For an email marketer, precision and metrics are the two factors that sustain an email campaign. It requires a great deal of effort, resources and time to craft an email, especially an html email. The untold truth behind this is, when one has to breakdown all of it and dissect every part of an email to analyze its performance, it is not just disappointing to know that your email was flagged, spammed, or bounced, but it makes you question your marketing convictions.
A lot of email marketing blogs and tips vouch for a free ‘Email Checker’ coming to the rescue in such a situation. But the truth is, if at all, an email campaign performs better with an email checker, it is also completely possible that it was just a good email campaign and the fact that it was backed by an email checker software had nothing to do with its performance. Dumbfound?
Read on to know more as we unravel the complexity of most email checkers in the email marketing industry.
Why is Email Hygiene Important?
Take a look at this graph of search trends for the phrase ‘Email Checkers’ on Google. These numbers showcase search interest relative to the highest point that is February 2020, in the last 12 months across the globe, which shows a value of 100. This is the peak popularity for the term.
These searches were probably made by all those marketers who were seeking a solution for an unhealthy email list or wanted to make sure that the email addresses in their database are legitimate. Email hygiene is often remembered when an email list goes stale and the stench spreads to the metrics.
Email hygiene is one of those underrated email marketing aspects, which has a high value in contributing to the following:
- You will have a good email reputation, as a healthy list ensures better email deliverability and avoids being flagged as spam.
- Your metrics will show optimistic developments, as the bounce rates and unsubscribe rates subsequently decrease.
- You will achieve your marketing goals with better conversions
Prospectify found out that 4.5% of 1000 random contacts were not valid after less than 30 days. This tells us that it is not just enough to check your emails if they are valid or not, but to develop a stronger email relationship and better communication with the subscribers, one should lay a healthy foundation for email interaction.
What does an Email Checker do?
An email checker is a software as a service or plug-in, which is used on a desktop or as an online tool, to check, verify, and validate email addresses. The technical aspect of such checkers is what misguides marketers and gives them the false hope that it will help them in achieving their email marketing goals.
The answer to the question ’Do these checkers improve email performance’ will be discussed later in the blog. For now, let’s understand how it works. These are the major actions that an average email checker performs.
Syntax Check
A syntax check makes sure the email is correctly spelled. It checks the space, the @s, domain name, and dots. This is the main feature of any email verifier.
Domain Check
This step checks the existence and registration of the domain name provided in the email address.
Email Ping
A complicated process of verification through Extended HELO (EHLO) and SMTP which confirms if the server fosters the provided email address and if it’s active.
One of the main tasks is to verify if the email address is legitimate, other than that, a few tasks include spelling and grammar check.
Where do most Email Checkers fall short?
For those of you who were once using email checkers and have now moved on for good, this part of the blog is going to be quite a bitter path down the memory lane. Most email checkers lack the following expertise:
Weeding out fake spam complainers
A lot of fake email addresses have a pattern for flagging sources of email even if the sender was from a credible source. This spoils the ESP reputation. What’s even worse? This is not weeded out by email checkers. As long as this email is deliverable, email checkers will not highlight it as a bad email. Such toxic email addresses are capable of breaking your email program and damaging your sender reputation.
Detecting damaging email addresses
Email addresses that might be spam traps or honeypots waste your engagement and conversion opportunities. These emails remain in your send list and continue to pop up as deliverable emails. These bogus emails are not detected by average email checkers.
Accept-all Emails Addresses
SMTP verification is an extended syntax check which fails to derive any accurate result. Around 16% to 30% of lists uploaded for checks have ‘Accept-all addresses.’ These addresses respond with a valid answer irrespective of the credibility of the server. This makes the whole point of the email checking void.
Vague Email validation
Email checkers provide a false sense of healthy lists whereas the metrics give you a different reality, leaving a marketer lost in between the superficial process and rectifying what went wrong. Blindly relying on email checkers will leave you heading nowhere as most email checkers will give a high number of risk emails without giving you a proper conclusion.
Not pocket-friendly
Unless you are using a free email checker, which would also lack the above-mentioned processes, it would pinch your pockets, as quality list validation for a large scale email sender is expensive. In addition to the email checker services expenditure, the budget for actually validating those emails should also be kept in mind.
Are there any alternatives?
Send a verification email
This is the easiest and a guaranteed way to verify an email provided by a subscriber. This process can very well be made automated and at the same time assure you that the email is active and credible. If the email address was fake, it will bounce or you will immediately receive a message like ‘Address not found’ or ‘Message not delivered’.
IP address lookup
This process will determine the geolocation of an IP address, which can be viewed from the message source. Once you copy-paste the address and check it on an IP address lookup tool, it would tell you the location of the IP address. If it is not from a suspicious location, then you’re good to go. If not, there are high chances someone might be faking it.
Strategic lead acquisition
Most of the problems in an unhealthy email list indicate a problematic source of lead acquisition. If you follow the practice of buying your email list, then no email checker or email marketing blog can help you clean your email list. Leads should be acquired genuinely and through a method. Abandon your risky sources of acquisition and conduct a filtered and well-audited lead acquisition process.
Password Recovery
Probably not helpful for an email sender with bulk email lists, but worth trying for small businesses, where you can simply copy-paste the email address and the domain itself will tell you if the email address exists or not. This is just like when you forget your password and enter the wrong password during its recovery.
Allow Opt-in to emails
This process only enables a voluntary action on part of the subscriber. Although, it is completely in your hands to decide how you want to deal with your leads through email and how much you engage and nurture them. If done right, they will provide you with their alternate email address if they change their communication contact. Any subscriber who opts in is active and is interested in your brand; how to retain them, is completely in your marketing team’s hands.
Proactively managing metric
Check your data and it will tell you about your toxic email list issues. Managing your data of bounce rate, deliverability rate, and unsubscribe rate will give you an idea of which acquisition source provided those emails and therefore help you identify bad sources of lead acquisition.
Hire a professional
Although email marketing is a field of multi-tasking and all-round development, some tasks are better handled when they are exclusively dealt with. Hiring an email expert (developer) will not only help you check or validate your email lists but help you strengthen the collection of leads and to lay a stronger foundation for a better email performance. It is very important to understand that the only solution to maintain a healthy email list is to manage, verify, check, and validate emails in real-time, which can be best done by an expert.
Wrap Up
As email marketers, all of us have squandered in search of validating email addresses on our email lists and for avoiding the grave mistake of marking an active lead as a bad email address.
We do hope your experiences with email checkers are not as bad as it could be. In any case, try implementing a few of the alternatives suggested above and let us know how it helped you increase your email performance!
About the Author
Kevin George is the head of marketing at Email Uplers, that specializes in crafting Professional Email Templates, PSD to Email conversion, and Pardot Templates. Kevin loves gadgets, bikes & jazz, and he breathes email marketing. He enjoys sharing his insights and thoughts on email marketing best practices on email marketing blogs.
