The Fastest Way To Verify An Email Address

As email marketers, it’s important that we verify an email address before mailing to it.

What happens if you send emails to an incorrect or nonexistent address? You will get bounces, which will damage your sender’s reputation and email deliverability. 

Plus, emails sent to a spam trap address may end up in the spam folder. That’s why it is essential to verify email addresses when contacting cold prospects.

By removing invalid and spammy addresses, address verification reduces bounce rates. It can be beneficial in a number of ways.

What Does It Mean To Verify An Email Address?

Verifying an email address is the act of checking its validity and determining if a real person uses it. A valid email address and a real person reading the email are important. 

Verify An Email Address: The Benefits

The word deliverability summarizes everything. 

You are better off sending 10 outbound messages to verified addresses than sending 100 unsolicited messages. 

There is a good chance many of these 1O00 emails will bounce. When your emails bounce, they are more likely to be marked as spam. Besides wasting your time on bounced emails, your emails sent to valid addresses won’t be successful. 

Verify an email address before you send an email to improve your deliverability. When your deliverability improves, you’ll have a higher open rate and response rate. 

How To Verify An Email Address

You can verify an email address in two ways: by sending emails and without sending emails. 

Below are two methods to verify an email address by sending emails: 

1. Check For Bounced Emails

The simplest method to verify an email address is to send it an email. In case the email bounces, you can remove it from your mailing list. This way, you won’t send more emails to it.

But, this isn’t the most effective way to verify emails. It may harm your campaign results and tarnish your domain’s reputation. 

2. Create a Test Email To Verify An Email Address

A quick way to test a contact’s validity is to send a test email to it using a fake sender’s address or domain.

After a hard bounce, remove the address from your mailing list. Because the email is from a different domain, you won’t harm your reputation by sending it.

Despite being easy, this method has its downsides. Due to its use, you are forced to monitor the responses manually, which can be quite tedious. 

Furthermore, this approach cannot guarantee complete accuracy, since your message could end up in the spam folder.

Thus, we are forced to look at other ways to verify emails.

The following are ways to verify email addresses without sending them emails: 

1. Check The Email Address Format

The most common errors associated with email addresses are typos and syntax errors. You must manually check them and fix them. 

An email address gives us an idea of what syntax errors look like. 

An email address contains 3 parts: a unique identifier, an @ sign, and a domain name.

Check out this address: [mailviotest@gmail.com] 

This email address contains a unique identifier, mailviotest, which has a limit of 64 characters. Users can enter letters and numbers, and special characters: ! # $ & % ‘ * + – / = ? ^ _ ` | { 

A domain name begins with @gmail.

Emails sent to addresses that don’t conform to the above syntax will bounce back. Emails may bounce back due to typographical errors, like @gmol.com instead of @gmail.com. 

2. Request a Response From The Server

The ping method is another way to verify email addresses without sending emails. If you are using Windows, you’ll need a tool such as PuTTY for Telnet in order to perform this check. 

In spite of its accuracy, pinging the server is challenging and can negatively affect your system. 

3. DNS Lookups To Verify An Email Address

DNS Lookup can be used to verify a domain’s authenticity. You can do this with ease if you use the right tool. For example, MXToolbox DNS Check can be utilized.

To use it, follow these steps:

1. Start the MXToolbox DNS Checker.
2. In the text box, type in the domain name you want to check and click ‘DNS check’. 

DNS record details are displayed along with the hostname.

Unless the details of the domain appear, the domain isn’t available. 

It will allow you to determine whether the domain exists, but can’t guarantee email delivery. 

4. Finding an IP address

Using an IP address lookup is another way to check the authenticity of an email address. A recipient’s IP address can be obtained this way.

You must first identify the recipient’s IP address. Here too, MX Toolbox will be of use. 

1. Click on ‘MX Lookup’ and enter the recipient’s email address.
2. Associated IP addresses will appear under the email address. Any of them can be chosen.

You can look up your IP address using tools available on the Internet. You can get the IP details of the recipient’s email server by entering the IP address into a tool of your choice. 

An email address that is unusual may be a sign of spoofing, or it may be unsafe.

5. Making Use of Email Verification Tools

While all four methods work, it’s better to use an automated tool that will handle everything for you. 

In an automated verification tool, you input the mailing list, and the tool takes care of the verification. 

Check bulk addresses and receive results right away with a tool that checks bulk addresses. By doing so, you will save yourself a lot of time and can use that time put to better use. 

What is the Right Time to Verify An Email Address?

Once you know how to verify your prospects’ email addresses, you might wonder how often you should revalidate your mailing list. Below are some tips:

1. New Mailing Lists

If you have a new mailing list for your email campaign, you must verify it first. It is possible to have invalid or malicious contacts, which can tarnish your sender’s reputation and your email deliverability. 

Once your list has been verified, the sales process can begin.

2. Increased Bounce Rate

If you notice a rise in your email bounce rates you’ll need to reevaluate your mailing lists. The more bounces you get, the less likely your email will be delivered. Thus, it is a good idea to verify your email addresses and to rid your database of invalid ones. 

3. Occasionally

Maintaining a mailing list regularly is essential. It is necessary to do it quarterly or half-yearly because email addresses on your list can become invalid over time. 

There are many legitimate reasons why emails become invalid. Keeping your mailing list clean is your responsibility. 

What Should You Choose – A Free Email Verification Tool Or A Paid Tool?

The fact that there are so many free tools for verifying email addresses makes it easy to get sucked in. But, most free tools only allow you to verify one email address at a time. This is not optimal if you need to verify multiple emails every day.

So it makes sense to go for a paid tool that will support bulk verification. By investing in a paid tool, you can leverage your time better. 

Now, there is one thing we haven’t actually touched on, and that’s removing invalid email addresses. 

How To Remove Invalid Email Addresses

Of course, not all email addresses on your lists will be valid. Some will be spam traps, others will have errors. Even if you create a high converting optin page you won’t be able to avoid this. 

So, once you identify these addresses you have to remove them. You can do so manually for sure. But this will only be suitable if you have a small list. 

If you have 100s of 1000s of contacts you’ll definitely want to use one of the many available email list cleaning services. These tools will quickly scan through your entire list to identify invalid addresses. Then they will remove them from your list. 

One such tool is Mailvio’s list cleaning service. It’s built into the Mailvio autoresponder and is highly accurate. It gives you peace of mind knowing that only real people will receive your emails. 

Conclusion

Email verification is an essential list management skill that you have to develop. 

Failing to verify an email address before mailing it to it will potentially ruin your marketing campaigns. Your deliverability and open rates will be negatively affected. 

In addition, your sender’s reputation will suffer. The result of this is a high email bounce rate and low inboxing. 

Thankfully, it’s easy to avoid all of this. Simply by verifying an email address using the methods outlined in this article. Then cleaning your list using a list cleaning service. 

Furthermore, you should ensure you segment your email lists to send more relevant content. And ensure you remove inactive subscribers. A subscriber benign inactive is one indication that their email address may not be valid. 

Lastly, along with good list management, you’ll have much better results with a targeted email list. Try not to purchase your leads. Instead, learn how to build a responsive email list through organic or paid methods. 

Do that and you’ll be fine. If you happen to have trouble with verifying your email addresses or refusing your bounce rate let us know below. We’ll respond asap to help you out. 

Until next time, happy mailing.