The 5 Most Important Facts About Email Validation

Whether you’ve been an email marketer for several years or you’re fresh on the scene, there’s a good chance you’ve heard the term email validation.

Email validation is often touted as one of the most powerful ways to improve email deliverability, so it’s probably something you should do, right?

While the answer is definitely “yes,” there’s a few things you need to know about email validation before you invest in a service. Namely, what exactly is email validation? Why should marketers care about it? What benefits does it offer?

Today, we’re breaking down the top five things you need to know about validation.

1. Email validation helps you eliminate inactive addresses.

Email validation scans your contact lists and quickly flags emails that are likely inactive. Particularly sophisticated email validation solutions will also determine whether an email address is truly inactive or simply unresponsive to your communications. This enables you to get rid of the addresses that are legitimately no longer in use and keep those contacts with whom you still have a chance to connect (with a compelling re-engagement campaign, of course).

2. Email validation will correct data entry errors.

To err is human – and some of us will err more than others. For example, a cashier bombarded by shoppers may inadvertently key in an email address incorrectly. Or a customer can accidentally mistype when entering their email address in a form.

These mistakes can prevent you from reaching someone, limiting potential revenue opportunities. But email validation can correct human mistakes, such as typos and misspellings.

3. Email validation can lead to better campaign performance.

As an email marketer, few things feel worse than investing time and energy into an email campaign, only to see abysmal results. (Maybe hearing Game of Thrones spoilers, but probably not.)

But here’s the thing: the situation might not be as bad as you think. If you have inactive email addresses on your list, it could be weighing down your performance. Eliminating these contacts from your list via email validation will give you a more realistic view of your open rates, clicks and conversions.

4. Email validation assists you in avoiding spam traps.

Old and unused emails are prime for becoming spam traps – that is, email addresses that are no longer active but still monitored. If you send a message to one of these traps, it could report you as spam, which hurts your sender reputation and negatively impacts your email deliverability.

5. Email validation can help you prevent hard bounces.

Hard bounces – or email messages that are returned because the recipient address is either invalid or doesn’t exist – happen on occasion. People delete their addresses or enter a fake one for fearing of receiving spam.

A few hard bounces every once in a while is to be expected, but regularly emailing known bad addresses can harm your sender reputation. Email validation helps eliminate this issue by letting you know which addresses on your list are likely to hard bounce.

Email validation can be a true lifesaver for digital marketers. It’s a super effective way to clean up your list and, in turn, increase the success of your campaigns. If you haven’t already, it’s well worth getting your list validated (and doing it regularly) to preserve your sender reputation.

Want to try email validation free? Learn more, and sign up to get your free validation report.