no one likes email bounces, especially when sdrs run cold email campaigns. according to a recent report from constant contact, the average email bounce rate is 9.75%.
but a good email bounce rate is less than 2%. any value greater than 2% is considered critical.
To accomplish this, you can use email verification techniques. email address verification is the process of ensuring that emails are active and existing.
cleans up your email list by filtering out spam and invalid addresses helping you safely move forward with your email campaign. but many email professionals don’t know how to verify email addresses.
This article will help you with multiple email verification processes and their best practices to improve email deliverability by a considerable amount.
Why should we verify email addresses?
Before we jump into the steps to verify email addresses, let’s review the quick benefits of email verification.
This will help you understand the benefits of email verifications and their consequences.
advantages of email verification
1. stay away from ricochets
2. best sender reputation score & email deliverability
3. get better results from your email campaign (sequence)
4. keeps your email lists up to date
5. reduce spam complaints
1. stay away from ricochets
As mentioned, email bounces are the biggest nightmares of a cold (sequence) email campaign. Continuous bouncing degrades the authenticity of your email account and the quality of the domain.
Your email account could show up in the spam index of various email service providers (especially) and end up being blocked.
If you check your email list before you send a cold email, you can easily separate your good contacts from the bad.
Ultimately, it will decrease the bounce rate of your email and move you away from the spam rates.
2. best sender reputation score & email deliverability
Each email account has a Sender Reputation Score which helps the recipient’s esp decide the quality of the email.
the higher the score, the better the email deliverability and vice versa.
Your email deliverability rate tells you how many people have received your email.
If you frequently send emails to invalid or spam email accounts, it may cause your email account to be suspended.
verifying your email account helps you send your emails to the right recipient in an authentic way. this will keep your email account in good standing and increase your reputation score.
3. get better results from your email campaign (sequence)
imports a list of recipients to schedule an email campaign (sequence). With large lists, the chances of email bounces also increase. this ultimately affects the performance of your entire email campaign (sequence).
Also, you spend a lot of time and energy on an email campaign (sequence), which could be wasted if it doesn’t bring you the desired results.
Email account verification excludes bad contacts from your lists, increasing your email deliverability.
You also receive a higher email open rate and response rate which increases the performance of your campaigns (sequences).
4. keeps your email lists up to date
On average, 22.5% of email addresses are invalidated each year. this happens due to various external reasons. In most cases, it’s because people switch companies and the email addresses you have on your list become inactive.
If you don’t check email lists regularly, your bounce rate will be ten times higher than acceptable and your sender reputation will suffer.
Pro tip: Check your email list once every quarter.
5. reduce spam complaints
reducing spam complaints is one of the crucial benefits of email verification. try to keep the spam rate as low as possible. Ideally you should have less than 5 spam complaints for every 5,000 emails you send.
Email Verification identifies user email accounts that often mark emails as spam. email verification will flag such accounts, preventing them from marking you as spam.
To get all of the above benefits, you need to know about email verification best practices that can help you send your emails directly to your recipient’s mailbox.
how to verify an email address before sending cold emails?
There are multiple techniques to verify email addresses.
some of them require advanced knowledge of email technology. however, we have added some simple techniques to verify your email accounts in this section.
We have also tried to provide simplified solutions to address the technical difficulties associated with it.
7 best tactics to verify your email addresses
1. check email syntax2. ping the server3. send an email from a different account4. search for dns5. perform an ip6 address lookup. use an email verification tool7. check your email list while sending cold emails
1. check email syntax
typo and syntax errors are among the most common problems with email addresses.
can be checked and changed manually. the standard email address follows the format of xyz@abc.com. has three mandatory parts (unique identifier, @, and domain name).
The xyz in the email address is considered the unique identifier of the email. can have a maximum of 64 characters and can consist of:
- English uppercase and lowercase letters (a-z, a-z)
- digits 0 to 9
- special characters such as ! # $ % & ‘ * + – / = ? ^ _ ` { |
the @abcin syntax example is the domain name. This is usually the same as the business domain, such as @saleshandy.com or email service providers such as @gmail.com.
You must verify your recipient’s email address and must follow the required syntax. any format other than this syntax is faulty and more likely to be recovered.
Also, check for typos like @gmal.com or @yahooo.co which causes your emails to bounce.
2. ping the server
pinging the server is a technical method of verifying email addresses without sending emails.
You need a tool like putty to telnet into the windows system to perform this check. if you are using mac system you can use iterm app.
Follow the steps below to ping the email server.
- enable telnet on windows.
- open command prompt, type nslookup command: nslookup -type=mx domain.com
- you will find multiple mx records associated with the domain. choose the one with the lowest preference number.
