Using email for marketing results in an extremely high ROI. For each dollar you spend on the campaign, it’s possible to earn $44.
Building an email marketing campaign is complicated. The process involves studying numerous sending nuances, adjusting the content to the client’s needs, learning the best time to send an email, crafting suitable CTAs, and much more.
However, marketers may find themselves struggling to achieve any results without a high-quality email list. To make sure your carefully designed messages reach the target audience, you need to take advantage of email validation.
What is Email Validation?
Email validation is the process of inspecting the list of email addresses to make sure they are valid. By keeping your email list clean, you are giving your campaign a better chance of succeeding.
You can either check each email address by hand or take advantage of email validation tools. This type of software catches typos, confirms domain reliability, organizes the list, makes sure that the recipient can receive emails, and much more.
Besides cleaning your list and improving your campaign efforts, email validation protects your sender’s reputation and reduces the bounce rate.
How Does Email Validation Work?
If you decide to check your email addresses by hand, you would need to inspect each one for typos and send “test’ emails to recipients in order to figure out if the address can receive messages. Even then, it’s possible to miss invalid addresses or overlook typos.
Checking large lists manually can take a huge amount of time, keeping your marketing specialists away from creative tasks.
Unless your list is very short, consider taking advantage of email validators. These tools are readily available online. Many of them come with free versions, allowing you to check if they suit your needs.
An email validator can do the following:
- Check the address syntax and catch any typos (some of them may be made deliberately to avoid getting promotional emails).
- Ensure all domain-specific mailbox rules are followed.
- Check for bad language and improbable email names.
- Check if the SMTP server for domain exists.
- Check if the mailbox is active and working.
Advance email validators check for syntax problems on a regular basis. It also uses AI, runs multiple tests, and executes complex algorithms to identify bad email addresses. It also checks if the email can be sent to a certain address without actually sending it.
How Does Syntax Check Work?
The validator doesn’t just look for probable typos, it figures out if the domain name is spelled correctly. The program identifies spaces, commas, and other improbable characters. It also checks if dots and @ signs are in the right places.
Since the email address ID may be misspelled on purpose, the program will alert you about the problem so you can make the decision about removing the address from the list manually.
How Does Email Pinging Work?
This complex step of email validation is highly useful. Unlike checking for syntax errors, you can’t do this one manually. The program pings the email address by sending a message and waiting for a reply from the email server. The response confirms if the email is valid.
However, the recipient never gets an actual message. The entire interaction between the program and the server occurs behind the scenes.
How Does Domain Check Work?
It’s possible to check the validity of the domain name on your own by entering it in the browser manually. The validator checks if the domain exists automatically as well as if the email address is registered and working on the hosting domain.
Why You Need to Validate Your Email List Regularly
It’s important to check if all the emails on your list are valid to prevent unnecessary campaign expenses, a high bounce rate, and a poor sender’s score. Common reasons for finding invalid email addresses in your list are.
1. Changes in Email Provider or Service
One of the most common reasons why your email never reaches the recipient is because they changed the email service or provider.
While the initial address still works, the user never reads emails that you send. Validation can check how active the email is to help you eliminate it from the list if necessary.
2. Changes in the Email ID
The person may continue using the same email service or provider but decide to change the ID. Only a few people notify online stores and service providers about changes in their email address. Even fewer readdress emails from one ID to another.
You can avoid sending emails to the old ID by checking if the recipient opens the mailbox.
3. Changes in Position
When a person changes a position within the company, they may acquire a different address. These people are likely to notify other employees about the change, but they rarely tell anyone else about it. The old email address may remain active for a long while before being deleted from the system.
4. Changes in Employment
If you are a B2B product or service provider, you may be facing a situation when the recipient changes jobs. Whoever comes to fill the position is likely to get a different email address.
The email may be redirected to another person, who isn’t interested in your services. The message could keep ending up in the spam folder.
5. Old Domain
If something happens to the domain your recipient is using, you won’t get a chance to reach them. Such a problem could happen if the company goes out of business. In this case, it makes sense to filter out the address.
Keep Your Email List Fresh
If you want your email marketing campaign to produce the desired results, you need to make sure your messages reach the target audience.
People aren’t always responsible about sharing the right email address or notifying you about any changes. That’s why it’s up to the marketing team to ensure the email list validity.