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How to Verify Whether an Email Address is Real?

Feb 14, 2022
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Spammers have become so advanced at what they do, marketers now must know how to quickly verify email addresses to distinguish between real and fake email addresses.

The good news is that most of the different methods of checking if an email address is valid are fairly simple for anybody to use.

How to Check if Real Emails are Valid

Email validation is the process of ensuring that an email address is valid and exists. This is important for email marketing as it improves ROI by reducing the number of bounced emails. A bounced email is a message that is returned to the sender because the mail server could not deliver it to the intended recipient.

If your business or marketing company adds several email addresses to your mailing lists on a regular basis, there is a chance that many of them are spam addresses, misspelt, or otherwise invalid. Because of this, whenever new email addresses are added to your marketing list, it’s important to check for valid emails.

When checking if an email address is valid, it will give you peace of mind that the email addresses that you have on your email list will have a high email deliverability rate and no catch-all addresses, disposable email addresses or spam traps will be included. Additionally, it is important to be aware of phishing emails and fake emails that use free email addresses or addresses from fake domains. In order to improve deliverability, it is important to validate emails and eliminate any hard bounces, which are emails that are permanently undeliverable.

Why You Need to Check for Real Emails to Use

If you do not take steps to check if an email address exists, you could risk increasing your bounce rate and damaging your reputation as a sender.As a result, email providers are more likely to mark the messages that you send as spam, and there is a lower chance that your messages are going to reach their intended audience.You could even find your IP address or messages put on a blocklist, which will damage your sender reputation even further.

The good news is that it is fairly fast and inexpensive to check if an email address is real, and, in turn, this will ensure that your email messages are delivered to the intended recipient. This will then lead to better email deliverablility and profitability due to higher levels of customer engagement. It can be done in real time, as soon as a user requests to register on a website or as part of an organization’s email list management process. By validating the entire email list in real time, it ensures that the organization has a high deliverability rate, as well as avoiding sending emails to non-existent mailboxes. This can save money and time as well as providing a positive experience for clients. Additionally, it can also prevent the creation of fake mailboxes which can be used for phishing or other malicious activities. Real time email validation can be integrated into a website’s registration process to ensure that only valid addresses are accepted and added to the organization’s email list.

Sending an Email to Check for a Real Email ID and Password

The simplest and most straightforward way to check if any email address is real is to send an email to it. This can be an ideal option for smaller marketers who are just starting out and do not have a lot of email addresses on their mailing list.

It can also be useful if you only add a few new addresses to your marketing list every month. If you send an email to a fake address , it will bounce back, and you will receive an email reply from your service provider to let you know that the message has not been delivered or the email address could not be found.

Password Recovery to Check for Real Email Address and Password

Have you ever tried to get into an old email account only to be told by the provider that the email address could not be found? Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo are the three main email service providers that include an email address validity checker during the account recovery process.

Along with being a tool that can be used to help users recover their account when they’ve forgotten their password, you can also use it to check that you have the correct address.

You can use this method to your advantage with any Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo email domain. All you need to do is go to the recovery page for each service and enter the address that you want to verify. If the address does not exist, you will be informed of this.

IP Address Lookup to Verify Email Addresses

Another way to verify email address is to perform an IP address lookup. This method is actually less complicated than it first sounds.

The IP address lookup is used to determine an IP address geolocation, and each message you receive via email will come with the IP address of the mail servers that it originated from hidden in the source code of the message. You can view the message’s code and find the IP address under ‘received from’.

Then you can copy and paste the IP address into an address lookup tool. Press search, and you will find the ISP and company associated with the IP address along with its location.

However, while this method can tell you if an address is real and where it originated from, you will not get any information on the address’ deliverability or whether or not the domain that it comes from is reputable.

Google Search

While a Google search might not be able to tell you if an email address is real or if it is a disposable email address, what it can do is provide confirmation that an email address is valid. This is because most people have some kind of presence online, either on social media or with their own websites and blogs, for example.

Major search engines such as Google are constantly crawling the internet and indexing everything that they find. As a result of this, when you search for an email address, a valid address that actually belongs to a real person will often be findable with a simple search, while an invalid or fake address is unlikely to yield any accurate results.

Email Verification Tools

Fake email addresses and messages are a red flag and they are becoming a large problem for marketers, which is why it’s no surprise that there are lots of email verification and checking tools now available on the market.

You can use an email checker to easily validate a list of email addresses with just a few clicks, and there are both free and paid options available, although the free options will usually limit you to a certain number of checks per month.

Is this a Real Email Address? Choosing the Right Tool to Check Email Addresses for Your Email Marketing Campaigns

When your business uses marketing email campaigns to engage with and advertise to customers, it’s important to make sure that all mailing lists are updated and that any emails included in them are valid, which allows you to ensure that all emails are delivered successfully.

Using an email validation tool is the best way to save time to get a better deliverablility if you have a large email list that new subscribers are regularly added to. Some main features to look out for when choosing an email checker tool for your business include:

Syntax Errors

A good email verification service should be able to check the validity of emails by detecting syntax errors. Some may even have additional features including providing suggestions for the correct address if spelling mistakes are found.

Domain Issues

Another check that a good email checker should perform as standard is searching for invalid or non-existent domains. This check will look at the domain, email server, and the email account to ensure that they are all existent, valid, and can receive email. Along with this, the tool should also search for and identify catch-all addresses.

Spam Traps

Spam traps are email addresses that look real but are not really valid. They are used by some email providers and anti-spam organisations to catch malicious senders. You should always choose an email verification tool that can verify email address that may be on your mailing list, to avoid your business looking like a spammer.

What is a Valid Email?

A valid email address refers to an email address that is in use, can receive messages in the inbox, is associated with an existing domain, and has the correct syntax.

Can You Check the Validity of an Email Address for Free?

Using an email validation service is the simplest way to validate email addresses, if they are real and valid, free of charge. Many services offer a free tools for up to a certain number of addresses and allow you to quickly verify email addresses in real-time.

Why is My Email Address Invalid?

There are several potential reasons why your email address is not valid. Some of the most common reasons include the email address not existing on the email service provider’s servers, or the format not using the correct syntax or spelling.

What Happens When Email Is Sent to an Invalid Address?

Most of the time, if an email message is sent to an address that is not valid, the email servers will not recognise the address and the sender will receive a message bounces to inform them that their message cannot be delivered to the address.

However, in some cases, where the email is a catch-all address, the sender will not receive mail to let them know that the address is not valid.

Consequences of Sending Messages to Invalid Addresses

Sending emails to invalid email addresses can harm your sender reputation over time, which is why it is so important to use an email checker tool to make sure that all email addresses included are valid and deliverable.

When you send emails to invalid addresses, this can significantly increase your bounce rate, which can, in turn, harm your sender reputation and make it harder for messages that you send to valid email addresses to be delivered.

If you send email marketing messages, one of the most important things to do is make sure that you are only sending messages to real, valid email addresses, and we believe that Bouncer is the most reliable way. Start your free account and try before you buy with 100 free credits.

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