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The Benefits of Email Validation

Updated on December 22, 2022

Email validation is the number one way to keep your email list clean and your bounce rate to a minimum. But, there are other benefits you miss out on by not keeping up on your email list hygiene.

Email is still the king of digital communication channels. A recent report suggests that email marketing revenue will grow worldwide by more than one billion dollars in 2023 compared to the previous year. While email was already solid, recent circumstances catalyzed increased demand for online communications.

Put simply – customers want to hear from the brands they engage with regularly.

However, undeliverable or bounced emails can harm your email reputation and cost you money. That’s where email validation comes into play.

But first –

What is email validation?

Email validation is the process of verifying an email address to determine its validity. If an email on your list is valid, then the address is accurate and used by a real person. It’s safe to deliver your email messages to that address.

Likewise, validating your list will quickly identify undeliverable or invalid addresses. These addresses can fall into several categories:

  • The address does not exist
  • The address has improper syntax or typos
  • It’s a bot-generated email
  • It’s a spam trap

Any of these invalid or harmful addresses are the bane of email campaigns. You likely have some of these on your list as you read this.

Validating your email list ensures that your email marketing capitalizes on rising trends. Let’s look at the key benefits of regular email list validation.

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The major benefits of email validation

Lower mailing costs

You get more return for your money when your emails go to valid inboxes. Even if you handle your emailing in-house, you save time and money. That’s because improved deliverability means less effort and staffing to maintain mailing lists and databases.

Better email reputation

Most marketing experts agree that bounce rates shouldn’t be more than 2%. High bounce rates can lead to the blocking of your emails by internet service providers (ISPs). Alternatively, they may immediately assign your emails to spam folders.

One of the most significant email validation benefits is that it protects against bounces and helps you avoid spam traps. You can also identify abusers that routinely mark your messages as spam. With this help, you can eliminate these abuse emails and invalid addresses from your lists.

Woman working at her laptop taking note of these email validation benefits

Engagement with high-quality leads

Don’t waste time and money emailing bad leads. Invalid emails never lead to conversions.

Email validation ensures that you will only contact valid, interested parties. Connecting with real people leads to higher open rates. This translates to more sales, higher brand exposure and increased conversion rates.

Accurate email marketing statistics

Invalid and bounced emails skew your campaign statistics. When you’re delivering messages to nonexistent addresses, it’s difficult to assess the actual effectiveness of your email marketing. A good email verifier helps keep your mailing lists clean. It will also provide in-depth reporting to give you a better overall view of your subscriber and customer data.

Woman writing in her notebook while researching email validation benefits

Ability to personalize email campaigns

Successful email marketing is all about the customer experience. An email validation service provides personal data, such as names and addresses, that you need to engage each audience member as an individual.

The customer’s emotional connection to your company can make the difference between your company’s success and failure.

McKinsey & Company, a world leader in business management consulting, finds that brands excelling at personalization drive 40% more revenue than your average business. 71% of surveyed consumers expect personalization, and just as many become frustrated with a company when they don’t find it.

Your email marketing is only as good as your audience data. Validating your list regularly helps keep your information clean.

Proactive approach

It’s inevitable for every marketer to encounter deliverability issues. However, the difference between your average sender and an industry leader is strategy.

Too many bounced emails can lead to temporary suspensions from your email service provider (ESP). When you incorporate email validation into your tactics, you have a process to head off such delivery issues before your ESP blocks you from sending mail.

Despite the obvious benefits, many organizations fail to take advantage of email validation services. Over half the organizations in an Experian study felt they had a high email bounce rate yet did not take this essential first step.

If you’ve made it this far, you probably don’t want your company to be one of them. But don’t worry – getting started is easy, and you can begin immediately.

How to get started with email validation

Cleaning your email list is vital for any brand or individual who sends a high volume of emails. Here’s how to make sure your outgoing messages connect with real targets.

Find a secure service to validate your emails

First and foremost, don’t share your email marketing data with just anyone. Your team worked hard to compile your email lists, and you must protect the data.

Many organizations eagerly seek lists to buy and sell. These contacts may become useless if you give up your information to untrustworthy services. They will report the incoming spam and potentially suspect that you’re responsible for sharing their data. Depending on where you are, you may also run into issues with consumer privacy laws.

