Introduction
People who are familiar with Email marketing know what Email verification is. For those unfamiliar with the term, Email verification services check the legitimacy of emails and deliver details on types of emails. Your next question will probably be, “why do we need this?” A good response to your question is to control your Bounce Rate, improve Deliverability, and get good results from the email marketing campaign.
Email Verification facts
According to The Radicati Group’s E-Mail Market, 2016-2020 Report, there were 4626M email accounts in 2016, out of which 1078M were business accounts, and the remaining 3,548M were consumer accounts. In 2019, the total number of emails sent is 5,594M, out of which 1,288M are business accounts and 3,930M are consumer email addresses.
Though the number of emails out there is huge, there is likewise a probability that a huge number of them will be false or dead.
Top Email service providers That Serve Worldwide
The graph shows the most used domains worldwide.
- First comes Yahoo, it is the most used ISP, it serves 24% of live emails worldwide. Some of Yahoo’s popular domains are
frontier.com, frontiernet.net, rocketmail.com, rogers.com, sky.com, yahoo.ca, yahoo.cn, yahoo.co.id, yahoo.co.in, yahoo.com, yahoo.com.ar, yahoo.com.au, yahoo.com.br, yahoo.com.cn, yahoo.com.hk, yahoo.com.mx, yahoo.com.my
- Second comes Hotmail, it serves with 21% of all live emails worldwide, Some of the Hotmail’s popular domains are
dbmail.com, email.msn.com, hotmail.be, hotmail.ca, hotmail.ch, hotmail.cl, hotmail.co.jp,outlook.com, outlook.es, outlook.fr, outlook.it, webtv.net, windowslive.com
- Third comes Gmail serves with 19% of all live emails worldwide, Some of the Gmails’s popular domains are
georgetown.edu, gmail.com, google.com, googlemail.com, gsa.gov, hawaii.edu.
Bulk Email checker accuracy according to Email service providers
At ListCleaningAdvice we do detailed analysis on email verification services and this graph represents the data of accuracy per email service providers. As shown in the Graph, Email verification services get 95% accuracy for the Yahoo domain, which is the highest accuracy for any email domain so far. and the lowest accuracy is 78% for the Hotmail domain.
Remark: We advise you to verify your email list more then one time if you have a majority of Hotmail emails on your list.
Top 5 email verification services for Gmail
As the graph shows, for Gmail service, all five service providers have great accuracy. The top five email verification services provide 99% accuracy for Gmail.
Top 5 email verification services for Yahoo
Yahoo is the most used email service with 24% email addresses worldwide. For Yahoo, Zerobounce provides the most accurate results with 97% accuracy, followed by MyemailVerifier and HuBuCo with 96%, Bounceless, and QuickEmailVerification with 95% accuracy.
Top 5 Email verification Services for Outlook
If you have a list of old email addresses from outlook when the Outlook was one of the leading email service providers, then you should pay attention. For Outlook, MyEmailVerifier and HuBuCo provide 99% accuracy and other three providers, ZeroBounce, QuickEmailVerification, and DeBounce Provide 97% accuracy.
Top 5 Email Verification Services for HotMail
As we said earlier, for HotMail Email Service, Email verification services have a bit less score then other Email service provides. However, ZeroBounce and MyEmailVerifier provide 97% accuracy, followed by QuickEmailVerifier with 96%, HuBuCo with 94% and DeBounce with 92%.
Top 5 Email Verification Services for AoL
AOL serves a total of 5% Email addresses worldwide. For AoL MyEmailverifier provides 94% accuracy Followed by Zerobounce with 93% accuracy, 92% accuracy from Bounceless and HuBuCo and 91% from DeBounce.
Email List Quality
Email collection and list building is part of the job. And it takes time to build a long email list. As shown in the graph, if your email list is an older certain amount of time, there is a high chance of having invalid, spam, or graylisted emails on your email list. Email collection and list building is part of the job. And it takes time to build a long email list. As shown in the Graph, if your email list is an older certain amount of time, there is a high chance of having invalid, spam, or graylisted emails on your email list. The Graph shows when your email list is older than two or more years than there are chances of having 21% invalid and 12% spams. As suggested by many email verifiers and Email marketing experts, you should clean your email list every three months.
