Most people check their emails daily, it’s one of the reasons why email marketing campaigns are one of the most effective marketing channels.
Plot twist: Only 10% of email addresses on your email list are invalid.
These invalid email addresses are due to bad data coming from human error.
To have real leads and subscribers, you need real and valid emails.
To reach real and valid emails, you need email validation to ensure you have valid and active email addresses.
Suddenly, you’re oceans far from the successful email marketing campaign you had in mind.
Truth is, having email validation isn’t a magic wound that will make everything perfect.
It’s a wheel that needs steering and you’re in charge.
So if your email validation isn’t bearing fruit, you’re probably making some kind of email marketing mistakes.
In this article, we will shed the light on the 5 mistakes you’re making with Email Validation.
Read more to correct your email marketing mistakes and improve your email marketing strategy.
Email Validation
What is email validation and why is it important?
Email validation is the process of detecting whether or not an email address is active and valid.
Email validation is almost crucial in email marketing.
Email validation is a quick process that detects typos.
Email validation also verifies whether a specific email address is linked to a reputable domain.
Email validation checks email addresses at the point of entry into your database.
Email validation also protects your email sender score, allowing you to get the most out of your email software.
Email validation is simply checking for an @ symbol in your email field, or for a full stop and a standardized suffix.
An email address linked to a valid is not enough if it’s only the syntax.
This is why email validation is important in email marketing.
Email validation shields you from email hard bounces that could ruin your sender’s reputation and blacklist you.
Top 5 mistakes you’re making with email validation
Mistake 1 – Making people enter their address twice
You think to stop invalid emails from sneaking into your email lists is through email confirmation or a double-entry field, you’re making a major one of the email marketing mistakes.
But typing is troublesome since typo mistakes can happen.
Adding an additional field for email confirmation means an increased risk of errors and a potential reduction in completion rates.
There is a huge chance your users are going to try to copy and paste the email address from the first line.
If the email is written incorrectly at first, you are just as likely to enter it incorrectly twice.
This is especially the worse for mobile users.
This is one off the common email marketing mistakes.
Email validation is a no-brainer for detecting invalid email addresses.
But you wouldn’t if the entered email address belonging to the person who signed up.
To check that, you need to send a confirmation email with a unique link.
This is the double opt-in confirmation method.
The double opt-in is the only real way to confirm that the person signing up for your list actually wants to hear from you.
Double opt-in is more practical and way better than asking the recipients to type the email twice.
The numbers show that the double opt-in lists get up to double the clicks and double the opens of single opt-in lists.
Double opt-in gets you half the hard bounces and half the unsubscribes of single opt-in so it’s a win all round.
Mistake 2 – Not using inline validation
Inline verification is a great way of avoiding user confusion by correcting field errors along the way.
This way you avoid angry red error messages about fields you’ve filled in incorrectly.
Mistake 3 -Not providing clear labels
You need to provide clear labels about how and why you need your users’ email addresses.
Clear labels will encourage your users to stay subscribed to you.
If you provide this information to your users, you can prevent them from abandoning your form.
Like this, you will avoid one of the many common email marketing mistakes.
Mistake 4 – Regex validation
This is one of the common email marketing mistakes is the way to use a regular expression (or regex) to validate email addresses.
Regex is easy to implement, but it can be too restrictive.
A regex to validate email addresses can be more complicated than you first think once you’ve read the RFC.
The RFC is a 47-page technical spec describing what a valid email address is.
The RFC is applicable to SMTP (Simple Message Transfer Protocol) and email addresses.
The REC is something that most people presume will be easy, until you drill into it and figure out just how complicated it can be.
Mistake 5 – Being too restrictive
If you’re too strict with your validation, it could cost you some subscribers, users, and maybe customers.
Check if the email addresses have the common characters often used in email addresses such as a slash (/), equal sign (=), or exclamation (!).
slash (/), equal sign (=) or exclamation (!) are all valid symbols, so if your software is rejecting these you are literally turning potential leads away.
This is a very common email marketing mistake.
3 reasons why you should verify your email addresses with Email Inspector
Eliminate hard bounces
In the email marketing world, hard bounces are every’s email marketer worse nightmare.
It’s actually one of the email marketer’s rookie email marketing mistakes.
The lower your Sender Score, the higher the chances of getting blacklisted.
Email verification is designed to check accounts to make sure they are real.
Good quality email validation is not a simple database lookup.
It’s a real-time check to make sure the username is a registered and active mailbox at the host server.
A quick validation will give you peace of mind that your email marketing list is safe to engage in.
Reduces Spam Complaints
Spam complaints only damage your campaigns’ deliverability.
Spam complaints happen when a subscriber receives too many emails from you or does not understand the unsubscribe process.
The tolerable spam complaint rate is less than 0.1%.
There are some advanced email validation tools that help identify users who frequently mark email communications as spam.
At least, having a number of spam marks will give you a heads up on which email addresses to stop sending emails to.
This way, Email Inspector helps you avoid one more of the email marketing mistakes.
Blacklists
Being blacklisted is horrible news. Why? Because it will butcher your Sender Score.
Getting placed on a blacklist will prevent your emails from getting accepted by the server.
Some blacklists are more powerful than others.
Some blacklists will automatically de-list you after a pre-determined amount of time.
Practicing good list hygiene and acquiring data from the right sources is key to minimizing the risk of becoming blacklisted.
We also recommend monitoring your mailing IPs daily.
Keep track of your mailing IPs to be aware if you’re blacklisted and fix it before you send your next email marketing campaigns.
How to keep your email address data clean
To keep your email address data quality should be your top priority in your email campaigns.
Clean your email address lists regularly using an email validation tool.
An email validation tool will identify old or incorrect email addresses and remove them before your next marketing campaign.
With real-time email address verification, for each newly added email address, you can validate whether it has typos or is connected to fake accounts.
This will spare you additional unwanted hard bounces.
Not all data sources are good ones.
Email validating is an ongoing process, you need to keep an eye on the quality of email addresses they are sending to you.
Try to avoid buying email lists in your email campaigns.
Work on sending emails with a catchy, mobile devices friendly, and resonating subject line as well.
You won’t get results with the subscribers, and you will also find stale data to rock your email marketing!
If you’re looking for a great email validation service, you can try Email Inspector for free today. Get your first 100 email addresses checked by a professional and discover how many fake accounts you have in your list!
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