Your email marketing campaign is an investment, and you’re probably putting a lot of thought and time into its planning and creation. A big part of protecting your return of investment is using an email validator.
What is an email validator?
It’s a system that removes old and risky email addresses from your database, thus enhancing your marketing and business communication.
You want to send out your newsletters with confidence that the message will be read. With plenty of personal and business emails being sent all the time, you’ve got a lot of competition – even if your email ends up in the inbox. By using an email validator, you’re saving yourself the frustration of so many of your emails not even having a chance.
An email validator boosts your sender reputation
Do you know how some businesses start to get a bad rep? This principle plays out in email land, too.
Think of a bad email sender reputation like a local restaurant receiving a terrible grade from the health inspector. Bulk email senders have something called “email sender reputation.” Internet Service Providers (ISPs) assign these scores based on a number of factors.
Are a lot of the emails you send bouncing? Maybe you have a lot of addresses on your list that aren’t valid anymore.
Do you constantly get spam complaints? That means you’ve got abuse emails in your database. These are people who may habitually sign up for email lists and then, for reasons of forgetting or simply being careless, will mark emails as spam. You don’t want these on your list, because they cause your emails to land in the spam folder or in Google’s Promotions tab.
What an email validator does is rejuvenate that valuable database you have. It removes the invalid, abuse, and other undesirable addresses from your list. Some call it “cleaning” or even “scrubbing” your list.
“Quality over quantity” applies to email marketing as well
You may ask, “but won’t cleaning decrease the number of people on my list?” Having a high quantity of addresses isn’t what’s important – it’s having email addresses of high quality.
Going back to the restaurant analogy, the health inspector isn’t concerned with how much food you have in your refrigerator. If you have a lot of mouldy, rotten food, then you’ve got a problem!
Using an email validator increases your sender reputation exponentially and gives you a higher return on investment. You’ve put a lot of hard work, time, and money into your campaign. By allowing more receptive candidates who want to receive your messages, you’re decreasing costs while increasing revenue.
How to validate your email list
There are two ways in which you can keep your email list in tip-top shape:
- by cleaning it in bulk. This means you’ll upload it on an email validation platform and get it back clean within a few hours – or even a few minutes.
- by using an email validation API. This is a piece of code you can copy and paste on your website. Once activated, the API will check every new signup in real-time.
Bonus tips to help you reach the inbox
People juggle their busy day-to-day, all while being exposed to a constant deluge of advertisements on billboards, social media, television and other media outlets. Email marketing is one of the most valuable ways to reach your target audience and keep you in their thoughts.
For a product or service to sell consistently, increasing your customer’s awareness is of paramount importance. The old adage “out of sight, out of mind” can definitely be true when you consider this age of constant distraction we live in.
Most businesses prioritise their exposure and their reputation, and for good reason. Of course, the quality and consistency of your emails are crucial, but just imagine if these masterpieces of marketing you’ve worked so hard on are never even seen.
To avoid that and achieve better results, here are a few tips:
- once you ensure your email list is up-to-date, send your emails regularly, like on the same day of the week. It’ll help you build familiarity and trust.
- write your subject lines carefully and avoid using any spammy words, such as “money” or “for free.”
- make your content informative and engaging. The more people interact with it, the better your sender reputation will become.
- prune inactive subscribers regularly. Your email service provider should isolate them from your list, so you can remove if they don’t click your messages for more than six months.
Conclusion
Email marketing has the greatest ROI of any other way of reaching a mass audience. If you are like most people, you check your email before you check social media. Not everyone is on all of the big social media channels: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. However, pretty much everyone, young or old, uses email.
Using an email validator ensures your email newsletters and promotions end up in the inbox and not in the spam folder.
Remember your company’s reputation is on the line. It’s easy to do and quick to implement and protects this very valuable asset and investment – your email list and the efforts and expenses associated with it. Make sure to treat it that way.
Author bio: Paul Leslie is a freelance writer, researcher and interviewer. He has recorded more than 700 interviews distributed via radio and podcasts. He likes watching and rewatching movies and is always down to try a new restaurant.