- connect to the telnet server with the command: telnet {mail server address} 25
- squeeze handshake with the server by typing: helo
- then provide your identity with a random email address: mail from: {random email address
- as the next step, add the email address you want to verify: rcpt to: {email address to verify}
The server will respond with an ok or some error message. if the message is okay, then the email address is valid.
source: ilead.io
This method is accurate and gives the best results, but it is very tedious and negatively affects your system.
3. send an email from a different account
You can check email deliverability to an email account by sending it an email, but doing so from your primary email account is risky.
It is suggested to create a fictitious email address and test sending emails to your recipients.
In addition, you can manually clean bounced accounts from your email list. however, this method is quite tedious as you have to repeat each task twice.
4. dns lookup
the dns lookup technique is used to verify the authenticity of the domain. it also provides you with any blacklist or spam data associated with the domain.
To perform a dns lookup, follow the steps below:
- open mxtoolbox dns check in your browser
- add the recipient’s domain name in the provided text box and click dns check
- you will get a list of hostnames and dns record details
- if you don’t see any details of the provided domain, the domain is most likely available.
This test gives you the accuracy of the recipient’s domain, but cannot yet guarantee 100% deliverability.
5. perform an ip address lookup
Looking up ip addresses is another way to verify the authenticity of the recipient’s email account. this lookup helps you by providing the ip details of the recipient’s email address.
follow the steps below to perform an ip address lookup:
To start the ip address lookup, we need to find the recipient’s ip address as the first step.
- open mxtoolbox in your browser
- add your recipient’s email address in the textbox and click mx search
- you will get a list of addresses ip associated with the email address. you can choose any of them
In the next step, we’ll start with the IP address lookup. you can find many ip address lookup tools like whatismyipaddress on the internet which can provide the recipient’s email server ip details.
you can check with the location servers and isp details provided in the search results.
if you find something unusual, then it is a case of email phishing and the email address is dangerous.
6. use an email verification tool
an email validation tool can help you do all the technical checks in one go.
You just need to add the email list and the automated system will verify all email addresses for you.
The other methods listed above are tedious and each task must be performed individually. You can use a bulk email verification tool to verify an email list and get results in a fraction of a minute.
This will help you spend less time on email verification and free up your valuable time for cold email campaigns (sequences).
7. check your email list while cold emailing
If you are planning to send a cold email campaign (sequence) and are looking for a technique to verify your email list, this section is for you.
You can use saleshandy to check your bulk email list and send cold emails together.
Follow the simple steps below to verify your email addresses.
- sign up for saleshandy.
- click create sequence on the right side of the board.
- In the next step, you need to add your leads in csv format.
- after mapping your fields, you will get an email verification option.
- Emails will be verified automatically and you will receive an email with the list separated into 3 parts: valid, bad and risky. it is suggested to proceed only with valid contacts for best results.
This technique is used by sales professionals, marketers, recruiters, and others to send email campaigns (sequences) efficiently and get the best results.
saleshandy also uses the human-like sending methodology that keeps your email account’s sender reputation score high and provides improved email deliverability.
Verifying email addresses can be done at any time, but doing so every time won’t add any value unless you’re updating the list.
How often should you validate your email list?
Email list validation is an essential task for all sdrs who cold email.
but, they don’t need to have to do it every time. You should check the following conditions when you need an email validation check.
1. when you get a new list
If you plan to send a cold email campaign (sequence) to a new list, it is recommended to verify it.
new list with lots of data has chances to have bad, spam or invalid contact details which can affect the performance of your email campaign (sequence).
After verification, you will have a list of valid email addresses and can continue to send emails securely.
once you verify the list, you won’t need to do it again before tracking or scheduling a new campaign (sequence) with the same list.
2. a steady increase in your bounce rate
If you’re using an email list for a long time and find an increase in bounce rate in your campaign performance (sequence), it’s time to double check.
Too many email bounces can negatively affect your email account. before the situations arise, you should check the email address again and delete the invalid ones.
3. regular email list check
It is suggested to perform a periodic verification of the email list, once every quarter or every six months.
There may be a change in email addresses if any employees leave an organization or if any users delete their email accounts.
regular email verification helps you clean up the junk from the list above. this will maintain your sender reputation and ensure that your email campaigns (sequences) consistently perform well.
what’s next?
As we learned, email verification is an essential task before sending a cold email campaign (sequence).
once you’re ready with a healthy list, it’s time to start nurturing leads.
Send your cold emails with saleshandy using email delivery best practices and have them delivered to your recipient’s primary inbox.
We hope you have received all your answers on how to verify your email address, and our solutions must have provided you with great value.