For many businesses, the most preferred means of communication with their customers and clients is email. Lots of companies use this means of contact due to the belief that most persons check their emails daily. While this might be true, not all email addresses collected by businesses are accurate, and even some correct ones may be inactive.
Here is where an email verification process becomes necessary. An email verification process ensures that your company’s mailing list contains safe, verified and validated email addresses. The absence of an email verification service could be because most companies are not aware of its success rate and benefits. Also, only a few know how the verification process works and what tools are easy to use.
What is Email Verification Process
The fantastic feature of email verification tools is that they can confirm an address as active without sending a message to it. For a business to flourish and maintain a positive reputation, the recipients on the mailing list must be real persons. Fake email addresses are capable of ruining a company’s deliverability and reputation.
There are specific verification steps in sending messages that do not bounce. The email verification software is an automated program used to verify email addresses in bulk to save time and manual efforts.
It works by retrieving data from one application and delivering it to the sender. An example is the Application Programming Interface (API), a software that analyzes entire mailing lists to prevent fake sign-ups and invalid details.
How does email validation process looks like?
Syntax check: Here, the software ensures that errors such as misplaced spaces, commas, dots, and domain extensions are absent.
Examples of the wrong syntax include:
abcd@domain(dot)(dot)com – Double dots
abcd@domain(dot) – Missing extension
top sites@domain(dot)com – Unnecessary space between top and sites
wxyz @domain(dot)com – Unnecessary space before @
wxyzdomain(dot)com – Missing @
ijkl@domaincom – Missing dot
Domain check: This step confirms that the domain name is correct and does exist. This confirmation is necessary as, during sign-ups, users can in a hurry fill in the wrong domain. Also, since a dead domain means a dead email address, this verification helps ensure that emails are hosted on a working domain.
Email ping: Not offered by all email verifying tools, this feature ensures the quality of email addresses with little to zero mistake. The email ping test helps determine the active status of an address. After this ping monitoring test to determine if a specific device is online and functional, the verification process is done. The addresses are then arranged as Invalid, Accept-All, Safe to Send, etc.
Reasons for a business to conduct email verification
1. It ensures the veracity of your recipients and reduces email bounces
Email verification is a handy tool in reducing bounce rates from email campaigns and in protecting the company’s reputation. These bounces occur when emails cannot reach the intended recipient due to the addresses being deactivated by the user, invalid or fake. The more the bounce rate you encounter, the more chances your email campaign provider will close your address. Through a verification process, you can decide to remove addresses that are unlikely to receive messages.
Fake and invalid email addresses are often used when the user does not want to share their email when asked to. In such instances, manual verification may not identify such false information. But, automated verification software can. By verifying that your messages reach the intended recipients, you become a reliable sender and reduce the chances of a blacklist.
2. It highlights and prevents mistakes
To err is human, so they say. It is usual for humans to make mistakes when entering details, most especially when done in a hurry or by a tired individual. Email verification allows website owners to identify typographical errors made by users during the sign-up stage. It can also specify different ways of spelling a particular name for confirmation.
By letting the user know there is something wrong with their details, you lower the number of incorrect addresses. As a result, you have an improved sign-up process, and the user data on the mailing list is more accurate.
3. It can boost email engagement, click-through, and open rates
According to statistics, most persons have more than one address. About 3 in 10 individuals change their secondary email addresses more than once a year. This situation means that you might be sending messages to a user who has changed or stopped using a particular email address. A change in or a promotion at the workplace may mean that an individual no longer requires some services. Yet, he/she still receive emails due to the sender’s absence of an email verification process.
For example, a custom writing services website will generate better traffic by sending messages to a student than an investment banker who does not need such services. From a marketing point of view, such emails are pointless and a waste of effort.
Also, unsuccessful email service providers shut down, causing the users’ email accounts to become inactive, in which case the users cannot send, receive or access messages. By email data verification, one can get rid of email accounts that are inactive, deactivated, and irrelevant.
Even if this means a small mailing list, it is preferable because you will improve your revenues and have an excellent engagement rate. By delivering email messages to the targeted and relevant addresses, you reduce costs. You also improve your click-through statistics as well as the return-on-investment (ROI) for your campaign.
4. It lets you recognize disposal email accounts
Disposable email address providers let customers send and receive messages using temporary email addresses. Such addresses are designed to self-destruct after a given amount of time elapses. The service is often used to avoid accidental email breaches, hacks, spam, and promotional emails, especially with websites that request visitors to register before using their sites.
On the marketing side, since these anonymous addresses do not exist after a while, it becomes a waste of time, effort and revenue to send emails to them. With an email validation and verification service, you can recognize which email servers use this configuration and stop them.
5. Ensure data security
It is essential to verify the email addresses you try to contact and verify the ones that try to contact you. Many businesses expose themselves to danger by not verifying received emails. Such risk occurs in the form of scammers and phishers looking to exploit flaws in their security system.
With such flaws, hackers can steal valuable data about the company and their customers. They then sell the data or use it to achieve their own malicious goals. Companies and individuals must verify suspicious emails to protect themselves from such attacks and breach of security.
Conclusion
Regularly checking and validating your mailing lists can help identify incorrect email addresses as well as unengaged subscribers. You can then remove them before your next campaign and so drive better traffic.
In email verification, you go the extra mile of confirming that a correct email address belongs to a real-life person. You also ensure that the owner is active and available for email reception. Keeping dead and invalid addresses prevents you from reaching those who need your services.
