How should I validate my email list hygiene and what factors should I consider when choosing a list cleaning service?

Email marketer from Email Geeks explains that canonical deliverability depends on how long ago someone bought or last engaged on that email address, as the user might have abandoned that inbox, or it could have been converted into a trap.

Email marketer from Sendinblue advises considering factors such as accuracy, pricing, speed, and integration capabilities when choosing an email verification service. Also, they advise reading reviews, checking for GDPR compliance, and ensuring it identifies a broad range of email issues, including disposable emails and spam traps.

Email marketer from Gmass shares that removing spam traps from your email list is crucial for maintaining a positive sender reputation. Implement strict opt-in processes, regularly monitor your bounce rates and feedback loops, and use email verification services to identify and remove potential spam traps.

Email marketer from HubSpot shares that improving email deliverability relies on good list hygiene and strong sender reputation. Cleaning out invalid emails and removing subscribers who don't engage increases the likelihood that your emails will land in the inbox.

Email marketer from Email Geeks explains that while spam traps don't make purchases, people who do purchase can certainly provide a spam trap.

Email marketer from Mailjet shares that using a double opt-in process improves list quality by confirming that subscribers actually want to receive emails from you and ensuring that the email addresses provided are valid and actively monitored by the subscriber. This process reduces the risk of adding mistyped or abandoned email addresses to your list.

Email marketer from StackOverflow says that you can use Regex to validate emails but highlights that this is not a reliable method, and the best way is to send an email to the user.

Email marketer from Email Geeks shares their methodology to validate list hygiene by taking a sample of data already sent to, where they know who delivered, bounced, and engaged, and then running that sample between hygiene tools being considered, checking for which filtered out the most bounced addresses and which had false positives.

Email marketer from Email Geeks explains that one should not rely on any hygiene product to catch every spam trap, as those that manage trap networks are actively trying to obfuscate them and successfully hidden traps will either show as catch alls or valid and deliverable.

Email marketer from MarketingProfs explains that it's essential to ensure you have explicit permission from subscribers to send them emails. This involves clear opt-in processes and honoring unsubscribe requests promptly. Sending emails to people who haven't given you permission can damage your sender reputation and lead to deliverability issues.

Email marketer from Reddit suggests tailoring the choice of an email verification service to your specific needs. For example, if you have a large list, prioritize services offering bulk verification at reasonable prices. If you're concerned about accuracy, look for services with high detection rates for spam traps and invalid addresses.

Email marketer from Neil Patel shares several steps to clean an email list: removing duplicates, correcting typos, getting rid of role-based email addresses (like sales@ or info@), removing unengaged subscribers, and using email validation tools to identify invalid or risky addresses.

Email marketer from Litmus explains that email list hygiene is about identifying and removing invalid, inactive, and uninterested email addresses from your mailing list to improve deliverability and engagement. Regularly cleaning your list reduces bounce rates, spam complaints, and helps maintain a positive sender reputation.

Email marketer from Email on Acid recommends segmenting your email list based on engagement levels. Send targeted emails to active subscribers and consider re-engaging or removing inactive subscribers. This helps improve deliverability and ensures that your emails are reaching people who are interested in your content.

Expert from Word to the Wise explains that bad email data costs money, reduces inbox placement, hurts sender reputation, and creates more work. It's imperative to clean lists to ensure that you are only sending to the addresses you want to send to.

Expert from Email Geeks shares their experience investigating a new list cleaning tool by running the same audience through both their current tool and the new tool, focusing on the addresses the old tool said were OK but ultimately bounced. They liked that the new tool gave a confidence score with each record, allowing them to determine their own threshold.

Expert from Word to the Wise answers that a list washing service is where you provide your current email list to a third party who then sends an email campaign to that list on your behalf. This is to see which email address bounces, complains, or engages with the emails. The email addresses that don't engage or bounce get removed from your list - but this is considered a bad practice which can cause more harm than good. It's better to be more proactive in obtaining valid email addresses than reactive.

Expert from Email Geeks questions why one would put addresses with recent activity, especially directly after a campaign, into an email verification service.

Expert from Email Geeks recommends a service like Kickbox because it gives a 0-100 confidence rating, allowing users to dial in their own level of confidence, and shares their experience silently dropping anyone below a score of 30 in a prospecting email collection campaign.

Expert from Spamresource.com explains that identifying spam traps involves recognizing patterns such as addresses that have never opted in or have been dormant for a long time, and those that are part of known spam trap networks. Consistently monitor your list for these indicators and remove them promptly to maintain list hygiene.

Documentation from ZeroBounce shares that it offers risk scores for email addresses, indicating the likelihood of an address being a spam trap, bot, or problematic in other ways. A higher risk score suggests a greater need to remove the address from your list to protect your sender reputation.

Documentation from Kickbox explains that their service provides detailed verification results, including deliverable, undeliverable, risky, and unknown categories. This allows users to understand the quality of each email address and make informed decisions about which addresses to keep, remove, or further investigate.

Documentation from RFC 5322 defines the formal syntax of email addresses, including allowed characters and formats. While it provides a technical basis for validating email address structure, it's generally not sufficient for determining deliverability, as an address can be syntactically valid but still undeliverable.

Documentation from Email Hippo explains that their service identifies disposable email addresses (DEA), which are temporary addresses often used for spam or fraudulent activities. Removing DEAs from your list can prevent potential deliverability issues and improve overall list quality.