We have written several articles about email list cleaning free and the dangers of uploading your list into such programs. The fact to the matter is, there is no such thing as free. And we need to write again about this important topic. Your data is important and no one should own or have a copy of it – period. Unless you are a spammer and do not care about the rules, then the data you upload likely means nothing to you, however, most in this industry really do care about the rules and we are definitely one of them.

 

Email list cleaning takes time and effort. Any service that offers to do it for nothing will not place a lot of empathy into the process. They may just give you a glimpse of removal but not go all the way as they should. The whole point to a free service is for you to give them something they do not have and that is your list. Examine everything before you place such trust in the process. In fact, make sure they have a phone number and someone you can talk to for accountability and for goodness sakes, place a seed inside the list.

 

What is a seed? An unlisted and non-distributed email that no one has access to other than yourself for the purpose of finding out if anyone has mailed to the list you placed it in. Many people use seeding to monitor and track how many times they think their list was sold. This can be also used for legality purposes if you can prove you never gave that email to anyone and that you can prove it was planted by you in that list. Seeding lists is a common practice and should be used by any and all list owners.

 

Free email list validation can be used as a free service because it doesn’t cost a lot to do. But free email list verification will never be in existence unless you can figure out how to do smtp handshakes at small cost, which is unheard of. Email marketing average cost per 1 million emails is around $250. Unless the cleaning company can get good lists (opens and clicks) from you for their use afterwards, good luck finding free email list verification.