Your Guide to Email Verification: Whys and Hows
So, you’ve got your online store up and running, products lined up, and you’re ready to take your e-commerce site online. But hold up a sec! There’s one crucial thing you might be overlooking: email verification.
Now, you might be thinking, “What’s the big deal about email verification anyway?” Well, let me break it down for you in simple terms. Email verification is like your online store’s bouncer. It checks IDs at the door to make sure everyone coming in is legit. And trust me, you want a good bouncer in this digital age filled with spammy bots and shady characters.
In this article, we will explain:
- What email verification is.
- Why you need it.
- How we can help you set up email verification for your ecommerce hustle.
How email verification works step by step
Services for email verification expand your consumer base. Any effective digital marketing plan must have email deliverability, and outdated or dangerous data will prevent you from getting into your consumers’ inboxes. This is a comprehensive guide explaining email verification and its benefits.
Why do we need to Verify?
Understanding the reasons for email verification is just as crucial as knowing how it works. Email verification ensures that an email address is valid and capable of receiving messages, which is vital for maintaining the integrity of your email list and improving overall communication effectiveness.
Customer information may or may not be your company’s most important asset, depending on your business strategy. Email marketing is estimated by the Digital Marketing Association to have a return on investment (ROI) of 4300%; good luck getting that type of return on your other investments!
That’s fantastic, but the shelf life of client data—especially email data—is limited.
According to research from Marketing Sherpa, email lists deteriorate at a rate of about 22% annually. That implies that more than 20,000 of your contacts’ emails will become invalid in a year if you have 100,000!
Poor data quality reduces deliverability and opens, which means your mailing campaigns perform worse.
You’ll lose money if you keep sending email campaigns to accounts that are no longer active. Worse still, your email service provider may ban you as a result of all those bounced emails, harming your sender’s reputation.
Regularly verifying your emails will help you steer clear of all of those difficulties, especially before large-scale email campaigns.
Steps for Email Verification
Email verification providers carry out these procedures as their main means of confirming addresses. There are three simple stages involved in the email verification procedure. These are the following:
1. Verifying the Format and Syntax of Emails:
Email syntax is the first thing that email verification services look for. The proper sequence in which email addresses should be constructed is known as email syntax.
The service will compare the addresses to well-known and significant email service providers’ syntax. A legitimate Yahoo email address, for instance, cannot begin with a number. One telltale sign of a phony address is that.
The service will then verify that the email format is correct. Similar to the rules governing syntax, these rules are also quite sophisticated and detailed and specify which usernames are appropriate for email addresses.
It is necessary to do tens of thousands of various permutations. Therefore, it is not something that can be completed by hand. For example, every email address must have the “@” symbol. One example is that an email address cannot contain special characters, and so forth.
2. Confirmation from the server:
The verification service will now proceed to server confirmation after the email address format and syntax have been confirmed. The service will examine the DNS records about the email addresses’ domain names.
The domain name is referred to as “abc.com” if your email address is “[email protected]”. As part of this procedure, the service will test the mail exchanger to make sure that the email address is operational and capable of receiving emails.
Bounces can also be caused by an overfilled email box. Consequently, the domain or server confirmation will assist in eliminating those that are legitimate but unable to receive fresh messages. Email marketing services impair the sender reputation since they are unable to discern between phony email addresses and entire inboxes.
3. Validation of Mailboxes:
The final step is with mailboxes. The mailbox validation is the final and most crucial stage in the verification process. The service verifies the mailbox in this phase.
They will attempt to get in touch with the SMTP server to find out if the specific mailbox is available and, if so, if it is prepared to receive emails.
Here, the email address will be ping-ed by the verification service using an EHLO message, and it will then wait for the email server to respond. The email address and its existence on the server will be verified upon receiving a server response.
Because of the technicalities involved, a legitimate email verification service may accomplish all of this without ever sending a single email. Although it generally doesn’t take long, the length of the email verification process might vary depending on the size of the mailing list.
The procedure may be slowed down by the mail servers’ age, volume of traffic, and more recent anti-spam software.
Additional email verification services include role account checks, temporary email addresses, elimination of spam traps, and screening for duplicate email addresses.
These actions are not the only ones utilized, though. As previously indicated, multiple opt-in processes and real-time verifications are also very helpful in confirming addresses. The needs and circumstances of the company determine whether or not these tools are applicable.
You can qualify the addresses at the time of signup with real-time verification. But API integration is the only way to make that happen.
That might be challenging for you to do if you aren’t a developer or don’t have access to them.
Alternatively, double opt-in processes are implemented right away upon signup; nevertheless, companies may risk alienating users by emailing confirmations to them.
Email verification plugin for WooCommerce
Using our email verification plugin, you can ensure genuine customer interactions, eliminate spam, and elevate email marketing efficiency.
Features:
1. Instant email verification
This efficient tool quickly eliminates fake registrations, reducing the number of fraudulent accounts and the risk of harmful bot activity. Additionally, it ensures that your email marketing efforts are directed towards real, engaged subscribers, giving you peace of mind as you connect with your audience.
2. Flexible verification models
You can setup an adaptable, customizable and highly intuitive email verification.
Opt for a measured approach by withholding the default WooCommerce emails until after successful verification. This flexibility allows you to craft an email verification process that not only resonates with your brand’s values and operational needs but also provides a distinctive and potent verification experience.
3. Set customized emails
This feature transforms your email outreach into a series of personalized messages that truly connect with each recipient.
Assume full control of your email content by adjusting the subject line, polishing the body text, and overhauling the entire template. Sending out well-crafted HTML emails not only improves visual appeal but also greatly increases conversion rates.
4. Managing Content Access for Unverified Users
Elevate your website’s security and protect your premium content with our Content Access Control feature. Take command by restricting access to certain pages or high-value content exclusively for verified users.
From unique product unveilings to special promotions, or crucial information pages, guarantee that only authentic and verified customers have entry.
This approach not only enhances the appeal of user verification but also reinforces your site’s security and exclusivity, fostering a more reliable environment for genuine interactions.
Summary
Overall, email verification is a really easy idea to grasp and may have a big impact on your business’s capacity to reach customers’ inboxes. It’s also a very effective approach to stop abusive user behavior and stop phony accounts. Most significantly, keeping a positive sender score reputation will enable email marketing and other correspondence to reach your users directly without ending up in the spam bin. So, you should be careful when doing this to fully implement it. Deploy our email verification plugin now to enhance your website’s security and ensure a personalized and excellent user experience.