How To Verify An Email Address Without Sending An Email

Is important to make sure the email actually reaches the receiver an exist, Learn how to verify an email address without sending an email

By Claudio Pires
Updated on September 25, 2024
How To Verify An Email Address Without Sending An Email

In the past, email marketers relied on sending cold emails to get their message across. They bought email lists and had to contact every person on that list manually. Nowadays, technology has advanced to the point where most email marketing tasks are simple. However, this does not mean you still need to verify an email address without sending an email before launching a campaign.

Modern email outreach is all about attention to detail. You need to create attractive campaigns so that emails are opened. This includes numerous strategies and techniques, from adding personal touches to A/B testing.

Obviously, one of the most important things is ensuring the email reaches the receiver. We will discuss this in the following paragraphs about email verification.

Why Do You Need To Verify Email Addresses Before Sending Messages?

Whether you send email messages to lists you created in time or contact a plan you got from someone else, you must first check all the emails. This is mainly because of deliverability.

When you send messages to many email addresses and do not verify them, there is a high possibility that many messages will bounce. Unfortunately, when more emails bounce, there is a higher chance that messages sent by you will end up being marked as spam in the future.

You instantly improve deliverability by simply taking one extra step and verifying email addresses before sending messages. This increases open and response rates for your marketing campaigns.

Also, your analysis is more accurate because actual people receive your emails. Your campaign data is not negatively impacted by the presence of incorrect emails that automatically bounced. As a result, it is a lot easier for you to adapt and make future changes.

How To Verify Email Addresses Without Sending Emails

For most of us, it is counter-intuitive that we can check an email address without actually sending an email to it. For experienced marketers, though, there are 2 options available:

  • Using a free email verifier tool – This is perfect when you send just a few emails or need to verify one email address from time to time.
  • Professional email finder tools that include built-in verification are mandatory as email campaigns scale up. When bouncing can impact your results, it is time to opt for a professional tool.

Let’s dig a little deeper and see how easy the verification process can be. We will talk about using the Snovio email verifier, which is one of the best tools of its kind on the market.

Manually Checking Email Addresses

The free version of Snovio allows you to check up to 50 email addresses monthly. This is more than enough for most small-scale marketing campaigns. All you have to do is to follow these steps:

  • Visit snov.io/email-verifier
  • Write the email you want to check in the form.
  • Click Verify
  • You receive the check result, telling you if the email address is good or not.

This is a quick way to verify email addresses if you only send a handful of emails in a single campaign. It is also straightforward and accessible.

However, when you need to scale your operations, you need to consider the second option:

Using An Email Verifier Tool

Email verifier tools allow you to check several email addresses at once quickly. As already mentioned, the Snovio verifier will enable you to do this.

How does the paid version improve the verification check?

For starters, you have access to extra tools you can use. For instance, the Bulk Email Validation Service allows you to upload a .csv file with all the emails you want to check. This makes it very easy to perform a large check-in in just seconds.

We need to mention that a paid account gives you access to a user interface you can use to have all your information in one place. This can be very useful when dealing with huge email lists.

Syntax Checking to Verify Email Address Without Sending Emails

What It Is: Syntax checking involves validating the format of an email address against standard email formatting rules.

How It Works: An email address must follow a specific structure, such as username@domain.com. By checking the syntax, you can immediately filter out addresses that don’t meet these criteria.

Example:

  • Valid: john.doe@example.com
  • Invalid: john.doe@.com or john.doe@example

Benefits:

  • Quick and Easy: Syntax checks can be performed rapidly using regular expressions.
  • First Line of Defense: Eliminates obviously invalid addresses upfront.

Limitations:

  • Not Foolproof: A syntactically correct email may still be invalid if the domain doesn’t exist or the mailbox is inactive.

Domain and MX Record Verification to Verify Email Address Without Sending Emails

What It Is: This method checks if the domain of the email address exists and has a mail server configured to receive emails.

How It Works:

  1. DNS Lookup: Perform a DNS (Domain Name System) lookup for the domain part of the email address.
  2. MX Record Check: Verify the existence of MX (Mail Exchange) records, which direct emails to the correct mail server.

Example:

  • For john.doe@example.com, check if example.com exists and has MX records.

Benefits:

  • Validates Domain: Ensures the domain is live and configured to receive emails.
  • Reduces Bounces: Filters out emails with non-existent domains.

How Does An Email Verifier Work?

Using the Snovio example, the email verifier tool uses 7 verification methods. They are:

  • Email format check – A self-explanatory process that checks how an email address is typed.
  • Gibberish check – Automatically identifies email addresses that look like gibberish.
  • Domain existence checks – When the domain no longer exists, the email address cannot be valid.
  • Catch-all email and domain check – This uses known databases of email addresses identified as bad in the past.
  • Freemail check – This checks if the email address is connected to a free email provider.
  • MX record check – This confirms that the email address can receive emails.
  • SMTP Authentication – This pings the email address and is the most reliable way to check if an email address is valid automatically or not.

Do You Need A Free Or Paid Email Verifier to Verify An Email Address?

Both paid and free options are suitable for different marketers. Choosing between them is pretty simple:

  • Free Option – Very useful when you only need to verify one address or under 50 lessons per month.
  • Paid Option – Necessary when you scale your email marketing campaigns and deal with thousands of recipients.

Conclusions

As you can see, verifying email addresses before launching email campaigns is not at all challenging. The options highlighted above cover all your needs.

Eventually, you will need to opt for a paid email verifier. However, the free tools are more than enough when your list is small and you only need to check a single email from time to time.

Remember that data accuracy is vital for success in the world of email marketing. Sending emails to addresses that do not exist can drastically impact the statistics you use to improve your campaigns. This is especially true when you send under 5,000 emails per month.

Even 10 undetected fake email addresses can lead to a wrong marketing decision. With this in mind, in most cases, the truth is you need to use a paid email verifier. And you need to check all email addresses before you launch a campaign.

Claudio Pires

Claudio Pires is the co-founder of Visualmodo, a renowned company in web development and design. With over 15 years of experience, Claudio has honed his skills in content creation, web development support, and senior web designer. A trilingual expert fluent in English, Portuguese, and Spanish, he brings a global perspective to his work. Beyond his professional endeavors, Claudio is an active YouTuber, sharing his insights and expertise with a broader audience. Based in Brazil, Claudio continues to push the boundaries of web design and digital content, making him a pivotal figure in the industry.