Email Verification and Validation is a necessary evil. Based on statistics, your opt-in subscribers may stop using an Email address 1 in every 20. That makes it very important for you to ensure that your list remains valid and updated every 6 months.

The validity of an Email Address can be measured through a combination of several validation techniques and internal databases checks with some proprietary algorithms. At the end of list validation process, invalid Email Addresses will be filtered out and the outcome will be a clean email list – validated and ready for marketing and business requirements.

How it Works

Here is a detailed description of how entire email validation process works:

• Email address syntax check: This process will remove any improperly formatted email addresses. The email addresses are validated according to the IETF standards.
• Domain/MX records check: This process will check the DNS entries of an email address. When the domain is invalid or MX entry is missing, the process will mark this email address as invalid.
• Role-based Account detection: Role-based account email addresses such as postmaster@, info@, support@, admin@, etc. will be detected and flagged appropriately.
• Disposable email address (DEA) detection: Throwaway / disposable email addresses or junk collector email addresses will be detected and processed appropriately. These email addresses are used for a one-time use to sign up or to bypass login form with providing a valid email address.
• HoneyPot/Spam trap detection: This process will detect spam seeds, BOTs, honeypots, black list or bogus emails addresses. In this process, all the emails are checked against the known list of email address/domains used for trapping spammers.
• Checking DNSBLs and URI DNSBLs for blacklisting: A DNS-based Blackhole List (DNSBL) or Real-time Blackhole List (RBL) is a list of IP addresses which are most often used to spamming. A URI DNSBL is a DNSBL that lists the domain names which are found in the body of spam email messages, but generally not found inside legitimate messages. In this process, email address or IP address is checked against the known DNSBLs and URI DNSBLs to trap spam networks.
• Final Verification: This phase performs deep level SMTP verification on each email address. Each email address will be verified for mailbox existence without sending actual emails on that address.

Here is a Free tool to check your HTML email for SPAM Content.

Why Verification Of Email Addresses Is So Important?

Most of the online websites have web forms asking for customer details along with email address. During this form fill up, intentionally or by error, users may enter a wrong email address. By accepting them and building your list, your email list will be filled up with inaccurate and undeliverable email addresses.

If you send emails to such email address, the ratio of bounce back emails will be much higher. This will negatively affect your mail server reputation, which is, constantly monitored by Yahoo!, Gmail, AOL, Hotmail and other ISPs. A poor reputation of your mail server IP address will result in blacklisting by popular email services like Gmail, Hotmail, AOL & Yahoo.

So, identification and removal of an invalid email address are essential when you are planning to send any bulk email campaigns like newsletters.

Email verification service will ensure that your email list is clean and duly validated which helps you reducing bounce back and save your hard-earned money and valuable time.

Validating email addresses will also help you in maximizing deliverability of your email marketing campaign and helps you to separate the low-quality addresses from high-value contacts.

Smart marketers are enjoying their grand success because they are validating their email list before starting marketing campaigns. Using email list validation services you will enjoy peace of mind because you are only sending emails to the real users.

Here is a list of Email Verification & Validation Service Providers. I have also analyzed their costs for 10,000 email verifications.