Why is Email Verification Crucial for Businesses?

Email verification is essential for any business to protect its email domain reputation and deliverability. Whether you rely heavily on email marketing or use email for crucial communications, being able to reach your customers and prospects is critical.

These are the primary ways that email verification will impact your business.

Lowers your email bounce rateⓘ

Email verification will lower your email bounce rate by eliminating invalid email addresses from your database. It will also help correct typos and remove duplicate emails so you can confidently send your campaigns to valid contacts.

Internet and email service providers look for senders to keep a bounce rate of 2% or lower. Email verification will help you decrease it to zero.

Keeps spam complaint rate in check

The ZeroBounce email verifier can identify known spam complainers, also known as abuse emails. These users are known to misuse and abuse the report function, which can add to your business’s spam complaint rate. The more spam complaints you get, the more your emails will likely land in the spam folder or be rejected.

Senders must keep their spam complaint rate at 0.1% or lower (1 in 1,000 emails sent).

Protects your sender reputation

Every business that uses email has a sender reputation. Internet service providers use this numerical score to describe the quality and trustworthiness of your emails.

If your business domain has a poor sender reputation, it’s more likely for your emails to land in spam or be rejected by service providers. You’ll have a more challenging time reaching the inbox for prime visibility, also called your email deliverabilityⓘ.

The two factors mentioned above, bounce rate and spam complaint rate, directly impact your sender reputation. Email verification will keep these metrics in check and protect your sender reputation.

Boosts your email deliverabilityⓘ

Email verification preserves your sender reputation, which leads to better email deliverability.

Email delivery simply means that the email was delivered. Your email may land in the inbox, the promotions folder, or even spam.

Email deliverabilityⓘ refers to your ability to reach your subscribers’ inboxes - the area they will visit the most.

Accurate email campaign insights

Without email verification, your email list becomes cluttered with invalid emails and unengaged subscribers. Basing your email content on an outdated list can skew your performance and lead to poor results.

First, email verification will eliminate expired email addresses to boost your deliverability and reach the inbox.

Second, it can identify the subscribers who do not open or engage with your content so that you can phase them out of your list over time.

Cleaning your list with email verification leaves you with valid, active email subscribers. You’ll have more accurate insights regarding what type of content resonates with your audience so that you can adjust your campaigns accordingly.

Improves email marketing ROI

Finally, email verification is the number one way to boost your campaign ROI.

You’ll no longer need to waste your budget or time storing and reaching out to outdated, disinterested email subscribers. Your email content will reach the customers who want to hear from you.

Your bounce rate decreases, you find the inbox reliably, and you gain actionable feedback on boosting your email conversions.

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What Happens During the Email Verification Process?

Verifying your email list is a simple process for the user. Download the list from your database, upload it to ZeroBounce, and we’ll handle the rest.

But what exactly happens during the email verification process?

Let’s break down each step so that you can better understand what happens to your email addresses after you upload them.

Step 1 - Syntax checkⓘ and verification

A preliminary check begins after uploading your list via the bulk upload tool or the API.

This check verifies that the email address follows the proper syntax. Proper syntax includes the correct structure (username followed by email domain) and allowed characters (certain special characters are not permitted in different parts of the email address).

It will also identify typos or misspellings and attempt to correct them until it provides a valid format.

Step 2 - DNS record check

An email domain needs to be configured with the proper DNS records (MX or A-type) to receive incoming email messages.

The second step verifies that the domain has these records, allowing us to perform a real-time SMTP checkⓘ.

Step 3 - Spam trap check

Before attempting the SMTP check, ZeroBounce scans each email address for known spam signatures associated with spam traps.

A spam trap is a tool internet and blacklist services use to identify spoofers and spammers. Different types of spam traps exist, and they typically appear to be regular email addresses. Old email addresses no longer in use are often repurposed as spam traps.

If the verifier identifies spam traps in this step, it marks them accordingly.

Step 4 - SMTP checkⓘ

An SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) check is a test that attempts to connect to the email server and measures the response time. The test measures the email server’s health and whether or not it’s properly configured to send and receive emails.

A failed SMTP checkⓘ can indicate issues with the email server, such as improper configuration, which will cause incoming emails to bounce. Some email servers are also not configured to receive incoming mail.

Step 5 - Proprietary technology check

At this step, ZeroBounce leverages its proprietary technologies to continue testing the validity of the email address. This step allows the verifier to deliver our 99.6% accuracy guarantee and lets it identify more than 30 types of email statuses.

Step 6 - Validity check

If an email address fails any checks at this step of the email verification process, it is marked invalid. The email verifier then proceeds to the following address on your list.

Step 7 - Further qualifying your emails

Any emails that pass all prior checks will undergo further investigation. Myriad processes take place, which allow us to further qualify the email address into one of the following categories when applicable:

The verifier marks the email address with the corresponding status. These high-risk emails are unsafe and should be eliminated from your list.

Step 8 - Investigate “unknowns”

At this late stage, the verifier will know whether most of your email addresses are valid or invalid, along with the address type. However, there may still be some unknowns based on the success rate of previous checks.

