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How to find an email verification tool that fits your needs

Business , Company , Research , February 28, 2018

Finding an email verification tool online or an application for your desktop takes a little work. Before you start googling to find solutions, there are several things you need to understand about your email marketing practices “first” before choosing the right one. We have written ‘many times over’ that validation and verification are two separate things and many still do not understand the significance – even hygiene companies! But, once again, we think it’s important to go over both of those words so you can get a good idea as to what they mean and get you ready to search for the right tool.

Validation

According to dictionary.com, validation is, “the action of checking or proving the validity or accuracy of something” or “the action of making or declaring something legally or officially acceptable”

Verification

According to dictionary.com, Verification is, “the process of establishing the truth, accuracy, or validity of something”.

Unfortunately, both definitions are the same thing if you really dig deep. I hear both definitions for each at shows and parties, so the industry seems to still be confused by the definitions. To simplify the terms, validation is everything before the at sign and verification is everything after the at sign. Validation focuses on the email names by matching and removing threats, syntax errors and bots while verification focuses on the domain and where it is hosted.

Some computer geeks, like me, will balk at the terms because validation does more than what I mentioned above and vice versa with verification. I get it. But explaining it more simple is better for the company that are not as technical as we are. I have found that the more technical you write, the more you lose your audience.

So how do we find an email verification tool that will fit the needs of an email marketer? Since now we know verification decides the truth if the email is deliverable or not based on questions asked about the domain, we can now use the right search terms to find the right application. A simple Google/Bing/Yahoo search of these words works really well:

Email list verification

Email verification tool

Email verification services

Look for the company that talks about bounce removal and deliverability. Verification really focuses on removing all bounces. In fact, the verification company should remove at least 98% if they understand what they are doing.

Email list cleaning keeps you from being a threat

Business , Company , Research , February 28, 2018

Email list cleaning is getting more popular as the years go by. The more email marketers share data, the larger the suppression lists of protestors, threats and litigators there are. Marketers call these threats, however, consumers find marketers the real threat. According to a survey by Fluent, out of 1,900 consumers age 18 and older who live in the United States, “…only 15% of Americans say the emails they receive from marketers are frequently or always useful. Some 7% of respondents say the marketing emails they receive are always useful, and 8% say they are frequently useful. In addition, 29% of respondents say marketing emails are sometimes useful, 33% say they are rarely useful, and 24% say they are never useful…”

That means 85% of consumers find that email advertisements are worthless and will most likely ignore or report you. Many large email service providers consider a .01% complaint rate to be the threshold. This means 100 complaints out of 1 million records. Any bulk email marketer will look at these stats and most certainly find better alternatives to ESP’s. Especially if their lists are not confirmed optin. MTA’s are easy to find but IP’s are not. In order to set up your own ESP, you will need to learn all about traffic thresholds into all of the internet service providers and have consistent feedback loops, compliance regulations and real contact information.

Email service providers now are tracking all of their clientele data. This means, all records being sent, blocked, bounced and complained about are known. Large ESP’s are doing billions monthly, so it’s safe to say they know if your list has bounces or not right after you upload it. Some ESP’s will assign you worse performing IP’s if they suspect you are uploading an old list, just to make a few bucks at first. That is why email list cleaning is even more paramount than ever before. Even if your list is optin, yet is a few months old, you will be most likely wondering why your deliverability is so low. It’s because your list is not clean.

Email list verification now belongs in the white listed space. For years, many just did it on their own and mostly got away with it, but inexperienced emailers will more than likely quit the industry because they will not get the deliverability they want and will be a threat to ESP’s and the list itself. If you use your company name and domain for email marketing and send to a list from your CRM, LinkedIn and prospecting list, you may be blacklisted due to spam and never be able to work with that ESP again. Or worse, if you end up getting your domain blacklisted, you are now on the spam fighting radar and although you may get delisted, they are monitoring you. Good luck finding email list verification free because it’s a high commodity.

Email list cleaning format and sizes

Business , Company , February 28, 2018

Email list cleaning needs to be robust and move mountains. When an email marketer cleans their list, they send to it immediately, so the timing is essential plus the size of the file needs to be just right for the correct conditions. Many email marketing systems use different formats so every email marketer should own parsers and appending software to manipulate their databases so there are not errors when it comes to sending mail.

Delimiters

Email cleaning companies and service providers use several different delimiters for their system. The average is comma with semicolon in second place. Some use pipe delimiters and colon but comma is what most email list validation service uses. Separating your data is so important. Many use a semi colon because some data uses comma only to separate data inside one cell. In example, some data has/have sentences with periods. In this case, using a comma to separate is a bad idea, therefore semi-colon is the right choice.

Multiple Columns

It’s rare to find email verification free, let alone a company that will not support multiple columns. Most data comes with name, email, phone and hundreds of other combinations. These are called “headers” and with that comes multiple columns. If an Email list cleaning company does not support multiple columns, then that is a red flag. Professional systems should support at least a million records and with multiple columns.

Size

There should be no reason to scrub any more than 1 million records at a time. We have clients upload hundreds of files into our FTP utilizing our batch API and can get the files out quickly. A typical file with 1 million records and multiple columns can be up to 250 mb. Anything over that is not necessary since most lists are not as big as that anymore. There was a time, ten years ago, where these lists were needed cleaned, but hygiene and email marketing has changed since then. Most lists are now smaller and targeted versus the shotgun approach.

Excel

Excel can open up to 1.2 million records. Anything over that, it will show an error. Use excel as a rule of thumb on sizes of files you need scrubbed. If your database is larger and you need to open it up to cut it down, TextPad for windows works well and BBEdit if you use MAC. Both applications can open up at least 1 gb files.

