How to Validate Email Addresses for Better Delivery
Overview
Email validation is a critical process that verifies the accuracy and deliverability of email addresses in your database before sending campaigns. This feature helps you maintain a clean contact list, improve delivery rates, and protect your sending reputation. AllClients provides comprehensive email verification with a three-step validation check that identifies typos, eliminates hard bounces, and filters out high-risk addresses.
Why Email Validation Matters:
- Increase Delivery Rates - Prevent typos and eliminate hard bounces with comprehensive verification
- Avoid High-Risk Addresses - Email validation serves as your first line of defense against problematic recipients
- Improve Sending Reputation - Validating emails before sending helps build a strong email reputation and leads to email marketing success
Email validation happens automatically in many areas of the system, and you can also manually validate addresses when needed.
Step-by-Step Instructions
1. Validate Groups of Contacts Using Group Actions
Navigate to your contact list and select the contacts you want to validate. Choose Group Actions to access validation options for multiple contacts at once. This method is particularly useful after importing new contacts or before sending an email campaign.
2. Use Email Blast Validation Reminder
When preparing an email campaign, look for the red alert triangle next to the Email Blast button. This reminder prompts you to validate email addresses before sending your campaign to ensure maximum deliverability.
3. Validate Individual Contacts
Click on any email address in a contact record to open the Email Info Box. The validation status will display in this popup window. If the email needs validation, click the Validate button to check the address immediately.
4. Automatic Landing Page Validation
Your landing pages are configured to automatically validate email addresses as submissions come in. The email validation occurs before any automated actions assigned to the landing page are triggered, ensuring only verified contacts enter your workflows.
5. Enable Workflow Trigger Validation
Set up your workflow triggers to automatically validate email addresses when contacts are added from external lead sources. This ensures all new contacts entering through automated processes have verified email addresses from the start.
Important Note: Never send emails to unvalidated addresses, as this can damage your sender reputation and cause future emails to be marked as spam.
Email Validation: Questions and Answers
Q: What does the email validation process check for?
A: Email validation performs a comprehensive three-step check including: spelling and formatting verification (identifying typos like "Gmail" or "Yahoo"), domain verification to ensure the domain exists, deliverability assessment based on sending history, detection of fake addresses designed to trap spammers, and identification of role-based emails not intended for personal use.
Q: When should I validate email addresses?
A: You should validate email addresses after importing new contact lists, before sending any email campaigns, when adding individual contacts manually, and whenever you notice delivery issues. The system also automatically validates addresses from landing page submissions and workflow triggers.
Q: Will email validation slow down my campaigns?
A: No, validation actually improves campaign efficiency. While there's a brief processing time for validation, this prevents wasted effort sending to invalid addresses and improves your overall delivery rates and sender reputation.
Q: What happens to contacts with invalid email addresses?
A: Invalid email addresses will be flagged in the system, and you'll receive notifications about which addresses couldn't be validated. You can then choose to remove these contacts, attempt to obtain corrected email addresses, or keep them in your database for non-email marketing purposes.
Q: Does validation affect my sending limits?
A: Email validation helps you make better use of your sending limits by ensuring you're only sending to deliverable addresses. This improves your success rates and prevents wasted sends that count against your monthly limits.
Q: Can I turn off automatic validation for landing pages and workflows?
A: Automatic validation for landing pages and workflows is enabled by default to protect your sender reputation. Contact support if you need to discuss specific requirements for your business needs.