Many have asked me what are my Email verification software schematics for list hygiene. It really isn’t a secret. There are 5 fundamental parts of the email address. The user, the name, the domain, the string and the ending. This blog post explains each one of these and why it’s important to build your hygiene schematics around them.

 

The user is the element before the at sign. The user encompasses many different parts. There are dots/periods, underscores and hyphens that separate the user information. Too many of these characters tell us the email is bad. The user information helps remove bad emails before we have to do a SMTP/MX check.

 

The name tells is a lot about the email. Usually names are associated with B2B data in any email verify tool. In many cases, B2B emails do not last that long. This tells us what to do with the email. For example, let’s say we recorded the email as james.carner@. This tells us the person is professional and is interested in their name. We can separate data this way using sophisticated algorithms for what to do to the name before we move on to other checks.

 

The domain tells us the located and IP address of the recipient. Hundreds of checks can be done just by the domain alone into sophisticated cleaning. In example, we can check the domain’s whois, the wayback machine of how old it is and who owned it along with content associated. We can check against blacklists and the IP for spam fighters. The domain and IP also tells us about the mail exchange and if the domain is associated with traps. This is just a few examples.

 

The string helps is remove emails that are bots, fake and not really serious inside an email verification tool. Checking against swear words, alphanumeric characters via regex and the like can remove emails that are a risk to emailers. Strings tells us a lot about what’s inside and how to write the algorithm correctly.

 

The ending tells is a lot about how to sort. If it’s a government email, or an EU (GDPR) email or any other threat to email marketers. Understanding every element of the email’s ending really helps to sort out emails that you should not send advertisements to.

 

These are the basic elements if you want to build your own email verification software. The hardest part about email list hygiene is speed. In example, you will need to figure out which checks go first and which go last.