The Importance of Email Validation in Marketing Campaigns

Building a database of email addresses is one of the first steps in developing an email marketing program. Whether you are getting new subscribers or queries from your contact page, ads, events, or referrals, over time, some of the email addresses you’ve collected may no longer be current. In some cases, there can be typos too.

Email validation is critical to the success of your email marketing campaigns. So, before you launch your email marketing program, you need to validate your entire email database. Running an email marketing campaign without first validating your email addresses is like wearing a blindfold while shooting arrows at a target. 

What Is Email Validation?

Email validation helps you ensure your email address database is accurate and authentic. There are two email validation techniques that you can use:

1. Implement email validation on your website
2. Use bulk email validation and verification tools

In the first technique, you can send a “verification email” to all the new users registering on your site, before you start using it. 16% of all emails never reach an inbox. Email validation is a fool-proof technique to eliminate fake or spam users.

The second technique is even more essential if you have a large list of email addresses you’ve compiled over a long period of time. You can buy bulk email validation and verification services to clean up your email address database before initiating an email marketing campaign. This is especially important if you will be using a third-party's platform for sending your email campaigns (e.g., HubSpot, Constant Contact, Mailchimp).

Here are top bulk email validation and verification services to consider:

• MyEmailVerifier: It is a privately-owned email address verification service. The service’s mission is to help you get quality leads and boost your sales. You can make the most of the real-time API-based email validation service offered by MyEmailVerfier if your business relies heavily on email marketing.
• MillionVerifier: The best thing about MillionVerifier is affordability. The tool is highly accurate and comes with a variety of affordable plans. In fact, MillionVerifier is the only tool that does not charge users for catch-all and unknown emails. They only charge users for verified emails.
• Neverbounce: It is one of the most trusted real-time email validation and list cleaning tools. It easily integrates with tools such as HubSpot, Marketo, and MailChimp.
• TowerData: This tool can help you enhance, clean and optimize your email list with effective data enrichment, email validation and identity matching services.
• EmailAcademy: This tool provides users with a variety of email cleaning options, such as single email validation, bulk email validation, single API real-time email validation, and so on. It is reliable and cost-effective.

How Does Email Validation Work?

While all the email validation tools listed above have their own way of verifying emails, most of them use this three-step process:

• Syntax check: This step checks for spaces and special characters.
• Domain check: This step checks the validity of the domain. Does the domain exist or not? This step also helps you determine if an email address is registered and functional.
• Email ping check: This is the most critical step of the verification process. In this step, the tool sends a ping to the email address to determine its status (active or deactivated).

The tool typically gets negative pings in the following cases:

• Dead domain
• Temporarily-down domain
• The email user is moving to a new service provider or creating a new account with the same service provider

Why You Should Take Email Validation Seriously

Here are the key reasons you should not ignore the step of email validation:

Email Validation Can Reduce Your Bounce Rate

Research shows that email validation can reduce your email bounce rate by 90%. Hard bounces are typically caused by emails that are instantly returned as undeliverable, meaning that the email account has been closed by the account holder or the recipient’s address doesn’t exist. This can also occur due to a typo or fake email.

Email Validation Can Help in Lead Segmenting

According to research conducted by the Content Marketing Institute, over 80% of B2B marketers use email to reach their clients and potential customers. Email validation can help you refine your email lists so that you can segment leads based on their stage in the buying process. This can also provide you with actionable data that can help you identify uninterested leads and inactive subscribers.

Email Validation Can Prevent You from Entering the Blacklist

Your Sender Score can drop if you enter the blacklist. Moreover, once you enter the blacklist, the server will stop accepting your messages. It’s critical to practice good email list hygiene. And if you've entered the blacklist, we recommend checking your emailing IPs regularly.

Finally, keep in mind that if you use a third-party sender to distribute your emails, they control your ability to send emails from their platform. If they aren’t satisfied with the bounce rate from one of your campaigns, they may freeze your account and require you to discuss the origin of your list with their compliance team before you’re able to use it again. This is part of their process for ensuring that you/they are abiding by the CAN-SPAM Act.  Some providers will even stop releasing the email mid-stream if the early metrics show a high bounce rate. That alone underscores how essential it is to use email validation.

If you have questions about email validation, please contact us.