply with GDPR/CCPA regulations?

Yes, email verification complies with GDPR/CCPA regulations as it reduces spam mail and bounce rates while ensuring the collection of valid data only that is required under these regulations.

[CTA1]

[CTA2]