Compared to other marketing strategies, email marketing has the highest potential ROI. With the right approach, it can reach 4400%. Unfortunately, many businesses fail to achieve such impressive results simply because their message never reaches the recipients.
Invalid addresses on your email list don’t just reduce your marketing ROI. They hurt your sender’s score and hinder the CSAT(Customer Satisfaction Score). To make sure you are getting the best out of your marketing tactics, it’s imperative to implement email validation.
What is Email Validation?
Email validation is the process of checking addresses on your email list to make sure they are valid. Common reasons why an email address may become invalid are:
- You purchased the email list (that’s a black hat marketing tactic that could cause serious consequences. Ready-to-go email lists are often full of spam traps.)
- The customer misspelled the email address when typing it into a form.
- A customer stopped using the email address.
If any of the above issues occurred, you are sending your messages into the void. Accordingly, you are getting the wrong information about your marketing campaign’s results.
You can do email validation manually. However, if your list contains more than 10 – 20 addresses, the process is likely to be time-consuming. Meanwhile, you would need to send extra messages to valid addresses, thus frustrating the recipients.
If you aren’t ready to do manual validation, you can invest in special software like the email validation tool by Byteplant. These tools check for such issues as:
- Typos
- Spam traps
- Invalid domains
- Abandoned email addresses
- And more
Validation tools have different functionality and may have such options as:
- Bulk email verification – check all email addresses on your list in bulk.
- Bounce analysis – check if any of the email addresses result in a bounce.
- Integrations – integrate the tool with help desk software.
- Automated cleanups – check your email list automatically on a weekly or daily basis.
- Real-time verification API – check the address as the client is typing it into a form.
Email validation is integral to the success of your email marketing campaign. Here is why your company needs to take advantage of it as soon as possible.
1. Tweak Your Marketing Campaign
When you are sending messages into the void, you can’t evaluate the efficiency of your email marketing campaign.
For example, you send a message to 200 clients and 20 of them convert. You have a 10% conversion rate. Now let’s say you send a message to 200 clients but 100 emails bounce and 20 clients convert. You have a 20% conversion rate.
With messages not reaching their recipients, you can’t get a clear picture of the campaign. This could lead to unnecessary adjustments and extra expenses.
2. Avoid Losing Clients
If a client made a silly typo when entering the address, your message will never reach them. You could be losing a potentially high-paying client simply because they were distracted when filling out a form.
Such a mistake can easily be fixed by an email validation software, which works with a database of numerous domains.
3. Save Time
Trying to validate your email list manually is a time-consuming process. Doing it without any software usually means sending messages to each person on the list to make sure the email reaches the destination.
Such an approach can take hours, annoying the recipients in the process. An email validation tool can do the same within minutes without sending actual messages.
If you decide not to validate the email list at all, you are likely to lose both time and money trying to adjust your marketing campaign.
4. Maintain a Good Reputation
If your email messages bounce continuously, your sender’s score goes down. Eventually, you could be blacklisted by email providers. While it’s possible to improve your sender’s reputation, it takes time. During that period, your marketing campaign suffers.
The Takeaway
Email validation involves checking your email list to make sure your messages reach the recipients. Avoiding it can hinder your company’s reputation, lead to client loss, and hurt your marketing campaign.
To achieve a high email marketing ROI while improving your company’s bottom line, your email list must be as clean as possible. Whether you do it manually or use special software, validation is an integral part of your marketing efforts.