MailRefine

How to Check if an Email Address is Valid
Table of Contents

Email is still one of the best communication mediums for both personal and corporate use. Companies use email all the time in order to generate new leads or to get in touch with existing customers.

The better an email marketing campaign is, the stronger engagement becomes with the customers. Email validation is a part of this complex process. Validating email makes sure to make your marketing campaign worth every penny.

Though email validation sounds like a complicated process, it is not actually. Throughout the years, marketers found various ways to check if an email address is valid or not. Let’s talk about how to check if an email address is valid or not.

Why An Email Address Might Be Invalid

We, humans, make mistakes both. Sometimes it happens unknowingly. But yeah, some people do the opposite when it comes to putting their email. Before checking the validity of any email, let’s find out why an email might be valid.

By researching for a while, we found out there are some proven reasons why an email address is counted as invalid. Let’s get to know the culprits behind invalid email addresses.

Typo

Humans make mistakes, right? We said that already. So it is most probably the person who entered the email that messed up the spelling. Hence we ended up with an invalid address. Either the user entered an incorrect email address unintentionally or used a fake email to sign up for your list. So yeah, both options are quite strong reasons why an email address might be invalid.

Account Deleted

According to LifeWire, there are 1.75 email accounts per person. So, one or multiple accounts remain abandoned. Some users even have separate mail for personal and professional use. So, the user may end up deleting the email account and you end up with an invalid address.

Email Changed

Just like how a user can delete their email, it is also very easy to change their email. Changing email service provider or email username is not a very uncommon practice. In this case, old email addresses remain abandoned or deleted.

User Unavailable

Some users use the email provided by their employees to sign up for a mailing list. So when they change their job or leave the company, their email becomes inactive. So these kinds of email addresses are counted as useless for email campaigns.

Non-Existing Domain

It is a common practice to have an email with a custom domain name. But when the domain of an email expires, all the email addresses associated with that email will be gone. So, all the emails with that domain that used to exist, simply won’t be able to receive any email.

Unspecific User

Company email accounts like contact email or support email don’t belong to a certain person. These are basically managed by multiple persons such as a department. That’s why sending an email to this kind of email address is better to avoid. Because the person who signed up for the mailing list for a certain interest may not end up getting it. So it doesn’t make any sense to send an email to some individuals who are not even expecting an email from you.

Duplicate Issues

You may have the same email address twice in your list. This can happen because of various reasons. First of all, it can be caused by a system failure. But most of the time it is a mistake from the user end. Some users sign up for a mailing list using the same email twice, under different names. So, you are theoretically sending an email to two people but practically only one person receiving it.

Why Email Validation Is Important

Why Email Validation Is Important

Before learning how to look out for invalid email addresses, it is better to address why email validation is so important in the first place. It is actually more important than you can even imagine.

Better Insights

If you receive data from your email campaigns that don’t add value to the next campaign, then you’re at a loss somehow. Digital marketing relies on data the most. And if this data is not high quality, then you will have worthless campaign reports.

The more precise your data is, the more deliverability you can achieve in the next campaigns. If your email list is made of real and deliverable addresses, then you can get accurate outcome data to study and plan your next campaign better.

If you get to notice a lower clickthrough rate, you can simply find out the reason. Then you can make better use of your next email campaigns. By having accurate campaign data, you can ensure better deliverability with every campaign.

Reduced Bounce Rate

The prime reason for email list cleaning is to reduce bounce rates. Every campaign results in a number of emails bouncing. In this case, it is very important to verify whether sending mail again to the same address will actually result in a bounce or not.

Email validation makes it easy to remove emails with no deliverability chance. So it is better not to keep emails like that in the next campaign. This way you can get a reduced bounce rate. Hence, the success rate of the campaign goes up.

Saving Cost

Email campaigns come with a cost. So you can save a tremendous amount of cash in your next campaign if you do the right thing. Just a simple check makes the difference of a huge number at a huge scale of an email campaign.

Better Engagement

More email doesn’t necessarily mean a higher engagement rate. The success of an email or email marketing campaign depends on deliverability and engagement. The more confined, yet engaging email list you have, the better your success rate is gonna be.

If you send an email to a valid address, it is going to find its recipient and is likely to attract engagement. On the other hand, sending an email to an invalid address doesn’t make any sense at all.

To ensure, it is better to remove an invalid email address from your email list. This will ensure better deliverability with better engagement. Summing up everything, you’ll get better campaign reports.

Sender Reputation Protection

Just like your social media profiles, email addresses also have rankings as well. Every email you send makes a difference in sender reputation works among ISPs, ESPs, and various others.

It is not possible to check the sender’s reputation. So you have to be precise about what and where you’re sending the email every time. It is a safe practice to keep your sender’s reputation progressive.

Sender reputation is determined by various factors. These metrics greatly resemble your bounce rate, how often your email was flagged as spam, email click-through, etc. So reducing bounce depends on the sender’s reputation. And sender’s reputation depends on the rate of valid email deliverability.

