Email marketing has proved to be one of the best digital marketing trends in the world. Today, thousands of professionals prefer to communicate with clients and reach out to leads through emails. 

So if you’ve made your mind to deal with leads through emails, get their email addresses first. And now, when you are ready to set your email campaign, do not forget about email verification.

Besides other email marketing trends, email verification is a crucial part of your email marketing strategy.

So let’s discover what it is, what is an email verifier, why need it for your email marketing strategy, and how to choose an email checker.

In this article you will learn:

• What is email verification
• What is an email verifier
• Why you need an email verifier
• How a good email verifier works
• How to choose an email verifier
• Email verification tools

What is email verification

Email verification is the process of checking an email address for being real, active, and capable of receiving emails. If the email address is valid, you can safely send emails to it. Also, you don’t have to worry about the delivery rate and your sender’s reputation. Yet, if an email address is invalid or catch-all (or accept-all), delete it from your mailing list.

There are a few ways of email verification. You can send a test email manually. Yet, it will take much time if you have many addresses and can grow the bounce rate.

Also, you can simply google the addresses. However, this method turns out to be time-consuming if your mailing list is long. Just think, one-by-one manually google every address. Not so pleasant, isn’t it?

Method 3 is the fastest and simplest. You only need to use an email verifier tool. So what is an email verifier?  

What is an email verifier

An email verifier is not just a tool that helps professionals keep up. Unlike other email marketing tools, an email verifier is an instrument that will really help you reach out to people.

So, an email verifier is an instrument that checks every email address on your list of recipients. It detects the invalid, bouncy, and abandoned ones, and deletes them. As a result, the delivery rate grows, your sender’s reputation remains high, and your sent drip emails reach your leads.

Why you need an email verifier

An email verification tool is a must-have for every professional who in their efforts rely on email marketing. And here are a few reasons why:

1. Fresh email lists. According to research, 22.5% of email addresses turn invalid yearly. An email verifier will help you keep your lists of recipients clean.
2. Cuts down the bounce rate. The more invalid emails you have on your list, the higher the hard bounces. When you reach the critical point, you get blacklisted.
3. Better email deliverability. An email checker deletes the invalid addresses from your list. Thus, your emails will reach the recipients.
4. High sender’s reputation. The higher the email deliverability and the fewer bounces you receive, the higher your sender’s reputation.

So if you want to keep the high sender’s reputation, an email verifier is the tool that will support you. Without it, all your email marketing efforts will go down the drain.

How a good email verifier works

Every snowflake is unique. So email verifiers are. Each of them works according to the algorithms the devs have implemented. But still, here are the most popular checks a reliable email verifier performs.

1. Step 1. Syntax check allows you to get sure the email address is written correctly. In particular, it doesn’t contain forbidden symbols, and all the email parts are in their places.
2. Step 2. Gibberish check verifies if the email address doesn’t look like a set of symbols.
3. Step 3. Domain check guarantees the domain name (the part after @) is correctly written, exists, and is active. 
4. Step 4. Catch-all check finds out whether the email address belongs to an accept-all domain. *Catch-all domains are the ones that always accept mail even if an email address is a gibberish.
5. Step 5. MX record check defines if the email address can be accessed online.
6. Step 6. During an email address ping, or SMTP authentication, a verifier sends a tech message to the email address. This step defines whether the address is active and can receive messages from you.

How to choose an email verifier

When it comes to choosing an email verifier, you can get confused: there are thousands of email verification tools on the web. Some of them are free, others are paid; some offer a single verification, with the help of others you can check lists of addresses; a few go as a single tool, others are a part of an all-in-one platform. There are a few parameters you need to remember:

• The verifier type. The two main types are online and offline services. The first option is better as you don’t have to download anything to your PC and litter the storage. Also, with an online tool, you can access it from any place in the world.
• Flexibility. The more options you have, the more favorable you are. If a service provides single and bulk verification, that’s great. And when an email verifier can check both personal and corporate addresses – that’s even better.
• A variety of checks. As stated above, a good email verification tool performs at least 7 steps of an email address validation. 
• A part of an all-in-one solution. Pay once, get ore. A reliable service provides a set of tools for email marketing together with an email verifier. It’s cheaper, handy, and convenient.
• Integrations. To improve your email marketing strategy, it would be great to have an email verifier integrated with third-party services. 
• Price. Pricey doesn’t mean the best. Often, free or cheap instruments do their work as pricey ones do or even better. Then, why we have to pay more?

Email verification tools

As you already know how to choose the best email verification tool, let’s have a look at a few that the digital market offers. 

Snov.io Email Verifier

Snov.io Email Verifier is a part of an email marketing toolset. It checks every email address in 7 steps and provides the email deliverability of 99%. Besides other useful features, it detects catch-all addresses.

On a free plan, you can verify for up to 100 email addresses. You can check emails one-by-one, upload a list of addresses or use the extension for Chrome. 10,000 verified addresses cost $69.

Moreover, even within the free plan, you can use other tools: an email finder to get email addresses, an email drip campaign instrument to send triggered email sequences, track emails for free, and more. 

Hunter

Hunter is an alternative to Snov.io that provides email verification. At a free plan, you can check 50 addresses.

The service detects unavailable and catch-all addresses. Yet, it won’t verify freemail ones. To check 10,000 addresses you will have to pay $199.

ZeroBounce

ZeroBounce is a verification instrument that lets you check 100 email addresses for free per month. If you need to check more addresses, you can go premium: the prices start at $16 per 2,000 verifications. You can check both single emails and lists of addresses. Just as Snov.io, it provides anti-greylisting technology.

Which tool is the best? It’s all about your preferences and budget. Anyway, do not skip this crucial step, email verification, in your email marketing campaign. With a great checker onboard, your email campaigns will always reach the recipients and your revenue will grow!