The Reality of Using a Free Email Checker
With around 306.4 billion emails sent every day, you want to ensure that any correspondence you send is going to a valid email. Unfortunately, when you send out emails through a service provider, around 10% are invalid. As the number of valid emails in your database goes down, so do your open and click-through rates.
Many marketers opt for a free email checker to validate the email addresses of their subscribers. You’d think that they’re a quick and easy way to find out if you’re sending communications to a secure and active email address.
Unfortunately, the average free email checker doesn’t do a thorough job to validate email addresses. Just because an email validation tool is free doesn’t mean it’s helping you and your business out.
This guide will go over why you shouldn’t be using free email checkers and the importance of using a reliable tool instead.
What is Email Validation or Verification?
The process of verifying that the emails in your subscriber lists are valid is called email verification. Email lists need to be cleaned regularly.
Bad emails in your lists lead to:
- Increased bounce rates
- Poor standing with your email service provider
- Increased complaint rates
A poorly managed email list can damage your email reputation. You want emails delivered to an active inbox. Sending emails to inactive email addresses guarantees that no one is reading your email and you won’t see any activity off of it.
Another thing to note is that many email service providers’ pricing is based on how many subscribers you have in your mailing lists. Do you want to pay extra money each month for email addresses that aren’t active? Email list cleaning is essential to reducing your costs and increasing the efficiency of your email marketing campaigns.
Why a Free Email Checker Isn’t Effective
A free email checker sends an SMTP check or a ping to evaluate if an email address is active. That’s not an effective way of checking an email address. A free email checker basically does the following actions:
- Checks in with Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.
- Verifies that the email address belongs to a customer
- Doesn’t send through your message
Solely relying on a free email checker could be more detrimental than not verifying the email at all. The email provided by the checker is often wrong. The hardest part is you don’t know what information is incorrect.
You could end up deleting an email from your system that is valid while keeping ones around that you don’t need. It also doesn’t detect emails that are spam traps. That’ll result in you sending messages to toxic email addresses that could cause problems with your deliverability.
Free email checkers also don’t identify email addresses that are disposable or bogus. These emails cost you money with your email service provider. If you have too many of these emails in your database, it could put your account at risk.
These types of systems also don’t check for common typos in email addresses. Unfortunately, email addresses get mistyped when they’re entered into a system. A reputable email verification tool will comb through your email addresses, helping you correct typos.
Why Email Validation Hygiene is Important
Hygiene isn’t limited to a person’s cleanliness. Email scrubbing, or email hygiene, refers to the process of removing inactive subscribers from your email lists. You should conduct email hygiene every six months.
You want to scrub your email lists beyond sending the email addresses that initial ping to see if anyone is home. Free email checkers won’t help you definitively determine if an email address is “dirty” or “clean.”
Having an email validation hygiene tool in place will flag any bad email addresses that are in your database. It’ll help you identify email acquisition sources that are risky. If you determine a particular source keeps giving you bad email addresses, you’ll know not to use it in the future.
Email hygiene ensures that every email address you gather and put into your system is deliverable and problem-free. No free email validation checker can give you that kind of security. It also helps guarantee that the email addresses in your database are those who want to receive your correspondence, reducing your chances of being marked as spam.
Things to Look for When Choosing an Email Verification Tool
Not all email verification tools are created equal. You want to go with a verification tool that is robust, offering you all the features you need to clean up your email database.
One feature you should look for is accuracy. That may seem obvious but a reliable email verification tool should guarantee 99% accuracy. Its bounce rates after cleaning should be around 2% to 3%.
Accuracy should go both ways. You don’t want the checker flagging emails that are safe.
Evaluate if the system can be integrated to suit your needs. If you’re using it regularly, you want to streamline the process as much as possible. Check with their automated integration programs to evaluate if it’ll work for you.
Customer support is key as well. The best email verification companies should have representatives available at convenient times. If they’re difficult to get ahold of and unable to answer your questions, you might want to look for another service provider.
Speed is vital when working with a large email list. You want something that works quickly and doesn’t get bogged down when you have thousands of emails to check.
Price is one final factor to take into consideration. Price is typically tied to your subscriber account, so keep that in mind when shopping around. You’ll also pay more for additional features.
The Benefits of an Email Verification Tool
If you’re sending emails to addresses that aren’t valid, you’re going to be left with inaccurate data. You won’t know how effective your email marketing campaign is.
When you’re sending your emails to active, engaged subscribers, you can more accurately analyze your open and click-through rates. If you’re seeing a ton of unopened emails but are sending to spam accounts, that will skew your data.
Your customer engagement will also improve once you start using a verification tool. You’re left with a database full of customers that are real and interested in your business. You can draft more effective emails as you tailor your messaging to your customer profiles.
One of the most important benefits is protecting your sender reputation. Your reputation can be affected by people flagging your email as spam or you getting bounce backs. Sending emails to a clean list will help ensure you don’t send emails to addresses that’ll reject your email.
How EmailOversight Verifies Emails
The system that EmailOversight uses is multi-faceted. We use verification and hygiene scans to identify the following threats:
- Hard bounces
- Complainers
- Spam traps
- Bots
The email address first goes through the hygiene phase of our program. We immediately eliminated network-based and reputation problems. Any harmful email address is eliminated before we move onto the second phase.
During the second scan, the email addresses are verified. Our system pings the email address in order to get a certain response code. This helps us determine the validity of the email address.
We remove the following problems from your email addresses:
- Mal-formatted emails
- Hard bounces
- Syntax errors
- Over-quota accounts
These two processes work in conjunction to improve your reputation, email deliverability, and increase the engagement you see with each email campaign.
You can process emails fast with our powerful validation Application Programming Interface (API). Simply plug the code into your forms, website, or other forms of lead generation to validate the email. Verify the address at the point of contact so you can quickly decide if you should keep or remove the email address.
Additional Features of EmailOversight’s Email Validation and Hygiene
EmailOversight delivers reliable email scrubbing services for our customers. We’re also happy to offer these additional features:
- User-Friendly Application and Reporting: Available 24/7 for customers that need immediate list verification services
- PGP Encryption and Security: You and your customer’s data is secure at every step with PGP encryption and decryption
- Automated FTP and SFTP Solutions: Automated and secure way for validating your email lists
- High-Speed File Processing: Our system can process up to two million email addresses within 24 hours
- ISP Analysis and Global Validation: Validate email addresses from 150 countries and receive a percentage breakdown of your top ISP domains
All of our management solutions are user-friendly, designed with your convenience in minder. Our verified results are 99.5% accurate, ensuring you’re sending emails to quality addresses.
Partner With EmailOversight for Your Email Validation Needs
Don’t waste your time and resources with a free email checker. It won’t help your business in any way and most of the information it provides is incorrect. Work with a reputable email verification tool to scrub your email lists, ensuring you deliver emails to quality addresses.
EmailOversight is ready to help you get your database in tip-top shape. Register today for an account to get started.