Email address checking method

How to Check if an Email Address is Valid

Sending emails to non-existing email addresses can cost both your money and resources. As a smart email marketer, you should never send an email before checking whether the email is valid or not.

Luckily, there are many proven ways to check the validity of an email address. Some of them are very straightforward and some of them require a bit of work. No matter which email address you’re trying to check the validation of, you’re guaranteed to be successful after reading this guide.

Let’s learn about how to check if an email address is valid or not.

Verifying Syntax

A valid email address is structured in a certain manner. So it is kind of easy to determine whether an email is valid or not, just by verifying its syntaxes. So let’s first learn the parts of an email address.

A valid email address is a representation of 3 parts: the local part, the @ (pronounced as ‘as’), and the domain name. So, a valid email address will look like this: [email protected]. Her name is the local part and domain.com is the domain name.

If an email is missing any of these prime parts, then it’s confirmed as an invalid email address. Spelling mistakes can also make an email address invalid. Spaces can’t be used in email addresses.

So verifying all the email syntaxes and ensuring that everything is in the right place, is an easy step to know if an email address is valid or not.

Double opt-in method

Though we are talking about verifying static email here, if you’re an email marketer you can use the double-opt-in method to catch new email addresses. This method can maybe cause the users to follow extra steps. But you’ll end up with a profound email list that is waiting eagerly to receive your newsletter.

Also verifying the email the user just put in can make the users confirm if they entered the right address. Both the user and email marketer can benefit well from this amazing feature,

Send an Email to the Address

Most people don’t like to follow this method. But this is the most straightforward method of checking the validity of an email address. Just by sending an email to the email address, you wanna verify, you can ensure whether the email is deliverable or not.

You can send a simple email like this:

“Hi, I’m just checking if this email address is valid or not. Please respond to this mail if you’re reading this.”

You’ll get to know whether that email address is valid or not after sending it. If the email address is not valid, the email will bounce back and show errors like a message not delivered or an address not found. Both results mean the same: the email address is not valid.

But sometimes you can end up sending an email to an incorrect address and it will be delivered like a normal one. That’s because some email providers use a feature called catch-all-email-address to catch every email message regardless of the validity of the email address.

However if sending an email to an email address to check validity is not your cup of tea, you can simply not do it. Just follow any other methods mentioned in this article.

Password Recovery

Using password recovery to check the validity of any email address is a proven method. It may sound unconventional but actually works better than any other method.

All the email addresses use any email provider. Chances are the email address you’re trying to reach is using email servers of either Gmail, Yahoo, or Microsoft. You can find out if an email is valid or not just by using the password recovery page of any of these email providers. Chances are you’ll get what you’re searching for.

Email verification using password recovery is fairly simple. All you have to do is go to the password recovery page of leading email service providers. Just enter the email address you want to verify in the password reset email. If the email is using that email service provider, you will get a password reset prompt.

Let’s start with Google’s email service, Gmail. Go to google.com/accounts/recovery and enter the email address, press Next. If the email address is registered with Gmail, you’ll be asked to enter passwords.

Similarly, you can go to accounts.google.com/Signup and that will take you to the Gmail Sign-up page. If you try creating a Gmail address with the address, then it should come up with a notice saying that the email is already registered. If that email is registered already, that means the email address is valid.

Visit account.live.com/ResetPassword to enter the password recovery page for your Microsoft account. Enter the email address and you’ll get to know if that email was created using a Microsoft account.

Go to edit.yahoo.com/forgot to enter Yahoo’s password recovery page. Enter the email address and press the Next button. If that email is matched by the Yahoo database, then you’ll get a result of asking to reset the password.

Ping Test

The ping test is another proven method to check if an email address is valid or not. SMTP authentication or ping test checks the obstacles between your email address and the recipient address. It identifies if there is any obstacle between the sender and the receiver.

Email Verification Tool

What is a better way to verify an email address than using a dedicated tool? We are talking about email verification tools here. Email verification tool is the easiest and most time-efficient way to find out the validity of an email address.

There are countless email verification tools out there to check if an email address is valid or not. Some of them are free and some of them cost money. Both of the parties get the job done anyway.

Google Sheets

You can actually use Google Sheets to check if an email address is valid or invalid. Especially if the email address is created with Gmail, then you’re in luck. All you have to do is just enter the email and you should be able to see the contact info like someone’s full name and image.

Google Search

This one may sound kind of uncommon but actually works sometimes. If you’re trying to look up someone’s email address, who has quite enough information on the internet then a quick Google search can help with your query.

Most people these days have their email addresses associated with their social media. Search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. crawl information such as email, name, etc. So you can maybe find what you’re looking for via just a quick search on Google.

Conclusion

Now you know the importance of email validation and how to check if an email address is valid, definitely make sure to use these lessons in your email space.

It is a good practice to validate your email list regularly. This way you can keep your email list engaging and worth your time.

Popular Stories