Email verification guide - Avoid bounces and spam

Let’s open with one of the biggest sins of any email marketing:

Sending to unverified emails.

Many unverified emails will be invalid, leading to bounces and deliverability problems.

In this guide, we’ll discuss:

• Why email verification is essential to email marketing success
• How to actually verify emails
• And what the best email verification tools are

The importance of email verification ⚠️

Not verifying emails will give you deliverability problems.

Not only for the invalid emails in your unverified email list but also for the perfectly valid emails among them.

How?

The invalid emails will bounce, and bounces hurt your sender reputation because spammers also experience a high bounce rate.

Since your bounce pattern will be similar to that of spammers, email service providers could consider you a spammer.

As a result of your tarnished sender reputation, email service providers will cautiously place many of your emails in your audience’s spam folder. Some of your emails to valid email addresses will even outright bounce.

To add salt to the wound, the subsequent lack of engagement with your emails will cause even lower deliverability. In short, it’s a downward spiral!

We think you get the point:

Not verifying emails is not an option!

To learn more about the importance of verifying emails before using them, read: Why email verification is important for outreach success

How to verify an email

The most used tools for email verification are bulk verifiers.

Typically, these tools allow you to upload a list of emails to verify. If you want to scale your outreach, going the bulk verifier route is the way to go.

However, to verify an email or two, you don’t need a bulk verifier.

There are some other innovative ways to check if an email is valid.

You can, for example, add the email you want to check to a new Gmail email and then hover over it.

If a profile appears, you’re dealing with an existing email.

However, one of the simplest ways to verify an email is by using our free email checker below. Just enter the email address and hit the “Check email address” button.

Top 3 email verification tools 🔝

The most scalable way to verify emails is with bulk verifiers.

They allow you to verify hundreds or even thousands of emails in one go.

Here are our top 3 bulk verifiers:

1. Dropcontact

Known for its high verification accuracy, Dropcontact is an all-in-one tool for finding leads and their contact information, as well as verifying their emails.

Dropcontact offers a free trial and starts at $29/month for 1000 searches.

For low usage, Dropcontact can get expensive.

2. lemlist Email finder & verifier

lemlist takes it a step further and includes highly-personalized multichannel outreach to its features.

Due to its waterfall enrichment, it finds 40-55% more verified emails than its competitors.

Email finder & verifier verifies emails with a 99% accuracy.

lemlist offers a free plan with 25 verification credits. Its paid plans start at $32/month.

3. Bouncer

Bouncer uses the pay-as-you-go model, meaning you’ll only pay for what you use.

They offer a free trial of 100 credits. After that, you’ll pay $1.60 for 200 verifications and $16 for 2000.

Bouncer verifies emails with a 99% accuracy.

We just showed you the top 3 email verification tools. However, we actually created a top 10. To get to know them all, read:  Top 10 best email verification tools in 2024

FAQ ⁉️

What is email verification?

Email verification is the process of validating an email address before using it in an email campaign.

Why does email verification matter?

Sending only to verified email addresses increases deliverability and protects your sender reputation. Using unverified emails does the opposite.

How often should I verify my email list?

Before adding an email list to your campaign, make sure to verify all of its emails.

For newsletter email marketing, ensure to re-verify your email list every quarter.

How accurate are email verification tools?

No email verification tool is perfect, but many reach accuracies of 95% or more.