David Struth, head of marketing at Experian Data Quality, offers advice on choosing the right email validation software
B2B organisations have an age old perception towards the collection of email addresses that needs correcting, with many still feeling success lies in securing the highest volume possible. The belief that larger email lists generate more conversations and revenue, is fundamentally flawed unless best practices are adhered to when acquiring the email addresses.
This preference for ‘quantity’ over ‘quality’ can have a negative impact on an organisation’s reputation both with ISPs and customers with the validity of email addresses often seen as a secondary metric and one not linked to customer satisfaction.
ISPs ultimately decide how much of an organisation’s email communications reach the inbox, basing their decisions largely
on sender reputation. Score poorly in the eyes of an ISP and you potentially run the risk of having your email communication volume throttled, or worse, blacklisted and blocked altogether.
Organisations can drive improvement in their sender score to ensure maximum email deliverability by serving relevant and timely content, having an active subscriber programme and avoiding mass list purchases that may contain traps.
Organisations can also use technology to improve the accuracy of their emails, both at the point of collection and within legacy databases, actively validating email addresses before they’re used to communicate with customers and prospects.
But what should you look for in an email validation vendor? This short guide highlights five key areas for consideration.
1. Speed and accuracy
Solution speed is a critical factor that must be considered from the outset. Essentially, it’s the measure of how quickly validated results can be returned either when requested as a real-time look-up or bulk file process.
Quick tip: Ask your prospective email validation vendor whether they have conducted system speed tests and to share the results with you.
The accuracy of the results generated is an important element of an organisation’s wider contact data quality strategy. By choosing a vendor that can validate a larger proportion of email addresses organisations can improve their communications effectiveness.
Quick tip: Ask your chosen vendor to perform a free data test to ascertain match rates and representative findings.
2. Active validation
There are two stages to a robust email validation offering: syntax correction (is the address correctly formed?) and active validation (a series of real-time checks and transactions with each ISP to actively determine whether the email address exists and can accept emails at the time of enquiry). There are a number of ‘alternatives’ which companies should steer well clear of as they violate global anti-spam regulations and could result in regulatory sanction and penalty.
Quick tip: Pick an email validation vendor that offers full ‘active validation’.
3. Accept-all address validation
Some ISPs, such as Yahoo, have an ‘accept-all’ address policy. For example, when actively validating a Yahoo email address, if it has at any time existed in the past then the ISP will return a valid response code, even if it is no longer valid. This clearly has implications for the organisation as they could receive valid response codes for inactive addresses and it will devalue the trust in the results.
Quick tip: Pick an email validation vendor that has a robust ‘accept-all’ offering that extends further than a one off SMTP check.
4. Actionable response codes
Email validation result codes should be simple to understand and easily actionable. There should not be multiple responses that all mean the same result for an organisation to justify charging for an ‘unknown’.
Quick tip: Ask your prospective vendor to share the solution response codes and simply explain how to use them.
5. Security and scalability
When purchasing software, platform security should be high on an organisation’s agenda. The buyer must be confident that the solution will perform to the expected level but also that the solution is safe and secure and has the necessary security accreditations.
Quick tip: Ask for a full breakdown of your vendor’s security accreditations and solution performance metrics.
Solution scalability is an important factor when choosing an email validation vendor due to the volume of contact information organisations now collect. The validation of emails is often time-based; either dependent on campaign delivery dates or regulatory pressure and therefore timely validation of large volumes is a critical requirement.
Quick tip: Ensure your prospective solution can handle the volume levels and territorial deployments you require.
Taking a proactive approach to email list management is a key way for organisations to improve their communications effectiveness. Email validation software should sit at the heart of an organisation’s list management strategy and picking the right vendor to partner with is crucial when considering the pressures organisations face.
