What are the 9 most common mistakes in email verification and how to avoid them

Among the most common mistakes in checking emails are: not using professional email checking tools, ignoring valid corporate emails, not removing temporary emails and spamtraps, ignoring recent changes in email providers, not checking emails at all points of contact, among others.

Email verification is a necessary data processing step for companies that need to get better results from their email marketing campaigns and also optimize your lead generation costs.

What is email verification?

Email verification is a process that evaluates the validity of email addresses, eliminating those that are invalid or dangerous, such as spamtraps, disposable emails and others subject to heuristic filtering. This practice improves the quality of email marketing campaigns, increases deliverability and protects the sender’s reputation, in addition to legal privacy requirements.

In order to perform the best possible e-mail verification, you need to relying on a good platform, that has an intelligent and efficient algorithm and also complies with data protection and privacy laws.

In addition, the client needs to adopt some good practices in their day-to-day work in order to make the process as a whole more efficient.

That’s why we’ve listed the 9 most common mistakes when checking emails and given you some tips on how to avoid them.

Mistake 1: not using email verification as part of an email marketing optimization strategy

Email verification should not be treated as an isolated action to clean up email lists, without being integrated into a larger marketing strategy, since the applications of email verification and its benefits are applicable at all times in the email lifecycle, from collection to maintenance and disposal of information.

Consequences: not using email verification as part of your email marketing strategy can lead to lost opportunities, wasted leads, drops in deliverability rates, conversions and campaign ROI.

How not to make mistakes: email verification needs to be aligned with lead capture strategies, verifying the addresses entered on registration forms, as well as being part of all processes for importing new lists from other data sources. It should also have a cycle of periodic checks, especially for email addresses from corporate domains.

Mistake 2: using low-quality verification tools

A simple online search for an email verification tool will bring up a plethora of results, featuring countless websites that present themselves as “the best tool”, the solution for verifying emails and a whole bunch of other features that add absolutely no value whatsoever.

Trust any online service that supposedly checks emails, can put your business at risk in many ways.

Consequences: relying on any email verification tool can lead to lists with inaccurate verifications, leaving invalid emails, spamtraps and temporary emails on your lists, damaging your reputation, your email marketing campaigns and leading to blocks. In addition, data protection violations can also be generated.

How not to make mistakes: look for reliable verification tools, with good levels of accuracy in the results, available support, certifications, privacy and data protection policies, with reliable tax information and referrals from other companies, etc. You’ll find that the number of truly reliable services will be greatly reduced.

Mistake 3: not carrying out regular checks

When you don’t check your emails or only check them sporadically, without a regular sanitizing schedule, you become more prone to problems related to aumento de bounces, such as difficulties with email providers, reduced reputation of IPs and domains, among others.

An email list that doesn’t undergo recurring checks is subject to, for example, email addresses being deactivated and becoming bounces. This can happen for various reasons:

• Layoffs, in the case of corporate emails
• Inactive domains, like when a company ceases to exist
• Deactivations, as in the case of temporary emails or aliases
• Other deactivations, as in the case of abandoned emails

In the case of corporate emails, an interesting fact: the average professional turnover in 2023 was 41% (Award.co – https://www.award.co/blog/employee-turnover-rates). Around 38% of people leave their job within the first year of employment and, of these, 40% do so within the first 90 days (Hubstaff – https://hubstaff.com/blog/employee-turnover-statistics/). Now, imagine the impact of these moves on your mailing lists, and you’ll have an excellent reason to rethink the regularity of your mailing list checks.

Checking your emails regularly is essential. Establish a regular schedule for checks and discuss the ideal frequency for different types of lists or new email entries.

How not to make mistakes:

For example, you can stipulate that your contact lists will be checked and sanitized every 4 months or differentiate the periods according to the type and profile of each list or each email cluster, prioritizing professional contacts. You can also define that all your registration touchpoints (online forms, totems, terminals, etc.) will be validated and verified in real time, i.e. on a daily basis, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Therefore, to avoid this error, implement a regular schedule for checks and activate a real-time email checking service.

Mistake 4: relying on manual checks

Perhaps you could carry out your own manual check on a list of, say, 100 recent and known e-mail addresses. What about 1,000 contacts? And with 100,000 contacts? See? The problem is that, as well as being laborious, these manual checks are prone to errors and obviously don’t succeed scale as the list of contacts grows.

Consequences: believing that manually checking email lists can bring positive results is a serious mistake, due to its inefficiency and the inevitable human errors that can end up compromising the campaign in every way, from both a practical and a strategic point of view.

How not to make mistakes: promoting the automation of internal data processing processes, as well as adopting professional email verification tools.

Mistake 5: not removing duplicate e-mail records

Duplicate e-mail records, i.e. those that appear more than once in the same contact list, represent an oversight in terms of the organization of the company and its CRM and e-mail marketing systems and a risk in terms of reputation and customer relations, who may receive multiple repeated messages.

Whether due to human error in the case of manual registrations or system failures when importing lists from different sources, duplicate e-mail registrations cannot be tolerated and must be removed from all lists.

Consequences: neglecting to remove duplicate emails can lead to a series of obstacles and problems, such as a negative perception on the part of the recipient (which can turn into spam complaints), a drop in reputation with ISPs, blocking, a reduction in delivery and opening rates and, finally, a reduction in ROI.

