HOW TO VALIDATE EMAIL ADDRESSES IN REAL-TIME?

Almost every type of business can benefit in some way from email marketing. Having a database of email addresses is an amazing way to market your service. Many people keep databases for cold leads, hot leads and existing customers, but it is estimated that around ¼ of all information stored in these databases is inaccurate. This means that you will struggle to estimate or calculate the success of a campaign, plus you might spend money marketing to email addresses that aren’t real, or aren’t accessible! If you stay on top of email trends, though, there are ways to deal with this issue far more effectively. You don’t have to wade through those spam email accounts which are on your list manually.

Collecting email addresses can be hard, especially for marketing purposes. Let’s say you’ve decided to offer a free giveaway or coupon and in return, you need a potential customer’s email address. This sort of marketing is very common, and it can be effective. However, what is to stop someone from just entering a fake email and reaping the benefits of your free giveaway without having to give up their email? This is without even considering the human error factor as people put typos in their email addresses when filling out forms. The best way to eradicate this is by making use of real-time email validation.

What is Email Validation?

Simply put, email validation is a method of checking that the email address in question is real and in use. It is a quick and easy process and determines if an email address can actually be delivered. For instance, if you’ve ever signed up for a mailing list and received an email asking you to click a link to verify who you are, this is a form of email validation. These services can also often check if email addresses exist within known email providers, for instance, Gmail or Microsoft.

The steps of email validation vary depending on which services you use and which method you opt for when it comes to checking email addresses are real. The steps can be as follows:

1. A user inputs their email address within the form.
2. The user is asked to verify this email address, sometimes by typing it a second time to make sure there have been no typos.
3. Captchas and other on-page methods can be put in place to reduce spam and bots.
4. The system recognizes when a form has been filled in and when an email address has been added, and checks or “validates” it. This can be by checking that the email address is real and in use by using a clever form of technology which checks if the email has been issued by certain providers, checking DNS, SMTP and social media use of the email address.
5. Alternatively, it may ask users to ‘double opt-in’, sending a verification email that contains a link and can confirm that the address is at least accessible.
6. The email has (hopefully) been validated. If the system you are using doesn’t think the email address is real, it doesn’t get added to your list.

What is real-time email validation?

Real-time email validation is built-in to the process of signup and allows you to check the email address before the user has totally finished the signup process. An example of real-time validation would be one that is checked while the user is putting in the rest of their details as the system scans for the email address in use elsewhere. Alternatively, double opt-in is a sort of real-time validation as it means that it is inbuilt into the process, and doesn’t need to be done retrospectively after the user has signed up or entered their details.

Validating emails after you have collected them is possible, too. This usually involves uploading a text list containing a full list of emails and then a service will be able to check them for you. This is not the ideal way of doing things, but it is a good way to validate it in bulk. If you’ve already got an email list that you have collected over time, it isn’t too late to validate that the email addresses are real.

How to validate email addresses in real-time?

To get your email addresses validated in real-time, you have two main options.

• Go for double opt-in and get users to click on a link that is automatically sent out in an email. There are plugins that can do this, and some mailing list providers such as MailChimp build this sort of functionality into their service, so it isn’t too difficult. Some people don’t like to use this as it can reduce the chances of someone following up and actually completing their signup or opt-in on your website.
• Integrate a service for email validation. This is often done via an API of the service, and you may just have to install some code on your site and integrate the service with your mailing list provider. It isn’t too difficult to do, but you will need an external service. Some mailing list providers and bulk email providers can give some sort of real-time validation.

Benefits of validating email addresses

Though it is always a good idea to have a system to validate email addresses, it isn’t immediately obvious why. Some of the main benefits of validation include:

• It can build more trust and reduce the bounce rate when running email marketing campaigns. This means that a higher percentage of your emails out tend to get opened, and this is especially useful if you are planning to use your email list for marketing, either internally or if you are allowing other companies to use it.
• It gives a more accurate reading for figures and research. Let’s say you want to know what percentage of customers you are marketing to end up buying your product or service. If you’ve got thousands of email addresses that aren’t real then this will skew your figures. Validation is good for the sake of accuracy.
• It helps ensure you don’t lose hot leads! Not all of the email addresses people put in incorrectly are deliberate. It is so easy to make a typo. Someone may have entered their email address wrong when they are about to spend some serious money at your website, and by validating the email you can make sure they double-check and enter a correct email address instead of accidentally misspelling their email and thinking you are not following up on their interest!

Primarily, validating emails is for signups to mailing lists, email marketing campaigns and any other form of site membership. The fact that these checks can be made in real-time and with no specific effort from the owner of a website means there is really no excuse for not having some form of validation in place, and making sure that emails are actually reaching people rather than getting lost in the digital abyss. As technology and email trends have changed, this has only become easier, and even relatively small-scale websites and email marketers can make use of this type of service with relative ease.