What is the general feeling about email verification companies?
Summary
What email marketers say13Marketer opinions
Email marketer from Email Marketing Forum shares that the cost-benefit analysis depends on list size and data quality. For large, poorly maintained lists, verification is worth the investment to improve deliverability. For smaller, well-maintained lists, the benefits might not justify the cost.
Marketer from Email Geeks finds real-time APIs helpful for subscription forms to highlight mistyped domains. For bad quality lists, they recommend deleting the list or using engagement metrics, lifecycle marketing, and sunsetting inactive contacts.
Marketer from Email Geeks shares a mystery shopping experience, finding that outside the top tier, it's a cesspool of reselling and double-sided businesses. They had a test address receive realtor spam within 10 minutes. One service validated addresses through a bounce campaign advertising dodgy loans.
Marketer from Email Geeks shares they've cautiously recommended email verification companies, finding them relevant for data collection on subscription forms, not for cleaning lists. They question whether these companies could exist without clients using them for purchased or harvested lists.
Marketer from Email Geeks recommends only two email verification companies that don't advertise "spam trap removal", considering those that do as junk platforms. They find them useful for brands that have gone dormant, removing known bad emails (e.g., gnail). They note that COI isn't as common in the US.
Email marketer from NeverBounce Blog shares that email verification is crucial for maintaining a clean and engaged email list. It helps reduce bounce rates, improve deliverability, and protect sender reputation. Regular verification is essential for successful email marketing campaigns.
Email marketer from Mailjet Blog explains that email validation should be used when users subscribe to a newsletter, register on a website, make a purchase, or update their profiles. This helps prevent typos and ensures accurate data collection.
Email marketer from ZeroBounce Blog highlights that email verification leads to higher deliverability, better engagement, and increased ROI. By removing invalid and risky email addresses, senders can improve their sender reputation and avoid being flagged as spam.
Email marketer from Clearout Blog advocates for real-time email verification at signup. This helps prevent bad data from entering the system, improves user experience by correcting typos immediately, and reduces the risk of sending to invalid addresses.
Email marketer from Hunter.io Blog explains that they offer both email finding and verification tools. They emphasize the importance of verifying found email addresses to ensure deliverability and prevent sending to invalid or risky addresses.
Email marketer from Reddit shares that using an email verification service for an old list is a good idea to remove invalid addresses. They advise cleaning the list before sending to improve deliverability and engagement, but warn to be careful about the specific service used, advising to pick reputable brands.
Email marketer from Stack Overflow answers that while regular expressions can be used for basic email format validation, they are not foolproof. A more robust solution involves sending a confirmation email to verify the address and ensure it is deliverable and valid.
Marketer from Email Geeks explains that email verification services help reduce errors with offline collection (e.g., business cards). They're also useful for gauging the health of unknown data following acquisitions, running against CRM data or ESP lists, and for real-time validation on signups. Ken considers using them to 'clean' acquired lists misguided and highlights that validation services vary in quality. They skew towards the US, where data is cheap.
What the experts say5Expert opinions
Expert from Email Geeks mentions that Kickbox doesn't use abortive SMTP connections, and there are a few other companies that do not use them either.
Expert from Word to the Wise explains that email verification services can cause damage, especially when validating addresses collected using poor practices. They state that address verification doesn't fix underlying problems and can make deliverability worse.
Expert from Spam Resource explains that many email list cleaning services use questionable methods and that marketers should approach them with caution. They recommend focusing on proper list hygiene and opt-in practices rather than relying solely on list cleaning services.
Expert from Email Geeks states that email verification companies all claim to remove spam traps, but they are lying about that and everything else. He jokes that his favourite are the ones who guarantee to remove all SpamHaus traps.
Expert from Email Geeks shares that many email verification companies are actually spammers under a different brand or are incompetent, providing inaccurate data. Real-time checking at signup, with a reputable company, is useful in some cases, as is checking for transcription errors during import of offline capture. Bulk checking of purchased lists is bad, hiding bounce rates from an ESP.
What the documentation says4Technical articles
Documentation from AWS explains how to use Amazon Simple Email Service (SES) to validate email addresses. It details the steps for verifying email addresses to comply with sending limits and improve deliverability. Verifying helps ensure that you are only sending to valid recipients.
Documentation from Microsoft Learn describes how to configure email address policies in Exchange Server. These policies automatically generate email addresses for recipients based on defined rules. This ensures consistency and helps manage email addresses across the organization.
Documentation from Mailgun details how to use their email validation API to verify email addresses. It explains the different types of checks performed, such as syntax validation, domain checks, and MX record lookups, to determine the deliverability of an email address.
Documentation from RFC Editor explains the formal syntax and structure of email addresses. It defines the components of an email address, including the local-part and domain, and specifies the rules for valid characters and formatting.