A Complete Guide To Email Verification & Lead Qualification In 2022

Emails might be among the oldest forms of communication we have but are still very effective. According to Statistica, the number of emails sent and received has been growing every year, with the number expected to hit 376.4 billion by 2025.

This makes them important when it comes to the growth of businesses and communication with customers. Creating a database with customer email addresses can help a sales team with an unlimited flow of leads. However, businesses have to make sure that these leads are accurate. If not, then the chances of them being effective would be very minimal. Here is a guide to email verification and lead qualification in 2022.

A) Introduction to Email Verification

Email verification, also referred to as email validation, is the process of making sure that email addresses are not fake or inactive. This is important in reducing soft and hard bounce rates. It also helps prevent businesses from sending emails to spam traps. Email verification helps businesses save money and time, improve customer engagement, and reduce email bounce rates. Here is how to verify emails and qualify leads.

B) Server Confirmation

You cannot complete email verification and lead qualification without server confirmation. This process checks whether the DNS records for the email addresses and domain names are valid and can receive emails or not. For instance, an email address such as xyz@abc.com uses the domain name abc.com. Server verification checks whether this domain name is correctly set up to allow sending and receiving of emails or not.

In addition, server verification checks to see whether the inboxes of your emails are full or not. Even though not common these days due to the large storage offered by mailbox service providers, it can lead to your emails bouncing.

C) Account Role Checks

Role accounts can be described as email addresses used by a business for different departments or roles. For instance, you will come across email addresses such as manager@domain.com, sales@domain.com, and support@domain.com, among others. Since your leads are real people, no matter the departments they are working in, you need to make sure that sales and marketing emails are not sent to role accounts. You should personalize your emails to attract the attention of decision-makers.

If the person you are selling to uses a role account, then the chances of your emails being responded to by different people are very high. This might lead to some form of confusion, delaying your chances of getting quality leads. It is a good practice to always use name-based email addresses.

D) Duplicate Checks

The most important thing when it comes to email verification and lead generation is to make sure that you have active email addresses that can receive and send emails. However, you need to ensure that you do not have duplicate email addresses. You do not need to have your potential customers receive the same email more than once, as this might make you look unprofessional. In addition, it is also annoying and you might end up being filtered as a spammer.

Whatever email verification system you use, you need to make sure that it checks whether you have duplicate emails or not. If any exists, it should flag them down or even merge them or delete one of the duplicate email addresses.

E) Email Formatting and Syntax

Email formatting and syntax are the first things you need to check when verifying emails. Email formatting sets different complex rules that dictate what should be included in an email username. You need to run different formulae to check the format of emails. Since this cannot be done manually, you can get a free email verification API to get the job done for you. Email syntax, on the other hand, checks the order your emails are created.

For example, an email verification API checks your emails across different mail service providers. For instance, mail service providers such as Yahoo have restricted users from creating email addresses that start with a digit. If it finds any that does, then that email address is flagged down and not added to your b2b database.

F) Mailbox Validation

Validating a mailbox is the process of checking if a mailbox exists by directly contacting the SMTP server of the mailbox. You cannot do this manually for all email addresses that you collect, meaning that you need a service to do the job for you. If the mailbox does not exist, then that means that it cannot receive emails. A message is automatically sent to the email address. If a response is sent back, then it means that the email address in question is active and can receive emails.

This process can take a few seconds to complete. However, it can take longer than expected, especially for businesses with large mailing lists. The time it takes can also depend on other verification processes put in place. Most businesses use email addresses to communicate with their potential customers for the first time. You can make or break your business at this time. This explains the reason why you need to ensure that email verification and lead qualification measures are implemented and done correctly.