Total Number of Emails Verified by Email Verification Services
Email verification services are used to detect email addresses that can be harmful to the sender’s reputation and bounce rate. Some of the email verifiers shared their total number of verified emails, and the numbers are large and exciting too.
ZeroBounce shared some figures which represent the number of emails they have verified for email service providers.
This graph represents the number of emails verified by zerobounce so far. The most number of emails verified by zerobounce is Yahoo’s, followed by Hotmail and AOL. Also, Quickemailverifier says they have verified 10+ Billion emails and Myemailverifer has shared the exact number with us 52,10,910. Moving to another topic a report published by marketandresearch in March 2019 stated that the global value of bulk email verification services was valued in millions in 2018 and it’s obvious that it will grow much more between 2019 – 2023. Many Email verifiers state that they have verified over 5+ million emails and still counting!
Email verifiers stated the number of emails they have verified right from the beginning up till now, and the number is really interesting. We have collected this data from some top players in the Email verification services market.
There are many Email list cleaning services in the market right now. ListCleaningAdvice has collected data through audits and research. We have identified some key factors of Email list cleaning services.
Critical Factors of Email Verification
Accuracy
Accuracy is one of the most critical parameters in Email verification services. “How accurate is the verification process?” That is the first question that comes to mind when we talk about any email verification services. An incompletely verified email list is almost as bad as a list that is not verified.
The graph shows the Top 10 accurate bulk email verification services. 1st is MyEmailVerifier with 98% accuracy then just after that 2nd comes Zerobounce with 97% accuracy. Followed by Bounceless and QuickEmailVerification with 93% accuracy. Accuracy of an Email list cleaning service can be determined by the capability of detecting various types of emails, such as Valid emails, Invalid emails, Catchall emails, Spamtrap emails, Role-based emails, and Disposable emails. We will discuss the various types of emails later.
Basically, accuracy is a measure of how correct an Email list cleaning service is.
Turnaround time
How much time it takes to verify a complete list and deliver results. Some Email list cleaning services do so very quickly, while some take much longer. It gets more complex when we talk about API verification.
Free Email Verification Credits
Many email list cleaning services provide free credits when users sign-up to their services, some email list verifiers provides up to 10000 free email credits.
[free_email_table]
Pricing
One of the most critical factors of email list cleaning service is the cost of Email list cleaning. Many Email list cleaning services charge less and provide above-average services, while others charge high but provide excellent services. It’s up to customers to choose whichever is most suitable for them.
Support
What level of support can the email list cleaning services offer? There are mainly three ways in which email list cleaning services can provide support: Chat, Email, and Voice call. Some email list cleaning services provides video call support also, but there are very few of them. According to the availability of this support, we can rate the email list cleaning services.
Data protection
Data breaches are inevitable. Data can be lost, taken, or released from the right hands to people who were never meant to see it, and those people often have the wrong intention. Under the GDPR terms, Email list verifiers have to guarantee personal data is accumulated lawfully and under strict conditions. However, the individuals who gather and oversee it are obligated to shield private data from abuse and misuse – regarded as privileges of data proprietors – or face punishments for not doing so.
Types of Emails
Valid emails
A valid/active email address is a deliverable email account. The existence of a mailbox is confirmed by email verifiers.
This Graph represents the top 10 email verifiers that give the best accuracy for a valid email address.
Remark: This is the safest email address for your marketing campaign
Invalid Emails
An invalid email occurs when you try to send an email to an address that is formatted in a way that does not meet internet email format measures or the email that does not exist at the recipient’s mail server. This response can come from your server or the recipient mail server.
Remark: These email addresses are incorrect, and sending mails to this type of address can harm the sender’s score reputation.
Catch-all emails
A catch-all address is an email that collects all the mail sent to your domain name that was not submitted to the other email addresses known to the server. Any email sent to misspelled recipients at your domain, for example, will be “caught” by the catchall account.
Remarks: There are no specific details about why you should send emails to the catch-all address, but we suggest not to send emails to catch-all addresses.
