By now we should all be familiar with the fundamentals of email marketing. We work hard on crafting relevant content and copy, build eye-catching newsletter designs, and leverage email-sending best practices. But what if you can’t reach your audience? Well, all of the relevant content or best practices in the world won’t land you in your customer’s inbox, especially if you have an unmaintained and unvalidated contact list. So how do we fix this? That’s where email validation comes in. In this article we answer the following questions;
Email marketing is the life’s-blood of any company doing business in the 21 st century. And proper email marketing is hugely beneficial in converting customers, reaching audiences and increasing sales. According to Imaginepub.com, 83 percent of B2B companies used e-newsletters as part of their content marketing campaigns. And yet, without proper email list maintenance, these newsletters/communications will most likely reach the spam folder, or worse yet, are not delivered at all. Businesses around the world take the time to create extensive and comprehensive email strategies, but surprisingly, very few actually rely on email list validation.
Your email list is ever-changing. People leave their positions or change their email addresses all the time. They may also (sometimes intentionally) mis-enter their own contact info. As such, abandoned and inaccurate email addresses will slowly jam up your email list. And as you continue sending to these toxic addresses, your marketing costs increase. That’s where proper email list validation comes in. By regularly maintaining your contact list, you ensure that your business communications are reaching real people.
Every email you send represents money spent. Money spent on copy, graphic design and ensuring you follow best practices. Your Email Service Provider (ESP) charges you based on how many contacts your list contains. Not how many emails are delivered or opened. Not surprisingly, the single biggest benefit of email validation is how much money your company will save.
By sending to a validated list, you maximize your return-on-investment (ROI). This is done by removing invalid email addresses, spam traps, and ultimately reaching the inboxes of your customers/audience. As you trim your list down, your campaigns should return better open rates along with potentially better sales and this results in lower marketing costs, and ultimately saving your company money.
List segmentation is a way to pool your contacts into similar groups. For example, you may have a segment for active users who regularly interact with/purchase from your business and one for users who have only signed up for an account, but never purchased. This allows you to tailor the messaging for each group.
And keep this in mind: aside from inadequate campaign figures, an invalidated and unverified email list simply won’t be able to provide actionable data. That kind of information is tremendously necessary for your ROI, along with helping you set a course for future campaigns. ZeroBounce also offers the only A.I.-scoring method in the email validation business. This incredibly powerful tool allows you better gauge the kind of audience you have, and ultimately how you want to interact with them.
Every business connected to the internet has an IP address. These addresses are a way for internet service providers (ISPs) to identify the kind of traffic generated by these businesses. If you send email campaigns regularly, then your IP address will have a reputation score. This allows your ESPs and ISPs to gauge your traffic. If you continually send emails using an invalidated list littered with high bounce addresses and spam traps, your reputation drops, and your emails will automatically be routed to the spam folder, or not delivered at all.
Now, take the time to imagine that your bounce rates increase over time because of abandoned and recycled email addresses. You IP reputation drops, and you’re labeled a spammer. You’d be hard pressed to find a business owner who wants their brand or company to be labeled this way, or to have an unfavorable IP reputation. Consequently, using email validation as part of your marketing strategy will go towards preserving your status as a responsible sender with your ESPs like MailChimp or AWeber, your ISPs such as Comcast or AT&T.
And remember, while most people would like to handle personal email subscriptions properly and update their information when they need to, the truth is that most campaigns they’ve opted into often become little more than afterthoughts. As such, your audience won't always take it upon themselves to report to you when their email addresses change.
Using an email validation process should include real-time verification. By using ZeroBounce’s real-time API, you validate email addresses as they are entered on your landing page, contact form, feedback and order pages. By stopping the improper entries before they populate your list, you ensure that your contacts are of high-quality.
But what if you already have a list? Then what can you do? ZeroBounce also offers a bulk email upload tool. Simply compile your email list into several file types (i.e. CSV, .txt), log into your ZeroBounce dashboard and access the bulk upload tool. Our system can validate millions of emails per upload, so regardless of the number of entries your contact list contains, we’ve got you covered. Once the list is validated, our system provides several reports with your contacts segmented in several ways.
