Validate email list is the best way to connect with your customers and prospects. However, it’s a waste of time and money to send your messages to email addresses that don’t belong to real people. If your email lists are filled with invalid or non-consenting emails, your message could get blocked at ISPs, end up in spam folders or remain unread in abandoned inboxes. The good news is that regular list cleaning can help you avoid these problems.
How to Validate an Email List: Best Practices and Tools
To validate an email list, you must first ensure that the email address is formatted correctly. This means checking for the @ symbol, a full stop, and a standardised suffix. You also need to check whether the email address belongs to a valid, frequently used domain and that the owner can receive messages.
Most reliable email validation tools will go a step further and look at several factors that influence deliverability. They will check the address syntax, perform an IP lookup to identify the location of the mail server, and ping the email address to find out whether it is in a blacklist or associated with spammy data.
Some email validation services will also flag catch-all addresses, which are prone to bouncing, and abuse reports, which are likely from phishers or scammers. You can then use these reports to remove these addresses from your list and improve your email engagement rates. Keeping your list clean also saves you money, as all that deadweight costs you in storage fees, the cost of sending through your ESP or marketing platform and lost opportunities when your messages get blocked at ISPs or sit unread in junk folders.