Email Verification vs. Email Validation
Email marketing has been shown to be one of the single best channels for ROI. For every $1 spent on marketing, email returns an average of $42. It’s a fantastic return, yes, but it’s an average. Meaning some email marketers will see $100 or more for every dollar spent, while others may see $5, $2, or even less.
In some cases, ROI for poorly managed (and unhygienic) email lists can be negative. Making them money losers, not moneymakers. One big reason for low ROI is this: unverified, invalid, and malicious email addresses are being mailed to, destroying deliverability, sender score, open rates, CTR’s and revenue.
It’s why email list hygiene, boosted by email verification, and email validation is a must. Every email marketer knows, clean and verified/validated email addresses get in-boxed, get opened and generate sales.
But what’s the difference between email verification and email validation? And what’s the best way to insure all your email addresses are clean, real, and can produce that average $42/dollar ROI, or much higher?
Let’s start with the differences between email verification and email validation:
Traditionally, email verification and email validation have been interchangeable terms. But as email hygiene technology has evolved, these two terms have evolved as well to mean two different things…
And as you’ll soon see, the technology at EmailOversight takes both email verification and email validation, combines them, and takes it to a new, industry-best level that can give you the cleanest, most responsive email lists possible.
Now, here are some differences between email verification and email validation you should be aware of.
Email verification involves a real-time server “ping” that verifies if the email address actually exists. Verification can let you know if the user’s mailbox accepts email, and the owner actively uses the address.
Is the email address real? Verification gives you a quick “yes” or “no.”
But just because an address is verified, it doesn’t mean you should mail to it. Because some verified addresses are the most malicious of them all.
This is where email validation comes in. Email validation involves a far more in-depth investigation than simple verification. While verification can tell you if the address exists, it can’t tell you if it’s a spam trap, a bot or a known complainer.
Email validation, however, can.
Addresses of spam traps, bots, disposable accounts and known complainers are all likely to pass through email verification tools as “verified.” But proper email validation will alert you to these threats as well, allowing you to remove them from your lists.
The main difference between email verification and email validation is this:
Email verification tells you if the address is real.
Email validation tells you if the address is real, but also tells you if it’s malicious or not.
While sending email to invalid addresses (like hard bounces) can result in a lowered sender score, sending to spam traps and other malicious addresses is a near guarantee your messages will never be seen, even by loyal subscribers.
And continual sending to these addresses means you risk becoming blacklisted or worse. It’s why you should only send to verified and validated email addresses.
EmailOversight takes the email verification and email validation process to the next level.
The technology at EmailOversight uses a multi-method approach to assure you’re sending email to addresses that can produce revenue. We utilize hygiene and verification/validation scans to assure the validity of every address, as well as the threat any of these valid addresses may pose to you.
During a multitude of scans, email addresses pass through hygiene to remove all network-based issues. Malicious email addresses like spam traps, known complainers, litigators, bots, disposable addresses and dormant accounts are identified and removed from your lists.
Then, once the malicious addresses are removed, we re-scan the addresses and “ping” them to assure they are legitimate email addresses that you can send to. In this phase, hard bounces, mal-formatted addresses, over quota accounts and syntax errors are removed.
Email verification: Good
Email validation: Better
EmailOversight: Best
By using our best-in-class technology, and in the order we implement it, your email deliverability will immediately improve, your reputation will be restored (if it’s already been dinged) and you’ll see an immediate increase in overall engagement.
Meaning you could now meet or exceed the average $42/dollar ROI experienced across the email marketing community. In fact, with EmailOversight, you could exceed it.
To learn more about our in-depth process of cleaning, verifying and validating your email addresses, and how you can implement our API to accomplish all of this in real-time, simply visit EmailOversight.com