The email verification process allows the email verifier to retest these “unknown” results using new IP addresses from different geographical locations. This strategy will enable it to work around specific anti-spam prevention tactics, such as greylisting.

In most cases, this process is successful and grants you the greatest percentage of known results.

Step 9 - Data append

ZeroBounce enriches your email list with key data points at the final step of the email verification process. The appended data can include the following:

The email verification process moves quickly, allowing ZeroBounce to verify 100,000 email addresses in approximately 45 minutes. Additional time may be required depending on specific SMTP configurations and anti-spam technologies.

This email verification process gives customers the most accurate results available (99.6% guaranteed). It also identifies more than 30 types of email addresses and enriches your email list with any additional social or email server data.

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What is the Difference Between Hard and Soft Bounces?

There are two primary types of email bounces - hard and soft.

A hard bounceⓘ refers to a failed email delivery caused by some permanent reason. A soft bounceⓘ, on the other hand, is temporary and will generally resolve with time or a manual fix.

What is the cause of a hard bounceⓘ?

The most common cause of a hard bounceⓘ is an invalid email address.

An invalid email address will always lead to a hard bounceⓘ as there is no destination for the email address. Here are some reasons for an invalid email address:

What are some causes of soft bounces?

Soft bounces can occur for several reasons - all of which are temporary and can be resolved. Some examples include:

You can overcome many soft bounces by simply reattempting the email send. For example, greylisting only initially blocks emails from unknown domains but will allow the email after a set time expires (usually 15 minutes). You can reach the inbox successfully with no additional action by configuring your SMTP settings correctly to retry sending automatically.

You’ll need to revisit your email for other issues like spammy content. Once you identify what’s activating the spam filter, you can adjust your email to reach the inbox.

What’s worse - hard or soft bounces?

Hard bounces will cause more damage to your email sender reputation. However, soft bounces can still make an impact.

Soft bounces, however, allow some room for grace. When you encounter greylisting, for example, you can automatically retry sending the email and reach the inbox within a specific period.

However, it’s important to note that soft and hard bounces are rolled into one metric. So, the more you soft bounceⓘ emails for reasons like content or file size, the more they can negatively impact you.

Learn more about hard and soft bounces - and how to deal with them.

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Why Do Emails Bounce in the First Place?

The most common reason for an email bounce is an invalid email address. If the username or email domain doesn’t exist, your message will bounce back.

However, an email bounce can bounce for various reasons, with some causes being permanent (a hard bounceⓘ) and others being temporary issues (soft bounceⓘ).

How can I tell when an email bounces?

If you bounce an email, it will eventually return to your inbox or the bounce address assigned in your campaign settings.

It will also contain helpful information, such as when the email bounced along with the error cause. This information can help you determine whether you should reattempt the email delivery or remedy issues with the recipient's email address.

However, you shouldn’t get in the habit of testing emails blindly and waiting for a bounce. The average bounce rate of your email domain affects your sender reputation, which can lead to more email bounces in the future.

The cause of hard bounces

If your email hard bounces, it’s due to an invalid email address. This means that the email address contains one or more of the following issues:

The cause of soft bounces

You can also bounce emails thanks to common, temporary issues, including:

The sender or the receiver can remedy the bounce cause, allowing future emails to reach the inbox successfully.

Stopping email bounces

You can stop email bounces with email verification. This process will leave your email list with clean emails.

Email verification and validation identifies valid and invalid email addresses. Then, you can scrub the invalid contacts from your list to prevent hard bounces.

However, it will also identify high-risk email types, such as spam traps or disposable emails. These email addresses may technically be valid but still pose a high risk of bouncing or damage to your email reputation.

> Learn more about email statuses

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What is a Disposable Email, and Why is it Problematic?

A disposable email is a type of email address that expires after a set duration of time. A person can use the address for the active period (usually 15-60 minutes), after which the email address becomes invalid.

Disposable emailsⓘ lead to hard bounces

The primary issue with disposable emailsⓘ is that they eventually expire. Once the address self-destructs, it is invalid, which means all attempted email deliveries will bounce back.

However, they’re more problematic than an outright invalid email due to the initial active period. Visitors can successfully register or sign up for offers with a disposable email domain, as the address is valid during this time.

You then add this email address to your list, believing it’s a valid contact, only to discover later that your email bounced.

This will negatively affect your email sender reputation, as you need to keep your email bounce rateⓘ at 2% or lower. Failure to do this will result in more bounces as email and internet service providers begin to see your email domain as untrustworthy.

How to deal with disposable emailsⓘ

The most effective way to combat disposable emailsⓘ is with ZeroBounce’s real-time email verification. Our 99.6% accurate email verifier performs additional checks, which allows us to spot disposable email domain providers.

> Real-time email verification API docs

You can add real-time email verifiers to your websites or registration forms to detect invalid email addresses. The ZeroBounce email verifier can also identify risky email types, including disposable emailsⓘ, so you can block those from entering your list.

You can also motivate visitors to use their actual email addresses by ensuring that your website is secure and communicating how you protect customer privacy.

To learn how to block them effectively, check out the definitive email marketer’s guide to disposable emails.

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