How not to make mistakes: immediately remove any duplicate records, using all available methods. CRM and e-mail marketing systems have features of this nature. Make registration forms capable of nurturing existing leads instead of duplicating records. Take advantage of the fact that email verification tools also promote the removal of duplicate email addresses.

Mistake 6: ignoring temporary or disposable emails

Temporary emails (also called disposable emails or burn emails) are those email addresses that exist for a period of time. only a few hours or days, becoming invalid after this period, in other words, hard bounces.

Thus, allowing registrations to be made using temporary e-mails will lead to problems in the future. Furthermore, such addresses can be used to validate double opt-in forms, bypassing traditional validation mechanisms and can even be used for fraud.

Consequences: accepting temporary emails will inevitably increase the bounce rate, negatively impacting the sender’s reputation. What’s more, it will make it impossible to engage with the recipients of these disposable emails.

How not to make mistakes: use an email verification tool, as it will be able to identify most addresses of this nature that want to register. Install real-time email verification on your registration forms and prevent new registrations from being made using these addresses.

Mistake 7: believing that syntactically correct emails are valid

Many marketing and technology professionals, when asked about dealing with invalid emails in their registration processes, answer categorically that they already check for them. The problem is that, in reality, most of them only deal with one of the possible problems: syntax errors. In other words, they validate whether an e-mail address is syntactically correct, if it has no characters that make it invalid.

This care is necessary, but insufficient, because the actual existence of the e-mail address is not verified. Relying solely on validating the syntax of emails can lead to a false sense of security which will ultimately lead to the registration of invalid emails (hard bounces), temporary emails and even spamtraps.

Consequences: e-mail addresses that are valid in format (syntax) but do not exist cause bounces which, in turn, lead to blocking by e-mail providers. What’s more, it’s a waste of business opportunities, budget and an unnecessary increase in lead generation costs.

How not to make mistakes:

verifying the real existence of an email address involves many more steps than simply validating the format. Double opt-in is one way of avoiding errors, as it sends confirmation links and prevents invalid registrations. However, it doesn’t prevent temporary emails or save leads from being wasted. What’s more, it’s important that other information is confirmed, such as server tests, domain configurations and so on. That’s why there are email verification tools, which specialize in this type of analysis and are able to bring benefits such as making the most of visitors’ registrations, avoiding fraud and waste.

Mistake 8: Not Implementing Anti-Spamtrap Measures

Spamtraps are e-mail addresses whose purpose is to identify spammers and their practices. To learn more about spamtraps, we recommend the read the SafetyMails manual.

Among the most common practices that lead spamtraps to become part of mailing lists are the purchase of lists and the improper collection of e-mail addresses on the Internet. But neglecting to manage email lists can also lead to spamtraps recycled type, which are abandoned e-mail addresses that are converted into spamtraps by email providers.

Consequences: having spamtraps in your contact lists and email marketing will inevitably cause your domain and sending IPs to be blocked and registered on blacklists. The effects of email providers’ penalties for those who send messages to spamtraps are usually more serious than other types of behavior.

How not to make mistakes:

First of all, don’t buy mailing lists. Not only are they made up of contacts who aren’t necessarily interested in your product or service, but they can also lead to spamtraps and violate data protection laws. So abandon any practices of automatic and improper collection of email data on the Internet. Then use professional email verification services, which are able to identify most spamtraps in a contact list. And finally, remove emails that have had no engagement with your messages in the last 4 to 6 months.

Mistake 9: not taking Data Protection Laws into account

As we said earlier, there are many websites promising email verification services. But in many of them, in addition to the poor quality of the services, there is a lack of compliance with laws such asLGPD, GDPR, and CCPA, which can compromise the security of your data and the reputation of your company.

Carrying out indiscriminate data collection on the Internet, through software, also constitutes a violation of data protection laws, since these recipients have not given consent to the use of their personal data for collection, processing and storage.

Consequences: violations of laws such as GDPR, LGPD, CCPA, among others, can lead to heavy fines, as well as serious damage to the company’s reputation, since cases of data leakage are often publicized. This will also affect your company’s relationship with its partners and clients, and could lead to a loss of credibility and contracts.

How not to make mistakes: always follow the best privacy and data protection practices, don’t buy mailing lists and only seek relationships with service providers (especially those with whom you will be sharing personal data) that are fully compliant with data protection laws. Demand privacy and data protection policies and see if the countries where these companies are based already have legislation of this nature.

CHECKLIST – How to avoid errors in email verification?

1. Don’t check emails manually
2. Search for professional email verification tools
3. Demand compliance with data protection and privacy laws from these tools
4. Schedule regular checks on mailing lists
5. Don’t buy mailing lists
6. Remove duplicate emails
7. Remove invalid, temporary and spamtraps emails
8. Prevent the registration of temporary emails
9. Install a real-time email verification API

Conclusion

Checking e-mails guarantees the efficiency of e-mail marketing campaigns and protects the sender’s reputation.

To do this, avoid the most common mistakes, such as not using quality tools, ignoring regular checks and disregarding data protection laws. This can save your company from financial losses, blocking of providers and damage to reputation.

Follow best practices, automate processes and maintain legal compliance to ensure the quality of your mailing lists and optimize the results of your campaigns.

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