Role base emails
Role-based email addresses (like admin@, help@, sales@) are email addresses that are not associated with a particular person, but rather with an organization, department, position or group of recipients. They are not generally intended for personal use, as they typically include several recipients.
Remark: As we know role-based email is not an invalid email address, but at the same time, it doesn’t have any benefit as the reader of the mail is not specific to the targeted recipient.
Graylisted emails
Email greylisting is a method of shielding email users from spam. Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) that uses greylisting block an unusual email with a “temporary rejected” error. In such a situation, a legitimate SMTP server makes multiple attempts to resend a delayed email until it is finally accepted. Servers for mass email spam, on the contrary, usually do not have such sophisticated capacities.
Remarks: Do not send an email that is marked as graylisted, it can affect your sender reputation.
Disposable or temporary email address
These are neither long-term nor useful addresses. A disposable email address is a temporary email address, mostly used for one-time communication or order, and then discarded forever.
For those who think email verification services is just about removing a bunch of bad email addresses, let me explain how it can be beneficial to verify your email list.
Benefits of Email Verification
1. Learns accuracy of your data
High-quality data is key to success in digital marketing. The outcome of verifying a mailing list shows you the condition of your data. If the state is high, you know you’re on the right track.
If, on the other hand, you see a large number of undeliverable or inaccurate addresses, you know there’s a need to fix things.
2. Decreases Hard bounces
The results of the email verification are exact. They disclose to you which address is undeliverable, which one is job-based, which address is catch-all, etc. Outfitted with this information, you can expel addresses that don’t have any guarantee of being conveyed securely.
Accordingly, you will find the entirety of your active emails is necessarily conveyed. The significance of email verification lies in the fact that with a cleaned rundown, you’ll practically find zero email skips.
3. Spend less money
Storing your email addresses and sending out emails both cost you money.
Email verification services disclose to you which amongst your emails aren’t secure to send. With that report, you can know which address to winnow from the list. Your mailing list will shrivel without a doubt, which likewise implies reserve funds. To those who’re asking why email check is significant, the appropriate response is that since you’re sending emails to fewer individuals, the expenses related to putting away and conveying emails go down.
4. Gives detailed campaign insights
When you clean your mailing list, you’ll be left with emails that are genuine and deliverable. All means taken by your beneficiaries will be precise and reliable for you to contemplate.
Suppose you find a specific email indicating a poor CTR, you can be sure that there was something unappealing in the manner the offer was made. One of the key focal points of email confirmation is that when your email wasn’t sent to unengaged supporters (Role-based email addresses), you realize each and every reaction is certifiable.
5. Improves customer engagement
Since email verification expels off-base or non-existent email addresses from your subscriber list, the rest of the email tends to be the genuine ones.
Therefore, their decisions, their inclinations, and their needs will give you an exact picture of what they need. So when you plunk down to draft the following email, you realize them better.
Thus, your emails will contain stuff that they’re keen on, things they genuinely care about. What’s more, that is one of the main favorable conditions of email verification. Since you compose stuff your endorsers can identify with, you can be confident you’ll have preferable commitment over ever previously.
6. Increases campaign ROI
A cleaned verified email list automatically means you’re sending out fewer emails than before. Not just that, the emails you’re sending out are well-targeted.
Better targeted emails mean better opportunities to engage the recipient. Your recipients find your emails more relevant. As a result, they’re more likely to purchase things.
One of the critical email validation benefits is you’re putting your resources to better and more efficient use. Your costs go down while your revenues likely rise. This gives you better returns on every dollar you’re putting in, a better ROI.
7. Decreases hard bounces
If you’re using an email list that’s not cleaned, this is what happens.
Just after you’ve sent out the campaign, the bounces start trickling in. If you’re doing everything yourself, you’ll need to set up a system that automatically unsubscribes hard bounces.
If you’re working with an ESP, they will have their own mechanism where these email addresses are moved to a suppression list.
Also, the ESP notes the number of bounces you received. If the numbers cross the limits set by the ESP, various things can happen. You might be asked to improve your list-building practices. You could also be warned of stricter action in the future.
Repeat offenders are typically banned by the ESP.
A verified list prevents all these troubles because it removes all undeliverable addresses in the first place. That way, you’ll see practically no hard bounces. Email verification benefits like this one aren’t always easy to spot, but they matter a great deal in your overall marketing strategy.
