When it’s done right, cold emailing is an effective strategy for reaching new prospective customers and growing your business.
The most engaging and successful cold emails are well-written and personalized, with an attention-grabbing subject line and a clear call to action. They provide something of value to the recipient, whether it’s a promotional discount, an offer for a free consultation, or a sneak peek of your newest product.
But even if you get all of that right, your campaign could still fail if you send to invalid or out-of-use email addresses.
According to data from QuickMail, the average bounce rate for cold emails is about 7.5%. (Bounce rate is the percentage of emails that are returned to the sender because they could not be delivered to the intended recipient.)
Are you seeing similar bounce rates in your own campaigns? If so, that means some of your emails are not reaching your audience. And those wasted opportunities hurt.
The good news is, you can easily improve your email deliverability. All you have to do is verify your contacts’ email addresses before sending your next cold email campaign.
In this blog post, you’ll find the best techniques for verifying email addresses and boosting deliverability. Before you know it, you’ll have that bounce rate down to zero!
Jump right to:
What is Email Verification?
Email verification is the process of checking an email address to confirm whether or not it is authentic, active, able to receive mail, properly formatted, and connected to a real person.
Why Verify Email Addresses?
Email verification is a crucial step in sending out cold emails, especially when working as a B2B sales representative. Verifying email addresses can prevent bounces, boost deliverability, improve overall campaign performance, and allow you to maintain an accurate and up-to-date contact database.
Avoid Email Bounces
Email verification ensures that your emails are reaching real inboxes and not bouncing. And you definitely don’t want bounces—not only does bounce rate have a direct negative impact on campaign performance, but too many bounces will also hurt the domain quality of your email account.
By verifying your contacts’ email addresses, you greatly improve the chances of your cold emails reaching the correct inbox and getting opened, read, and clicked.
Establish a Positive Sender Reputation
Your sender reputation, and thus your deliverability, will take a serious hit if you send emails to too many invalid addresses. Your email server or internet service provider (ISP) might even flag you as spam or temporarily suspend your account. Yikes! Yet another reason why verifying email addresses is extremely important.
Get Effective Campaign Results
You put a lot of effort into building your email campaigns—writing the content, determining the best send times, and setting up the automation. So don’t forget the important step of validating your email list. Otherwise, all of your hard work will go to waste.
Campaign performance improves when every email reaches a verified inbox. The more emails that reach the intended recipients, the higher the open and clickthrough rates.
Maintain an Up-To-Date Email List
Don’t let your contact database get stale. By making email verification a regular part of your database maintenance process, you can ensure that every contact in your list has an accurate and up-to-date email address.
How to Verify Leads When Cold Emailing
Let's look at several ways to verify leads, including manual and automated tactics.
Manual Email Verification Techniques
If you only have a handful of email addresses to verify, it might be easiest to do a manual check of each address. Here are three easy techniques:
Check for Syntax Errors
Sometimes the problem with an email address is a simple typo. Before sending out cold emails to a contact list, check each address to ensure the syntax is correct. Every email address has three components: the unique identifier, '@', and the domain name. If these three are correct, you’re good to go!
Search through DNS
To make sure you have the correct domain name for an email address, you can run it through a DNS lookup tool like MX Lookup. This tool will also let you know if the domain has been blocklisted (so it’s worth running a check on your own domain, too).
Send through a Test Account
Another way to verify an address is to send the person an email through a test account. If the email makes it through without bouncing, you know the address is correct!
Your test account should have a different domain name from your primary sender account. That way, if any of your test emails bounce, you won’t get your primary account flagged as spam.
Automated Email Verification Techniques
Manual verification is fine for a few emails, but once you’re dealing with hundreds of contacts, automated email verification is the way to go.
Email Verification Services
There are a plethora of services available for automated email verification. These services enable bulk upload and check the validity of email addresses through multiple methods, including syntax validation, domain validation, and mailbox existence. Additional services can include spam trap detection and disposable email address detection. Popular services are NeverBounce and BulkEmailChecker.
API-Integrated Email Verification
To make it even more hands-free, choose a service that enables you to integrate email verification into your existing CRM or sales automation platform. An API integration lets you set up real-time verification of email addresses as they are entered into your system by users or by automated processes (such as form submissions).
Best Practices to Boost Cold Email Deliverability
Cold email campaigns can be an effective way to expand your reach and gain new customers—as long as they actually make it to the inboxes. To ensure the deliverability of your cold emails, be sure to follow these best practices.
Start With Pre-Validated Contacts & Leads
Set yourself up for success from the very start with a high-quality email list. The most efficient way to obtain an email list is to buy one from a reputable B2B data provider like Nimbler. With Nimbler, you can identify your ideal contacts and download a massive email list that’s guaranteed to be 100% valid.
Add Email Verification to Web Forms
In addition to purchased email lists, you might also have some automated lead generation systems running. Generating leads through sign-up forms, webinars, and content downloads is another great way to obtain emails. However, to guarantee that these users are providing accurate information, be sure to add an email verification integration to your automated systems. This way, you won’t end up with a bunch of phony or misspelled email addresses.
Update Your Email List
Have you been sending cold emails to the same database for years? If so, you might have quite a few outdated contacts that need to be cleared out. Run your email list through an email verification service to weed out invalid emails and obtain updated contact information for your target accounts.
By following these best practices to ensure an accurate and up-to-date email list, you will avoid bounces and spam traps, boosting your deliverability.
How Will You Choose To Validate Your Emails?
Now that you understand the importance of validating email addresses and the different techniques for doing so, what’s your next step?
Will you opt for the manual method? (It’s not a bad idea, especially for those high-value accounts.)
Or are you operating at scale, with a massive email list that needs to be verified in as little time as possible? In that case, you need a powerful, automated verification service—like Nimbler.
Build Pre-Validated Email Lists with Nimbler
Nimbler is an all-in-one prospecting and sales automation platform. Powered by AI, Nimbler enables sales teams and marketers to:
Reach 120M+ high-quality B2B contacts
Automate prospecting with AI Sales Assistant
Build real-time verified email lists (that won’t bounce!)
Validate and enrich emails via API integration
Launch autonomous, AI-powered cold email campaigns
Ready to give Nimbler a try? Get started for free!
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