How to Validate an Email Address Without Sending an Email

Dec 16, 2023

AudiencePoint Team

Many marketers run into spam complaints, issues, or questions when implementing a plan to validate and verify email addresses. Namely, you won’t want to send content to unverified email addresses to avoid bounces and protect your sender reputation. So, how can you validate an email address without sending an email?

An email address verification tool will likely be the best choice for the job regardless of the mail server used. We’ll break it all down in this article, from how email validation works to the best ways to ensure you achieve an active list of valid email addresses and real subscribers.

Can I Check If an Email Address Is Active?

Verifying email addresses is an important step to determining whether an email is active. When someone signs up for your list, the first thing you’ll want to know is if you can check email address ownership to know that the email they listed is active. You can do that by using an email verification tool. Let’s look at how validation through these tools works.

How Can I Check If an Email Is Valid?

When choosing an email verifier to determine if a recipient’s email address is active, you’ll have a couple of different options. Those are initial verification and bulk verification.

How an Initial Verification Is Performed

Initial verification would be done by connecting the verification tool to the signup form that you use to add new subscribers to your list. The software would then perform an API call each time someone fills out the form to verify that the email they listed is real and active.

How Bulk Verification Is Performed

Your other option would be bulk email verification. This is best suited for those who have an established list that was never verified. Bulk verifiers will go through several processes, like SMTP checks, running DNS records, and checking for syntax misspellings.

Plus, when you use our email insight software at AudiencePoint for bulk verification, our tools will use second-party data to review new subscribers based on trillions of data points collected each year. It provides more accuracy since our software doesn’t rely on purchased third-party data and can provide readings on how consumers actually engage and get to know how actively they check their inboxes.

How Do You Check If an Email Is Valid Without Sending?

To answer your initial question about how to verify an email address without sending emails, both the previously mentioned types of email verification solutions will work.

The API call done in initial verification can be performed instantly in the background right when someone signs up for your list all while avoiding sending new subscribers any emails to avoid bounces. Instead, it works by reading code generated by signals that are sent to the servers of the listed email address.

Bulk verification also helps you authenticate a list without ever having to send content to those subscribers. All those processes, like SMTP checks, running DNS records, and looking for syntax misspellings, can be performed in the background.

That said, while tools are the most efficient, some marketers who are just starting out may look for cheaper alternatives like manual verification or free websites to find invalid email addresses. Let’s also review how those options work.

Deep Dive into Email Verification Techniques

Understanding the nuts and bolts of email verification can significantly enhance your email marketing strategy. Let’s delve into some of these key techniques to give you a clearer picture of how email validation works.

SMTP Checks: SMTP, or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, is the standard protocol for sending emails across the Internet. When we perform an SMTP check, we’re essentially pinging the email server associated with the email address in question. This process doesn’t send an actual email but rather requests the server to confirm if the address exists and can receive emails. It’s like knocking on someone’s door to see if they’re home, without actually stepping in. This step is crucial in filtering out non-existent or inactive email addresses.
DNS Record Analysis: DNS, or Domain Name System, is often likened to a phone book for the Internet. Analyzing DNS records helps us understand if the domain part of the email (like @example.com in john@example.com) is valid and properly set up to receive emails. This is akin to checking if the phone book lists a number and if it’s correctly associated with the name. By examining DNS records, especially MX (Mail Exchange) records, we can ascertain if an email address is linked to a valid and active domain.

These techniques, among others, form the backbone of our email verification process. They are employed to ensure that your email list is pruned of any addresses that could harm your sender reputation or waste your marketing efforts. At AudiencePoint, we understand that the devil is in the details. That’s why we pay meticulous attention to these processes, ensuring that every email on your list is a gateway to a potential customer or a continued subscriber relationship.

How Do I Manually Verify an Email Address?

When attempting to verify an email address manually, you’ll have a handful of different options you can try.

One of the first steps could simply be doing a manual review of syntax spellings. For instance, many fake emails will use slight misspellings of common free email providers like Gmail or Outlook. That means when you see a new subscriber with an email address that reads @ooutlook.com, it will bounce since it was misspelled.

You also have options of manually performing server pings, running DNS records, or looking up IP addresses by using tools like MXToolbox or PuTTY for Telnet. However, there’s quite a learning curve to this when getting started.

Ultimately, busy marketers will benefit from the efficiency of email verification tools. Manual methods require you to go through emails one at a time, which would be way too time-consuming when you have thousands of subscribers on your list. It makes it worth paying for a tool that does the job for you and provides you with a list of verified email addresses.

Is There a Website To Verify Email Addresses?

Some with lower budgets may also wonder about websites that can verify email addresses online. There are websites out there that can verify an email address online, often for free.

However, they don’t always do every possible check to verify your list. Some may only check to see that an email address exists, skipping several steps of the verification process. Plus, many of them require you to input emails you want to verify one at a time. That leads back to the same issue many will experience with manual verification of it being too time-consuming.

If you’re looking for a more efficient and accurate solution, AudiencePoint can help.

More Than an Email Verification Tool: How AudiencePoint Can Help

At AudiencePoint, we provide email verification and engagement solutions that will make optimizing your email strategy easy.

We provide both an initial verification solution that can be integrated with signup forms and a bulk verification solution that can evaluate and verify an email lists. Both can be done without ever having to send subscribers an email.

Once that’s taken care of, our email insight software can also provide you with actionable data on how you can boost engagement. Our tools will give you real-time data while helping optimize send times, segment your list, re-engage inactive subscribers, remove dormant subscribers, and more. All of this helps you get the best performance from your content.