Do you have a blog or an online business? Do you have a list of subscribers you send newsletters to? Do you make sure your list is ‘clean’? Email verification may seem simple but, under the surface, it is a very important system. At the most basic level, online businesses might think more is indeed more; if you message as many people as possible, surely this will improve your customer base? That couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, less is more, and email verification is a great way to reduce your mailing list to the addresses you actually want.
There are many areas where email verification can act as a life saver, saving companies from unnecessary embarrassment or other potential issues. Online marketing is a powerful tool, especially for companies with a strong internet presence, but it can backfire if it’s taken for granted. Here are two of the biggest issues you need to consider as a business.
Spamming
As great as your company may be, there are people out there who simply do not want to hear about your firm. If you sell cars, advertising to those who don’t drive is a prime example of this. If you send messages out to as many people as possible, you could be accused of spamming.
In short, people have a right to unsubscribe from your service. Email verification can help filter this process as well, removing those who do not wish to receive your content. Similarly, the act of spamming is also rather crude and can lead to inboxing various possible email combinations. You could accidentally message a previously unsubscribed customer and, if you do it frequently enough, this could be argued as being harassment. As many business owners know, terms such as “spam” and “harassment” are rarely positively reflected on a company’s image or brand.
Avoiding hard bounces
In emails, rejected messages are typically labelled as soft and hard bounces. The former refer to temporary problems, such as full inboxes and server issues, while hard bounces often suggest the address itself is invalid. This could refer to an incorrect domain, or be because account simply doesn’t exist anymore.
This is important, because many campaign marketing companies and business email providers often penalise you for hard bounces. While this will happen from time to time, these firms will take this into account. If your hard bounce rate is unnaturally high, then additional measures may be brought against you. If you’re spamming messages out, this will likely be noticed more quickly, thanks to the high volume and frequency of messages.
In this instance, email verification will let you know when an email is no longer active. When this occurs, remove them from your mailing list and save yourself the embarrassment of walking into a hard bounce later on.
