How to Check if an Email Is Valid?

To make sure your email campaigns are efficient, you need to know how to check if an email is valid. First, you will need to verify if the email’s format meets standard email structure criteria. Next, you will need to check if the email domain exists, is legitimate and capable of receiving messages. 

Additionally, it’s important to assess  the SMTP configuration.

Each of these steps—format verification, domain checking, and SMTP assessment— are absolutely necessary. Together, they will let you build a comprehensive approach to ensuring the validity of an email address. 

What Is Email Validation?

Email validation checks if an email address is correctly formatted and exists as a valid account. It also looks into the email’s syntax to make sure it  follows standard rules and checks the domain to confirm it can receive emails.

Email validation can also include an SMTP check to see if the email account is available and responsive. This helps remove invalid or inactive emails from lists. By keeping the list clean and current, email validation improves delivery rates and communication effectiveness.

Why Is Email Validation Important in Email Marketing Campaigns?

Email validation is very important for the success of an email marketing campaign. By validating emails, you get to make sure that each address on your list is valid. And this is a sure way to boost deliverability and reduce bounce rates. In turn, lower bounce rates will protect your sender reputation. Your emails will be far less likely to be flagged as spam by email service providers.

Validating email addresses will also help keep your list clean. As you remove email addresses that are incorrect or do not exist, you get to focus all your resources on engaged subscribers. This goes on to improve your click-through rates and other key metrics.

Additionally, email validation is a necessary step to prevent fraud by identifying temporary or disposable email accounts.

Validating your email list is also an effective way to cut costs.It makes marketing resources more efficient and provides accurate data from real, active emails. This helps make better decisions and strategy adjustments.

Summing it all up, email validation can boost your entire campaign. It improves deliverability, protect your sender reputation, optimize engagement, reduce costs, and ensure data accuracy. 

How to Validate of an Email Address

There are two key steps in email validation: format validation and domain verification.

Format validation

The structure of an email address is fundamental. It typically includes a username, an “@” symbol, followed by a domain name. Correctly identifying this structure is vital for the email to be recognized across digital platforms.

For syntactical validation, regular expressions (regex) are employed. These expressions can discern whether an email address conforms to the standard format. A common regex pattern for this purpose is ^[a-zA-Z0-9._%+-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9.-]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,}$. This pattern checks for the presence of an “@” symbol, followed by a domain and a top-level domain (TLD), ensuring the email address adheres to accepted standards.

Domain verification

After confirming the email format, the next step is to verify the domain’s existence. This stage is pivotal for affirming that the domain is active and configured to receive emails. The verification process involves looking up the domain’s Mail Exchange (MX) records. MX records are a type of DNS record that specifies a mail server responsible for receiving emails on behalf of the domain. The presence of MX records is a strong indicator that the domain is set up to handle email traffic.

To perform this check, various tools and scripts can query the DNS records of a domain to retrieve its MX records. If MX records are found, it’s a positive sign that the domain is legitimate and capable of receiving emails. This step is crucial for businesses and individuals alike to avoid sending emails to non-existent or incorrectly typed domains, thereby reducing the risk of email bounce-backs and ensuring smoother communications.

Verifying Email Addresses: SMTP Checks and Disposable Email Detection

Two advanced steps—SMTP checks and the identification of disposable email addresses—are essential for ensuring an email’s integrity and long-term usability.

SMTP check: The protocol’s role in validation

The Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) is the backbone of email communication. It facilitates the sending of emails across the Internet. 

An SMTP check is a more direct approach to verifying an email address. Here, the validator queries the recipient’s mail server to check if the mailbox exists and can receive messages.

To perform an SMTP check, a connection is set up with the recipient’s SMTP server using the domain from the email address. The serveris asked if it will accept an email for that address. A positive reply means the email is likely active. However, some servers respond positively to all queries (catch-all) to avoid spam. So, SMTP checks are helpful but shouldn’t be the only method for email validation.

Disposable email address detection: Ensuring longevity

Disposable email addresses are temporary and used for short-term purposes. People often create disposable email addresses to bypass registration or protect privacy. This can, indeed, be useful for anonymity. However, they are not suitable for long-term communication and can clutter an email list.

This is why you will need to find a way to detect disposable email addresses.

First, make sure you have an updated list of domains known for providing disposable email services within reach. Next, compare the domain of an email address against this list. This is how you can filter out addresses likely to become inactive shortly after they are created. 

If you are looking to make things easier for yourself, you can use one of the many online services and apps that specialize in identifying temporary email providers.

Advanced Validation Techniques: API Services and AI

There are two advanced validation techniques that can elevate your email verification process: API services and artificial intelligence (AI).

API services for email validation are an efficient way to confirm email addresses. They can perform checks like format validation, domain verification, SMTP checks, and detecting disposable emails. When you integrate these APIs into applications, you get to enjoy real-time verification. This can make the email verification process much easier – and you won’t even need an extensive internal infrastructure.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are also highly effective tools when it comes to predicting email validity. They can analyze vast amounts of data and quickly identify patterns of authenticity and longevity. AI tools can quickly assess risk of an email being fraudulent, inactive, or of low quality. AI models can also learn and improve over time and offer increasingly accurate predictions.

To Sum Up

Validating an email address goes above and beyond format and domain checks. To ensure authenticity, consider using advanced SMTP checks. Sophisticated techniques, like API services and AI, can help enhance your practices further.