What is email verification?
Email verification confirms the validity and authenticity of an email address, ensuring it is active and capable of receiving messages. Businesses, marketers, and individuals should avoid sending emails to invalid addresses, reducing bounce rates, and enhancing overall email deliverability and campaign performance.
In this article:
Email Verification: A Complete Guide
For an engaging visual representation, you can find a video embedded in the article below, providing an in-depth discussion on all the points covered here.
Benefits of Email Verification 
Email verification is the process of checking if an email is valid, without having to send an email to it and risk affecting the reputation of your domain. It’s crucial to protect your email reputation and avoid sending emails that will bounce back.
Improved Email Deliverability: Ensures a higher percentage of emails are successfully delivered to the inbox.
Reduced Bounce Rate: Minimizes the number of emails that bounce back due to invalid addresses.
Enhanced Campaign Performance: Increases engagement rates and ROI of email marketing campaigns.
Maintained Sender Reputation: Avoids blacklisting and spam filters by sending emails to valid addresses.
Key components 🔑
Syntax Verification:
What it Does: Check if the email address follows the standard email format, like, stephen@wiza.com
An email like "stephen@wiza..com" would fail the syntax check because of the double dots before the domain extension.
Importance: Eliminates addresses with missing or extra characters, spaces, or incorrect formatting.
Domain Verification:
What it Does: Confirms that the domain exists and is configured to accept emails.
Wiza’s algorithm verifies the existence and validity of the domain attached to the email address. It ensures that the domain is real, active, and capable of receiving emails.
An email address with a domain like "stephenh@magicalwizard.io" would be flagged as invalid.
Importance: Avoids sending emails to non-existent or misspelled domains.
SMTP Verification:
SMTP stands for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. It’s a protocol used to send emails.
What it Does: SMTP verification involves communicating with the recipient’s email server to confirm the existence and activity of an email address, without sending an actual email.
Importance: Ensures the email address is active and capable of receiving messages without sending an actual email.
MX Record Check:
What it does: This process confirms that the domain has valid Mail Exchange (MX) records set up and is capable of receiving emails. It’s a technical verification to ensure the email address is operational.
Example: An email address with a domain lacking MX records would indicate that it cannot receive emails.
Catch-All Address Check:
What it Does: Some email servers are configured to accept all incoming email messages, regardless of whether the specified mailbox exists. This check identifies such servers to assess the reliability of the email address.
Importance: Helps in determining the deliverability of emails to specific addresses on such domains.
Disposable Email Address (DEA) Detection:
What it Does: This check identifies temporary or disposable email addresses that are often used for a short period to avoid spam or sign up for online services. Wiza helps in detecting and filtering out these unreliable addresses.
Email addresses from domains like "mailinator.com" are often temporary and used to bypass registration forms.
Importance: Prevents wasting resources on addresses that will become inactive shortly.
Role-Based Address Identification:
What it Does: Identifies email addresses associated with a particular job role or department rather than an individual.
Importance: Helps in targeting communications effectively.
Spam Trap Detection:
What it Does: Identifies email addresses that are used to catch spammers.
Wiza identifies and removes email addresses that are likely spam traps or "honeypots" used to catch and blacklist spammers. Avoiding these addresses is crucial for maintaining a healthy sender reputation.
An outdated or non-engaging email address that suddenly becomes active can be a spam trap.
Importance: Avoids getting blacklisted by sending emails to these addresses.
Graylist-Proof:
What it does: Some Email Service Providers (ESPs) use graylisting to temporarily block incoming emails from unknown senders. Wiza’s verification process can confirm the validity of email addresses even with these hard-to-check ESPs, ensuring accurate verification.
Example: If an ESP temporarily rejects email messages as a defense mechanism, Wiza’s verification ensures that valid emails are not wrongly classified as undeliverable.
Risk Validation:
What it does: Wiza’s algorithm scans for email addresses containing high-risk keywords or Top-Level Domains (TLDs) that are often associated with spam or malicious activities. Such addresses are filtered out to enhance email campaign safety.
Example: An email address like "spam@example.com" might be flagged due to the use of a high-risk keyword.
Each of these checks contributes to a comprehensive email verification process, ensuring that email addresses are not only valid but also reliable and safe for sending messages. This thorough verification is essential for optimizing email deliverability, enhancing campaign performance, and maintaining a positive sender reputation.
We trust this insight into Wiza's verification process has been helpful. If you're grappling with the challenges of a campaign impacted by invalid emails, take the first step by signing up with Wiza today!
For any additional questions, feel free to click on the live chat button at the bottom right or reach out to our support team at hello@wiza.com.