When looking for the right email validation service, inquire about their security protocols. They should use the latest encryption protocols and comply with national and international privacy laws regarding customer data.

Man talking to a validation service on the phone to learn about email validation benefits

Pick the most accurate email validator

No email validation service is 100% foolproof. These companies utilize sophisticated technologies to verify email addresses to the best of their ability. However, the right validation tool should strive to reach the highest accuracy possible and communicate when it cannot obtain an actionable result.

Currently, ZeroBounce offers the strongest results with 99% accuracy. You will not receive a charge for the attempt if we cannot validate the address. You can retry the process, take the address to another service or investigate manually.

The right service should provide accurate results and detailed reporting for your newly-validated list.

Begin with bulk email validation

No matter the size of your list, you want to start by ensuring the contacts you’ve already gathered are valid and active.

Once you’ve found an email validation system, upload your email database onto the platform and let the system prune it. How long the process takes depends upon how many email addresses are present on your email list. For quick reference, it should take a validator no longer than an hour to clean a list of 100,000 people.

Download your results, identify which addresses are invalid or harmful and delete them from your list. Afterward, you can resume your email marketing and deliver content to the quality leads remaining in your audience.

Graduate to real-time email validation

After bulk validating your lists, you should immediately see your email marketing key performance indicators (KPIs) increase. With fewer or zero bounces, your sender reputation improves, and you’ll receive accurate measurements for your open and clickthrough rates.

This makes it easier to measure, adjust the content and push for increased campaign conversions.

Here’s the problem: your email list is continuously changing. As you push new marketing initiatives, you will acquire new leads and increase your audience reach. That means low-quality leads and invalid addresses will inevitably contaminate your email list once more.

Further still, valid addresses decay fast. An email list will degrade at about 22.5% per year. People change their emails, leave companies and receive promotions, leaving their old email inactive. You’re none the wiser about the change.

Fortunately, you can circumvent these problems by using an email validation API to check every new address in real-time. Whenever a lead attempts to sign up, the validator automatically verifies the address. The email gets added to the list or rejected based on the results.

Talk to the email verification service and ask for your API key. This is a short passage of code you can install on your website, landing pages, platform or anywhere else you collect emails. As soon as it’s active, the API will verify your subscribers instantly and protect you from invalid data.

Get better results with email validation

ZeroBounce is more than an email cleaning service. It’s a platform that provides all the email marketing tools you need to improve your list and email deliverability.

Our features come with a guaranteed 99% accuracy rating, giving you confidence that your messages will reach actual customers and prospects. No more questioning a spiking bounce rate or a rise in spam placement. We help you hit the inbox – every email marketer’s target.

If you need help, the team can guide you 24/7, 365 days a year.

The benefits of email validation are abundant. It’s the difference between a wasted marketing budget and an email campaign that drives ROI. Set your team up for success and ensure your email list is in perfect shape before hitting “Send.”

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Frequently asked questions

Why is email validation important?

Email validation is the only way to ensure that your email contacts belong to real customers and prospects. If you fail to validate your email list, you won’t be able to identify invalid or inactive email addresses. When you send messages to these addresses, they end up bouncing. The higher your bounce rate is, the worse your email reputation will be.

Why is email verification important for security?

Email verification and validation identifies invalid addresses and alerts you to spammers, spam traps and other bad actors. Not only will these harm your ROI, but they can also quickly lead to abuse reports or email blacklisting. Both are detrimental to your email reputation and can cause your email service provider to suspend you from sending messages.

How can email validation help your business?

Email validation ensures that your email campaigns target high-quality prospects. You achieve this by identifying invalid and toxic email addresses that inevitably lead to bounces and spam reports. Keeping your list clean ensures that your deliverability rate remains high and that ESPs view your domain as trustworthy and valid. All of this contributes to more successful marketing campaigns and improved ROI.

What does it mean to validate an email?

Validating an email is checking that an email address is valid and actively used by a real person. This means looking for typos, syntax errors and a valid domain name. The validation process goes further by communicating with the domain to ensure that the address belongs to a user.