A message from Jamie Turner: If you’re a B2B marketer like I am, then you know how important it is to use email to prospect for new leads and customers. Email is the life blood of a B2B marketer’s revenue stream.
The problem for most of us is that many of the emails we use are old, stale, or weren’t any good in the first place. And sending emails to outdated or risky email addresses can put a mark against your email reputation.
That’s why I was happy to try out an email validation service called ZeroBounce, which is an award-winning service that’s super easy to use and a pleasure to work with. (And, no, they didn’t pay me to say that.)
The process only took a few minutes. But it enabled me to clean up some old email addresses I had in my files.
So … with all that said, you might be asking, “What is an email validation service? And why is it important?”
Glad you asked. Check out the guest post below that answers those questions.
What is email list validation?
For many companies that use email, email list validation has become an essential part of their strategy. Making sure their databases are accurate is the first step towards a better communication with their customers and subscribers. But how exactly does an email validator improve your email marketing ROI? Stay with us to find out.
If your business involves sending transactional and marketing emails, you may be familiar with email list validation. It’s the process that removes outdated and risky email addresses from your list, so you can email only genuine contacts and preserve your sender reputation.
How much does sender reputation matter?
In email marketing, nothing matters more. Your sender reputation determines what happens to your emails once you hit Send. When you follow best practices (such as keeping your list clean), your emails make it to the inbox. However, if you haven’t validated your contacts in a while, your messages may end up in the Spam folder.
Worst case scenario? Your email list is a mess, so you get tons of bounces and Spam complaints. On top of that, you hit a few spam traps – these are email addresses designed to block Spam senders. Next thing you know, your emails don’t even make it to Spam, but instead, they don’t get delivered at all. Talk about an email marketing nightmare.
Fortunately, you don’t have to – and shouldn’t – wait until you’re in this situation. In fact, as long as you make email hygiene a priority for your business, you’re on the right way to higher open rates and conversions.
What does an email list validation service do?
Of course, it depends on how good it is. Some services are free, but we’re not going to talk about them today. Let’s focus on email validators that have proven their capacity and are helping organizations clean their databases thoroughly.
A reliable email cleaning system removes several types of bad email addresses from your list. Here are those that hurt your sender reputation the most:
- Invalid email addresses: whether they were incorrectly formatted from the beginning, or became invalid over time, they will bounce and affect your reputation.
- Spam traps: they are created by Internet Service Providers and blacklist providers only to lure in spammers and ban them. They’re extremely risky to your deliverability.
- Catch-all emails: their mission is to accept all the email that’s sent to a domain, even when the recipient doesn’t exist. They are tricky because some of them end up bouncing.
- Abuse emails: they belong to email users who often mark messages as Spam. Getting Spam complaints will prevent your emails from reaching the inbox.
- Disposable emails: there’s no reason to keep them in your email list, as they’re functional only for a short amount of time, after which they bounce.
- Role–based emails: boosting sales by emailing role-based accounts is hard. These addresses usually don’t belong to a single person, but to a group of people within an organization.
As you can see, all of these email addresses have no value to your email marketing. On the contrary: they not only bounce or cause your emails to land in risky places, but they also tarnish your sender reputation.
Email list validation helps you avoid these risks and achieve the best possible results from your email marketing.
The practical benefits of validating your list
You could talk to thousands of marketers to learn about how email list validation has helped their email marketing succeed. The most common story you hear is about a messy list that caused a high bounce rate, a poor sender reputation and zero conversions.
Fast-forward post email list cleaning, you’ll hear about their spectacular results. The great news is that it doesn’t take a long time to see these results. Once you validate your database, sending one email is enough to notice the differences:
- First, as the system removes invalid and disposable addresses from your list, your bounce rate decreases dramatically. This protects your sender reputation and saves you money – because why would you pay to email outdated contacts?
- Your emails won’t hit any spam traps or abuse accounts, and that’s another plus for your reputation.
- Communicating with your customers and subscribers is easier and safer. Your open rates will increase and, of course, so will your click-through rates.
- From here on, all it takes to boost ROI is sending people great content and build a genuine relationship with them.
Conclusion
Email marketing success is all about communicating with real people who want to hear from you. Before you create a new email campaign, focus on the quality on your list first. Email list validation is the best way to ensure your emails reach their destination and accomplish their mission: to connect and convert.