Has the world moved on from email marketing? Some might think that email has got nearly obsolete with the rise of social media channels and all the buzz about virtual reality, machine learning, and chatbots that abound.

But truth be told, email marketing is still as strong as it was before. A 2018 study, for example, suggests that it is the most effective technique digital marketers can employ nowadays.

This doesn’t mean, however, that marketing via email doesn’t have its own challenges. Numerous factors can affect a campaign’s deliverability—i.e., high-risk email addresses or accounts linked to fraud, among others, are particularly harmful.

It’s marketing specialists’ job to make sure that their email lists are “cleaned” and validated regularly to avoid these issues. If you’re wondering how that would be possible, let us introduce you to email verification.

What is Email Verification?

In essence, email verification is an instrument that can help identify email addresses that can damage the reputation of the sender. This type of service basically “cleans” email lists to improve the overall capacity of a campaign to reach relevant consumers.

Furthermore, verified emails are of much higher value in terms of digital marketing. Why? Well, because knowing that email addresses on your list are real and pertinent guarantees that they are indeed applicable for your marketing campaign which can help you improve your company’s reach.

The Danger of Sending to Suspicious Email Addresses

One of the biggest factors that can hinder your deliverability as a sender is delivering emails to high-risk addresses. These email accounts can be those used for spam traps or phishing as well as feature fake usernames or include misspelled domain names.

Sending messages out to these email addresses is a sure way to get into trouble, as email marketers who have done so often end up being penalized and blacklisted by an ISP or email service provider. Moreover, there are anti-spam organizations like Spamhaus and SpamCop that can alert ISPs regarding those companies who continuously send out messages to suspicious email addresses—truly hampering deliverability if you have been flagged as such.

The good news is that there are software applications that can help detect possibly shady emails within a mailing list. Some of the best email verification APIs can perform this task automatically to minimize as much additional workload as possible for marketing professionals.

How Can Email Verification API Help?

One of the first things an email verification API does is checking email addresses on your list against standardized formatting requirements such as IETF standards and detecting typos and invalid characters. This comes in handy as having to verify syntax errors of each address manually would take a long time or be even outright impossible. However, identifying such emails is in fact crucial as they may point out to users intentionally misspelling addresses to abuse freemium features.

Additionally, the API can examine the DNS records for each address to see if their domain names are valid and active. It then tests the mail exchanger (MX) ensuring that it can receive messages and checks for the existence of the mailbox for individual addresses.

What’s important is that the software can also flag disposable email addresses created using such services as Mailinator. These can be used for fraudulent activities or in order to get access to special offers which may require a subscription.

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Making sure that your email list does not contain suspicious and potentially harmful addresses is one of the keys towards a successful email marketing strategy today. Employing Email Verification API can help you achieve this goal and improve your deliverability as well as lower your chances of being penalized or blacklisted.