8. Prevent deliverability concerns
When you don’t attend to deliverability issues arising from undeliverable emails repeatedly, ISPs grow more and more confident that you’re a spammer. To make sure spammers like you don’t abuse people’s inboxes, the ISPs begin pushing an increasing number of emails into spam folders of recipients.
So this is what happens: some of your most engaged recipients will also not get your emails in their inbox. Actually, your emails are being pushed into their spam folder, but who checks spam folders? And so, you drop out of their radars and it’s curtains closed for your email marketing.
9. Protects Sender Reputation
You’ve been sending out emails for some time, and as a result, you’ve created a kind of reputation among ISPs, ESPs, and so on.
This reputation, commonly known as sender reputation, is built on many factors. This includes elements like how often recipients flag your email as spam or what proportion of your outgoing emails bounces back.
Using a cleaned email list ensures you aren’t sending out emails to any address that will reject your email, resulting in bounces. If you’ve ever wondered why the need to verify email addresses, the answer is this: it helps protect your sender reputation.
10. Gives a clean database to your sales teams
As your subscriber list grows and moves gradually from awareness level to interest in purchasing your products, your sales team can slowly step in.
But your mailing list is suitable for your sales team only when the emails are accurate. Without a verified listing, your sales teams are just shooting in the dark, trying out various versions of emails and worrying why the metrics aren’t coming outright.
And these are all because you gave them a list that has a lot of incorrect and dead email addresses.
A verified list, on the other hand, doesn’t waste the efforts of your sales teams. Whatever insights come up, they’re accurate and genuine. That means your sales can work more effectively and more efficiently.
11.Protects you from fines and penalties
When you use the services of an ESP, you are their customer, so they should be taking good care of you.
Sure. But they want you to act in a responsible and disciplined manner. That means they wouldn’t like your campaigns returning a large number of bounces and complaints.
So what would they do?
Depending on how big and how frequent your campaigns cause trouble, your ESP could begin by warning you. Next time this happens, they could flatly refuse to carry your emails.
That’s because your hard bounces are negatively impacting the deliverability of their other clients. If the issues get worse, they could demand you pay for the damages.
One of the advantages of email verification is it will ensure you maintain list hygiene and keep hard bounces to near zero.
12. Assists you evaluate email gathering methods
If you’re like most other marketers who collect email addresses from multiple sources, people may have signed up for a free e-book, a free email course, or a free trial of your product. Basically, they could have joined your mailing list for diverse reasons on various occasions and events.
One of the best outcomes of email verification is that it tells you how reliable your email collection methods are. You might, for instance, find email addresses collected for a free webinar are high quality as compared to, say, signups for a newsletter.
This insight gives you an excellent opportunity to improve and fine-tune your email collection methods.
13. Lower spam complaints
One of the benefits of email verification is that it reduces spam complaints. This could be particularly true for role-addresses (addresses like sales@, support@, etc.). If you send out emails without email verification, some of your emails could reach role-addresses on your list.
You already know role-addresses are often shared by multiple people. You have no idea (nor any control on) who, out of all the people sharing the single address, are subscribed to your mailing list. However, the rest of the people wouldn’t know someone used the address to sign up for your e-newsletter. As a result, one of them is going to report you as a spammer.
An email tester tool separates and removes role-addresses from your mailing list. Hence there’s no email sent to role-addresses and no spam complaints. You can find out more about how role-addresses on your subscriber list hurt.
14. Keeps your email list Clean
Annually, an estimated 20% to 35% of email addresses die and turn invalid.
Put differently, about one in every three email addresses on your subscription list will cease to exist every year. You can very well imagine the cost of storing and emailing to addresses that are no longer valid. Email verification ensures your list is updated, and all emails on your mailing list are safe and deliverable.
That gives you the confidence that all efforts of targeting these recipients are in the right direction and that you aren’t wasting a single penny on addresses that expired months ago.
Conclusion
Hence, we can say that the need for an email verification before an email marketing campaign is obligatory. It will be crucial in the future that as the non-human email traffic is increasing day by day, email verification service providers keep improving and adding new features