Why is email list verification so expensive?

Business , Company , Marketing , Team , February 24, 2018

Email list verification is one of the most challenging parts of email list hygiene. Everyone want their email list cleaning free, but in this case, you really get what you pay for. Out of the dozens of competitors in this field, all of them know that it’s not easy to verify if an email is a catch-all, soft bounce or hard, and on top of that, report back the exact details of the “kind” of bounce it really is. In order to verify an email, several things need to occur. There are approximately 30,000 internet service providers worldwide and each one sets their own mail parameters using blacklists to monitor and block spam. Each one is unique, therefore the approach must be handled delicately in order to not be blocked, blacklisted or worse, have false positives sent back during the exchange. (more…)

How to find an email list cleaner free

Business , Company , Marketing , Team , February 24, 2018

Email list cleaner free is going to be a challenge. Validation is cheaper than verification so if you want it done for free, the only choice is to find a validation company. Not one verification company is going to scrub your list for free because verification requires either highly sensitive data from data sources or an actual SMPT handshake and offering this service for free does not make any business sense since the typical charge for verification is .001 per record. With that being said, you will need to look for some signs for a validation company and what they are offering. Free, doesn’t mean free. So if you upload your database into a free program, you better watch out for these signs. (more…)

Email list cleaning and the pitfalls of giving up your data

Business , Company , Research , Team , February 24, 2018

Email list cleaning is a spendy process. It’s more expensive than sending email itself with your own MTA. It requires validating if they email is a threat like a trap or litigator or verify if they email is deliverable, catch-all or bounce. The process that goes into our own validation and verification sends your list through 9 GB of suppressions and 3 SMTP handshakes for each email where we pick the best 2 out of 3 for reporting. Verify550 is not a data aggregator nor does it email advertisements or sell data. We just clean lists. We are not interested in doing anything with our client’s data because our process is in real time. That is why we charge $1,000 per million. To get accurate results and to not touch our client’s databases. (more…)

Difference between email verification services and email address validation

Business , Company , Marketing , February 24, 2018

Email verification services and email address validation are two completely different things. The way we like to explain it is validation is everything before the @ sign and verification is everything after the @ sign. Now, this may not be the most technical way to explain it, it works with beginners and helps to explain more quickly. But let’s dive into the real explanation so you understand the differences technically. An email verification service charges more than an email address validation service and here’s why. (more…)

Email Validation Services – A Thorough Walk Through

Company , Marketing , Team , February 15, 2018

Email validation services, unlike email verification, focuses on the threats outside of the email itself. Email validation removes spamtraps, complainers, litigators, botclickers, roles/departmental and seeds while fixing the email removing syntax errors, unicode/latin characters and lastly checks the mx and domain for setup issues. Email validation is the first step in max scrubbing before you use an email verification software to remove bounces. Here are a list of all the modules inside our validation process:
(more…)

Email address verification – What is it exactly?

Research , Team , February 13, 2018

Email address verification mainly focuses on verifying if the email address exists or not and if it does not, why. There are dozens of email list hygiene companies to choose from and most say they do verification, but do they? A lot of services who offer to scrub email list free are actually validation companies that do not do verification. They simply cannot remove bounces. The reason is, they offer a free service for it, is because their cost to match and remove emails versus doing an SMTP handshake is way less so they can make those kinds of offers. This article focuses on email address verification and how to spot companies that simply cannot do it so you don’t waste your money. (more…)

The right and wrong way to do email list verification

Research , February 13, 2018

We have explained the differences between validation and email list verification in previous posts. In short, validation does not remove bounces nor does it do an smtp handshake. Many validation companies do, however, mx checking where it checks certain steps if the mail exchange is setup properly. But they do not do smtp handshakes. In order to understand verification and to choose the right company, it’s important to look for clear signs of authentication as most verification companies miss many steps in order to save money.

Social networks (the wrong way)

Ask your email list cleaning company how they do verification. Get them to be specific. Ask them if they do email list cleaning free of social networks. For a while, email marketers requested that emails be patched against social media email accounts. For a year or two, this verification method worked well because emails that were used for social networking were authentic, however, bots and fake profiles started filling up Facebook and Twitter therefore, you cannot use these as the best method for verification.

Appending (the wrong way)

Ask the email list Verification Company if they append date/time stamp emails that were verified during a special date appointment. In example, to save money, many verification companies will save the date and time stamp of when the email was verified. They then will not mail to that specific email until a set date is specified to save money. This idea works in theory but is not real time verification as some set dates of up to 30 – 90 days. Waiting this long to verify if an email is verified is not going to be accurate.

Scoring (the wrong way)

Like appending and social networking above combined, many verification companies will offer a technical term of scoring as their reporting feature. They offer the email on a scale of 0 – 10 (0 as good and 10 as bad). Most, if not all, email verification companies started as email marketers. Scoring works by tracking the date/time and when the email was sent last. It also connects to social networks. In example, if the email wasn’t sent for 90 days and does not have a social network profile, it can be scored as a 10.

SMTP Connection (the right way)

In order for an email to be verified correctly, without skipping steps, it has to be delivered. ISP’s have certain thresholds to allow a number of emails in from an IP range. Yahoo may allow only 3,000 from an IP per 24 hours or gmail 300. Verification companies must be deliverability experts by understand all ISP threhsholds.

Real time (the right away)

With an smtp connection comes real time reporting. In order to get the maximum bang for your buck, the email must be checked in real time and that means as the list is scrubbing, the system is sending an smtp handshake. Verify550 does this 3 times for each email in real time and picks the best two out of three in their reports.