Introduction
Email validation can help you improve your email marketing campaigns by reducing the number of fake signups and improving your reputation with ISPs.
Why use email validation?
Email validation can help you avoid a number of problems that could otherwise cost your business money. For example, if you’re using similar email addresses for multiple customers and don’t use email validation, it’s possible that your emails will be sent to the wrong person.
This could cause issues in a number of ways: the customer may not be able to read their email because they aren’t expecting it from you; even worse, they might receive messages intended for another customer; or worst case scenario, the customer clicks on a link in one of their emails and is taken to an unknown location (or even worse, an unsafe website).
These types of mistakes can be costly for businesses because they’re likely to get complaints from customers who receive these unwanted emails—or even worse yet—complaints from people who are tricked into visiting dangerous websites after clicking on links in unsolicited bulk mailings.
What is bad data costing you?
- What is bad data costing you?
- The cost of sending emails to invalid addresses isn’t just limited to the time and money it takes to send those emails. It also includes all the resources spent by your company, including employee hours spent managing bad data in your database, lost sales opportunities due to failure-to-deliver (FtD) emails and more. And if those aren’t enough reasons for you, consider that each time an email lands in the trash or spam folder instead of a recipient’s inbox due to bad data on your list—it becomes much less likely they’ll ever open a future message from you again.
6 ways to improve your email click-through rate
Avoid the following:
Sending emails to invalid addresses. This is probably obvious, but it’s important to mention. If you’ve ever had your email address on a website that’s been hacked, chances are you’ve received an influx of spam messages. Even if you haven’t been hacked, there are plenty of other ways for addresses to get leaked or otherwise enter into the public domain—for example, by being included in a comment thread on Reddit or Twitter. The last thing you want is for users who aren’t real people dealing with your company’s products and services (or those companies’ products and services) to start receiving spammy messages from businesses they don’t actually care about!
Sending too many emails over time. This may seem like common sense as well; how much is too much? Well, when I was working at Twitter we had this rule: “Don’t shoot yourself in the foot.” In other words: Don’t send so many emails that ISPs think poorly of you because they’re worried about their own reputation as well as yours! It might be tempting since there are plenty of workarounds out there that allow marketers/marketers-in-training/etcetera to do away with sending valid email addresses altogether (ahem). But remember that ISPs take these things seriously…they’re not going anywhere anytime soon so try not to make enemies of them unnecessarily 😉
1. Validate your email addresses on signup
Email validation is an easy and effective way to improve your click-through rates. One of the first steps you should take is to make sure that you are only getting valid email addresses when people signup for your product or service. The easiest way to do this is by using a tool like EmailOnAcid, which will allow you to see if any new subscribers are sending invalid emails from their accounts. If you aren’t getting invalid emails from people who aren’t real, then it means that they must be real!
2. Make sure your emails are actually getting delivered
- Make sure your emails are actually getting delivered:
To ensure that an email is actually reaching a recipient, you need to check the delivery status of the message. If a message fails to reach its intended destination, it will be marked as undeliverable and won’t be delivered. The best way to do this is by using a “return path” or “receiving IP” (i.e., the IP address that you’re sending mail through) in order to see if your email was accepted by an MTA (mail transfer agent). This will help you determine whether or not something went wrong while being sent out and ensure that future messages don’t end up in similar situations.
- Make sure your emails are being read:
You should also make sure that people are opening and reading your emails by monitoring click-through rates and open rates; these indicate how many people have opened or clicked on links within each message respectively (and whether those links were relevant for them!). This can help improve future messaging strategies by allowing companies/organizations/individuals access metrics about what sort of content gets viewed most frequently throughout different channels such as social media platforms or websites with embedded forms where users may submit information anonymously through surveys etc., etc.
3. Improve your subject lines and pre-header text
Email subject lines are an important part of the email’s content, so you should put a lot of effort into making them effective. Here are some tips for writing great subject lines:
- Use clear and concise subject lines. A great email subject line will be clear to your reader, making it easy for them to understand what their next step is when they receive the message in their inbox.
- Explain what the email is about with pre-header text. Your pre-header text (the text before your actual message begins) is another opportunity to engage readers before they even open the message itself—so make sure it’s compelling!
- Pre-header text can also be used as an incentive for people to click through from their inboxes by offering something special or valuable in return for doing so (for example: “Get 10% off all products now!”).
4. Provide content that adds value
You may have the best website, but if you don’t have content that adds value, people won’t be interested in visiting your site. If you’re sending out emails to promote products or services, including some useful information. If you are offering a free report of some kind or an eBook full of tips and advice related to your business, let people know about it!
Don’t send out generic emails that go to a broad audience either; make sure each email is customized based on who opened it and how often they’ve interacted with your brand before. Don’t just assume because someone gave you their email address at one point in time that they will want to receive promotional materials from you in perpetuity—you need permission from those individuals every single time if they are going set up as subscribers for the future communications (and even then).
5. Use an email delivery service to improve your reputation with ISPs
Once you’re in the habit of sending out email newsletters, it can be tempting to just send them as you go. But if you want to improve your click-through rates, it can be worthwhile to spend some time setting up an automated delivery service that will forward your newsletter to the ISPs on your behalf.
Using a reputable email delivery service like Amazon SES or Sendgrid (which both provide a good reputation with ISPs) means that ISPs will see less spam coming from your domain and more legitimate emails being sent out—both good signs in their eyes. This also means fewer bounces as well as fewer complaints about your emails going into spam folders—all crucial for improving click-through rates.
6. Reduce the number of emails you send out
Email marketing can be a powerful tool for any business, but it’s not always the best choice. Use email only if you have to. For example, if your customers are based in a different country and you want to reach them with customized offers, email may be your only option (and even then, consider using social media).
If you must send an email newsletter or discount code to retain customers who’ve bought something from you, do so once every two weeks at most. If there’s no reason why emails need to go out frequently—and there usually isn’t—then don’t send them constantly! If a customer hasn’t bought anything from me yet or has even clicked through my website once since they registered on it (which is rare), then I wouldn’t bother sending them anything more than one email per quarter until they make their first purchase from me.
Email validation can increase your click-through rates and reduce the number of fake signups you get
Email validation is a good practice, and it can help you increase your click-through rates and reduce the number of fake signups.
Email validation helps you get more click-throughs by minimizing fake email addresses. Your ISP may flag your messages as spam because they contain invalid emails, but if these users were able to sign up with valid email addresses in the first place, there’s a chance that they might convert into paying customers or repeat visitors to your site.
Email validation also helps you reduce the number of fake accounts that exist on your website. Fake accounts are bad news for any business; not only do they waste resources on account creation but they also make it harder for other users to find what they’re looking for when searching for specific keywords (like “[company name] reviews”). A well-designed form includes something called an “email confirmation” message – this special message verifies whether or not someone actually entered their real address before proceeding with account creation
Conclusion
Email validation is a powerful tool for improving your email marketing. It can help you get more clicks on each of your emails and reduce the number of fake signups you get.
