How to Verify the Validity of an Email Address

Email remains one of the main communication tools in personal life and business. However, we are not always sure of the correctness of the entered address or its existence. 

No matter sending a follow-up email after an interview or conducting outreach for marketing purposes, the need to check email address validity is more important than ever. 

Why Check Email for Existence?

Checking email for validity is necessary to ensure the accuracy and effectiveness of communication. It is necessary to check the reality of email to:

  • Reduce the percentage of delivery errors and returns;
  • Avoid getting blacklisted by mailers;
  • Avoid spam traps;
  • Maintain a good reputation in the email newsletter service;
  • Reduce the costs of sending newsletters.

Verifying follow up email addresses helps improve the performance of email newsletters without significantly changing the strategy. For marketing mailings, this helps reduce costs by eliminating invalid addresses and increases the likelihood of reaching the target audience. In addition, checking allows you to exclude errors due to typos and protect against entering fake emails during registration, contributing to more reliable work with real users.

How to Check if an Email Exists?

Email address validation aims to identify non-existent and incorrect addresses directly, increasing the possibility of sending letters and mailings to real recipient addresses. Here are the main ways to check: 

Syntax verification

  • Ensure the email address follows standard formatting rules
  • Check for common errors such as missing “@” symbols or invalid characters.

SMTP server validation

  • Verify the presence of an SMTP server for the domain associated with the email address.
  • Test whether the SMTP server accepts the email address by sending a verification request (without actually delivering an email).
  • Check the SMTP server for correctness and its inclusion in blacklists.

Use online email verification tools

  • They check syntax, domain status, and SMTP server responses in one go.

Blacklist and spam filter checks

  • Verify whether the domain or email server is listed on known blacklists.
  • Check the likelihood of the email being flagged as spam.

Methods to Verify Email Address Validity

1. Manual verification

Manual verification involves sending a test email to the address and observing if it bounces. For example, when writing a follow-up email, sending a short test message can confirm the recipient’s address. However, this method is time-consuming and not scalable for large datasets.

Bounce email notication example

2. Reverse email lookup

To perform a reverse email lookup using Google, start by entering the exact email address into the search bar, enclosing it in quotation marks for more precise results, such as “mailto:john.doe@gmail.com.” Then review the first few pages of results, paying attention to any mentions of the address on various websites like social media profiles, forums, and review sites; it’s helpful to evaluate the found information in context to understand to whom or what organization the address belongs. You can also use additional keywords to refine your search, for example, by adding the word “business”, or using the site: operator to search on a specific site, such as site:linkedin.com "john.doe@gmail.com", which will help focus on professional profiles. Keep in mind that if no information is found, it may indicate that the email address is not public or is used in private accounts, which can also be valuable information for further analysis.

reverse email lookup example

Online Email Verification Tools

Here are several email verification tools: 

Hunter.io 

hunter.io email verification example

Hunter.io is one of the most popular online tools for searching and verifying email addresses. This service allows you to not only search for email addresses by domain, but also check their relevance. Hunter.io analyzes each email address for its syntactic correctness and checks whether it exists on the server. 

Pros: Hunter.io is ideal for users who often search for contact information by domain. The tool is easy to use, allowing you to check your email in real time. The free plan allows you to check up to 25 email addresses per month.

NeverBounce 

Neverbounce email verification example

NeverBounce is a professional email verification tool that provides high accuracy and fast verification. It is suitable for small and large organizations, thanks to its bulk email list verification support. 

Pros: NeverBounce is known for its high accuracy of results. The service integrates with popular email marketing platforms like Mailchimp, Salesforce, and others. It allows you to verify large amounts of data, which makes it convenient for companies with large mailing lists.

EmailListVerify 

EmailListVerify verification example

EmailListVerify is a tool that allows you to check and clean your email addresses from inactive, invalid, and duplicate addresses. It analyzes each email address and checks it for some criteria, including syntax, domain, and server. 

Pros: EmailListVerify offers fast list processing and support for various file formats (e.g., CSV, Excel). The service allows you to check large amounts of data, which is especially useful for marketers. It also has affordable plans for users with different budgets.

These tools will help you significantly improve the quality of your email campaigns, reduce bounce rates, and increase email deliverability, which is a key factor for successful marketing campaigns.

Conclusion 

Depending on your goals and available resources, you can choose a manual method, use online services, work via the command line, or integrate API. It is important to remember that data accuracy is the key to successful interaction with the audience.

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