Before launching your cold email campaign, you must first clean your email list. In this article, we will explain what email verification is and why it is so important.

What is email verification?

The email list is the most important element of doing business for an email marketer. For this base to bring maximum benefit, it must consist of engaged and active contacts.

To maintain this state, it must be "cleaned" - to carry out verification and validation.

Email validation is the process of checking email addresses for existence and authenticity.

Email verification is the process of verifying that an email address is being actively used. Using SMTP communication, or mail transfer protocol, an email request is sent and checks whether the contact is active or not.

Why is it important to do email verification?

1. When planning to send a cold email campaign, marketers often have to use outdated databases. In such databases, there are many email addresses that no longer exist, for example, if the user quit his company or the domain name is no longer valid. Also, do not neglect the fact that the user simply may not remember you, since you have not been in contact for a long time.

2. The base of addresses is collected in real life or on paper questionnaires. For example, you participated in an exhibition or conducted a survey where users manually shared their email address. In this case, there is a high chance that a person could make a mistake in writing the address or write too illegibly, after which you risk writing an invalid contact of a potential client into the database.

3. More than 10% of sent emails were not delivered and were automatically bounced. You should try to avoid such situations, as the mail service may consider you a spammer and send a warning about a large number of complaints or even block you.

Pause your newsletter and check the contacts for validity so as not to spoil your reputation as a sender*.

Sender reputation* - your integrity in the eyes of mail providers. When there is a high level of deliverability and engagement of the recipient, the reputation of the sender domain grows. High reputation - more chances of getting into the inbox.

There are 2 types of failures:

1. Hard bounce is a constant reason why an email cannot be delivered.

• Email does not exist

• Domain name does not exist

• Delivery blocked by subscriber's server

• Emails marked as spam by the recipient

Hard bounce will block the sender. Do not exceed the limit of 7% of non-existent addresses.

2. Soft bounce - temporary reasons due to which the letter cannot be delivered.

• Letter size or character limits exceeded.

• The user's server is temporarily unavailable

• The user's mailbox is full.

Stages of validating the list of email addresses:

• Validation of the local part of the postal address (before @). For example, if the user added a special character: "/" or two dots ".." - joh/nyander..son@gmail.com

• Checking the domain part of the postal address (after @). For example, the user missed a letter in the domain name: johnyanderson@gmail.om

• Duplicate mailboxes

• Spam traps. These are the addresses that postal services "catch" spammers. Lists of known spam traps are checked and matches are identified.

• Disposable emails are temporary mailboxes that do not require registration. Check for such email addresses.

• Domain and server verification. Mail eXchanger (MX) is a DNS record that points to a mail server. A domain without this entry will not accept emails. Checking the address for the presence of an MX record.

Top 10 Free Bulk Email Verifier

🔹 ZeroBounce: ZeroBounce offers a free email verifier that allows you to verify up to 100 emails per month for free.

🔹 Mailfloss: Mailfloss offers a free plan that allows you to verify up to 1,000 emails per month.

🔹 EmailListVerify: EmailListVerify offers a free plan that allows you to verify up to 100 emails per day.

🔹 Verifalia: Verifalia offers a free plan that allows you to verify up to 25 emails per day.

🔹 Bounceless: Bounceless offers a free plan that allows you to verify up to 100 emails per month.

🔹 Snov.io: Snov.io offers a free plan that allows you to verify up to 100 emails per month.

🔹 MyEmailVerifier: MyEmailVerifier offers a free plan that allows you to verify up to 100 emails per month.

🔹 VoilaNorbert: VoilaNorbert offers a free plan that allows you to verify up to 50 emails for free.

🔹 DeBounce: DeBounce offers a free plan that allows you to verify up to 10 emails per day.

🔹 QuickEmailVerification: Quick Email Verification offers a free plan that allows you to verify up to 100 emails for free.

Conclusion:

If you want to do email verified successfully update and clean your email list regularly. Clients delete, change, transfer and even sell their postal addresses in a year. Therefore, it is important to check the base. Clean up unnecessary emails: non-existent accounts, contacts with complaints, users who unsubscribe from your emails.

Add the ability to unsubscribe from your mailing list. To prevent customers from marking your emails as spam, add an "Unsubscribe" button for them and remove unsubscribed contacts from the database. By doing this, you will not receive negative feedback from users and mailing services.

Do not send mailings from the main domain. Use a subdomain for this. This way you will not accidentally fall under spam and save the reputation of the domain.

A subdomain is part of the main domain. For example, "sub.anybiz.io". If your account is blocked, you can always create a new one without losing your domain name.

A mailbox is a user's personal space, where he collects only subscriptions that are interesting to him, personal and business correspondence. And as you know, people negatively perceive the invasion of their personal space.

When creating an email campaign, be polite and immediately convey to the user what you want, preferably in a short form.