Email verification entails checking on the deliverability of the email addresses you have collected from your initiatives in lead generation. Having many emails in the database can be worthless unless they can get your messages.
An email verifier offered for free does not simply check whether an email is valid. A verifier performs checks that ensure an email could be delivered to a particular email address. The process of verification includes checking on the existence of a domain name, whether there is a correctly configured email server, and if the available server accepts the provided email address.
Email checker ensures that emails are genuine in order to connect you with the real person or an organization’s real email account.
So why is it important?
No one would want to enter into any convo blindly. However, it can happen if you fail to regularly validate the email list. The use of an email checker in verifying your email can play a significant role in your organization:
- Email marketing campaigns: checking the validity of emails improves the sender deliverability and reputation while giving you more accurate benchmarks in email marketing and lower prices of CMS.
- PPC campaigns: when trying to create your PPC audiences, higher numbers of weak or fake emails have a significant impact on the number of those you will be targeting. Further, you’re likely to give incorrect information to advertising networks such as Facebook on the type of users you want to engage.
- Marketing costs: most CRMs charge according to the number of stored emails, hence it would be a waste of money investing in invalid emails.
- Sales team time: A lot of time is lost by your sales team trying to reach out to invalid emails rather than focus on the right prospects.
Fake Emails
A simple way of describing fake emails is that they cannot be delivered. The bounce rate would be so high considering such emails cannot reach an actual inbox.
Also, lower deliverability impacts the overall performance with email systems like Outlook and Gmail beginning to send emails emanating from you to the spam folder automatically.
Disposable Emails
These are just temporary emails created on various websites. The service sends and receives emails for a particular period. And after the period lapses, the email becomes inactive. Unfortunately, you cannot know a disposable email just by looking at it. For this reason, email verification becomes important in detecting those disposable emails and expunging them from your list.
Role-Based Email
They are also referred to as generic emails and typically start with admin@, info@, support@. You may not want such emails in the contacts list because they are not for personal use. Usually, they include a distribution list that has multiple contacts and will most likely be dismissed. Again, role-based emails could be useful in spam traps.
Spam Traps
Hitting the spam trap is a common occurrence even in circumstances where you have done nothing wrong. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) deploy spam traps or honeypots in luring spammers. When an email within your list is caught up in the spam trap, there are consequences including a negative impact to your reputation and being denied listing of your domain or IP address, especially for Pristine spam traps.
Catch-All
SMTP catch-all servers, otherwise known as accept all servers are the email servers that accept all emails associated with a particular domain. This means if you typed ifno@ instead of info@, your email cannot be lost but collected in a separate mailbox then somebody can correctly sort it.
But why should you care? It may look like a great idea!…No, it isn’t. Essentially, you cannot establish a valid email not unless the server has been configured in such a way that it can accept all. As such, your emails might end up in the second chance mailbox. Moreover, spammers attack mailboxes full of spam and quickly go over the quota.
You might be staring at hard bounces, bad sender reputation, and inaccurate email marketing results if your emails are caught up in such a mailbox.
Free Emails
Free emails are just as the name suggests, emails created and used for free. Top providers like Outlook, AOL, Gmail offer access to an email inbox with no charges to the user.
But why should it concern you? While free emails may not necessarily be weak and misleading, it can be better if you reached corporate emails that are paid for. It depends on the kind of business you do but more importantly confirm the number of these free emails contained in your list.
When Should You Verify Your Emails?
It depends on how extensive the list is but you can schedule regular cleanup, for example after every two months. Our suggestion? Ensure you have validated your email list before a new email marketing campaign and make sure your sales team is introduced to email verification for them to double-check their individual emails if necessary.
What next after Verification?
Kudos, it’s time to look at the results for your email checker! After bulk verification of your contacts, you can take a few more actions that will help clean your email list:
– Invalid emails: look at various suggestions on correcting errors and typos. In case your email addresses check out, update the database using the correct information.
– Spam traps: remove spam traps from your list immediately and ensure no one contacts them from your team.
— Disposable emails: You can decide to keep or delete them. It’s up to you. It’s not easy to know whether someone using this kind of email is a spammer or has a genuine interest in your product but does not want to get your emails.
– SMTP catch-all: there is no problem in using a catch-all filter, hence you may not need to take any action. The risk is too high in removing valid emails.
– Free emails: The approach you use on free emails depends entirely on the business you do. If you intend to reach out to corporate or enterprise clients, you then should monitor free emails closely. However, if your target is solopreneurs and small businesses, a free email could just be the real deal.