Imagine spending time on an important email only to find out upon sending that the address is invalid? Even worse if it happens with your email marketing campaign. You just can’t afford for your emails to miss tens and even hundreds of your clients!
So, how do you check if an email address is invalid and ensure that your campaigns reach your audience? Keep reading to find out and spot an invalid email address on your list!
What is an invalid email address?
An invalid email address is an email address that can’t receive emails, whether because it contains formatting mistakes and typos or for several other reasons, like inactive domains or deleted accounts.
Some addresses also can’t receive emails because of their short lifespan — they are called disposable or temporary.
Are invalid emails bad for your lists?
Invalid emails are a deadweight on your list. Many ESPs charge per contact, so if you keep these in your subscriber base, you pay without ever getting a return — these addresses are simply inaccessible.
They also return hard bounces, which cause risk not only to your deliverability but also to your sender reputation. Enough hard bounces, usually, more than 2%, and your IP may even end up blacklisted.
Are invalid emails common?
According to the data by turboSMTP, out of over half a million email addresses gathered through online forms, 22% are incorrect or invalid, 15% contain typos, and 7% correspond to abandoned or inactive addresses.
This means over half of the emails on your list might potentially be useless and pose a threat to email deliverability!
Common reasons for invalid email addresses
We’ve touched on the reasons why emails may be invalid, but let’s go over the reasons in a bit more detail.
Email has typos or an invalid email format
Only email addresses that follow the name@domain.com syntax are considered valid. In the local part, there can’t be spaces, multiple @’s, or no @ at all, a double dot, or extra special characters.
Here is a non-exhaustive list of various mistakes in an email address syntax:
- onlynamewithoutatanddomain
- #@%^%#$@#$@#.com
- ”(),:;<>[\]@domain.com
- @domain.com
- name.domain.com
- name@domain..com
- name@domain@domain.com
- .name@domain.com
- name.@domain.com
- name@-domain.com
- name..name@domain.com
- あいうえお@domain.com
- name@domain.web
- name@111.222.333.44444
- Abc..123@domain.com
- this\ is”really”not\allowed@domain.com
There are exceptions. According to Google Support, if someone’s private address is andrewdoe@gmail.com and somebody accidentally typed in additional dots, e.g., andrew.doe@gmail.com, the person will still get that email.
However, if a company or school uses Gmail to administer emails, dots do change the address, and a dot in andrew.doe@selzy.com instead of andrewdoe@selzy.com will be considered a mistake and render the address invalid.
Valid email addresses follow the template, or syntax, of a name@domain.com, where:
- “name” is the local part, usually identical to the username. In some cases, it may be enclosed in quotation marks or include some special characters, such as plus and minus. For example: firstname.lastname@domain.com
- @ separates the local part from the domain. The domain is usually associated with an email client, like Gmail and Outlook, or a business. For example, name@selzy.com, where “selzy” is a custom domain name. Sometimes, email addresses contain a subdomain such as name@blog.selzy.com.
- .com is a top-level domain. It can be generic like .com (commercial) and .edu (educational), or refer to a country code, like .uk for the United Kingdom, .us for the US.
Invalid email addresses, on the other hand, do not follow that syntax and simply can’t be reached.
Domain with the email address has been deleted
Some companies create custom domain names, such as name@selzy.com, where “selzy” is the domain. In case the company ceases to exist or wants to move its employees’ mailboxes to a new provider, it might delete or deactivate the existing accounts on the company’s server. All of this renders the email address inactive.
When a person leaves their workplace, their employer might delete their account and the inbox with it. Some providers, like Microsoft, offer an option to retain a former employee’s inbox with all its content for some time for regulatory or other reasons. Such a soft-deleted mailbox can be restored within a month, but it is still inactive.
Email has been changed or deleted
People can change their minds and either change their usernames or move to another domain and abandon the initial inbox they had. This means that your marketing communications won’t reach them. However, there’s more than one reason for delition. Some domains retain the right to retire or delete an account that has been inactive for a year or more:
- Gmail retires an account if it has been inactive for two years.
- Microsoft’s Outlook and Hotmail, and Yahoo deem an address inactive after a whole consecutive year or more.
Person used a disposable email
People use disposable emails when they are reluctant to share personal information or want to avoid spam. Disposable, burner, or throw-away email addresses are temporary. They expire after 10 minutes, one hour, or a couple of days at most.
Disposable email addresses harm any marketing campaign, at first boosting signup numbers but affecting long-term engagement rates.
Tips for fixing invalid email addresses
It’s easy to remove invalid emails if you regularly clean your email list. However, if your cleans often bring up a lot of inactive emails, you might want to use strategies to prevent invalid emails from getting into your subscriber base in the first place.
Check manually if you have entered the correct email address
Human error is a real thing. Everyone makes mistakes, whether the person entered their address in a hurry or your finger slipped on the keyboard when you recorded their email by ear. Anyway, it will not hurt to double-check that you spelled the address correctly.
If their username is the same as their actual name, compare the spelling; check if there are common typos in domain names, or if there are random dots and other special characters.
Check the address through the email verifier
Verification is a multi-step process that allows you to make sure that the email is valid. Usually, it consists of running mail server checks or sending an email to a user with an activation link or a code that the user then uses for verification. Verification is different from email validation, which generally checks if the email address follows the correct syntax.
Using a verifier, you increase your email deliverability rate, reduce the number of hard bounces, and protect your reputation — yay!
Record people’s other contacts besides emails
As we can see, collecting email addresses may not be enough to reach a person. Additional contact information offers higher engagement and a smooth, consistent experience for your audience.
If you have your customers’ phone numbers and social media handles, you can use an omnichannel strategy to engage your audience across multiple channels. Plus, it can be useful to re-engage a customer who, for example, changed their address and forgot to resubscribe to your emails. If you have their phone number, shoot an SMS encouraging them to check out your latest email. Moreover, it will give them an opportunity to change their email address.
Avoid purchasing email lists
Purchased lists can contain a lot of invalid or disposable addresses, plus the existing recipients did not actively consent to receiving your marketing emails. You are not only getting a low-quality list, but also violating regulations like the GDPR, the CCPA, and the CAN-SPAM Act.
The fines for these transgressions can be pretty hefty. For example, under the CAN-SPAM Act, each separate email is subject to penalties of up to $53,088.
To avoid legal repercussions, collect emails yourself using embedded or pop-up forms and use double opt-in.
Final thoughts
Your email might not reach the subscriber for various reasons, including their email address being invalid. The most common causes are typos, deleted accounts, and the use of disposable addresses by users.
Invalid emails are a waste of marketing budgets, so make sure to get rid of them before sending your campaign. Once you’re ready, create and blast your emails using Selzy!
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