Email Verification

00:00 Hello everybody, my name is Drew and today we're going to be talking about email verification. So email verification is a tool that is built into ByteCloud's enterprise level subscriptions and what this does is it helps you to confirm whether an email address is valid and likely deliverable without actually 00:30 having to send to them. And this is something that is generally done after you upload a list of contacts into your account. 00:40 You can verify that contact list before sending to it and this helps protect your sender reputation and we generally consider this to be a best practice of mass sending. 00:56 And let's just run through a little bit of what it is and what it is not. We're going to do that first and then I'm show you how you can do this in the account. 01:09 So, first of all, what it is not is it's not sending a test email. Sending an email is actually in a way the best verification because you will definitely identify it will bounce or deliver and if it bounces it will come back and our system will not send you that email address again going forward unless 01:30 you override it. So, email verification is also not a guarantee that that inbox is going to accept that email. Definitely not a guarantee that that inbox is monitored or used or of course somebody will reply to it, to your email that is. 01:54 So what email verification is, is it, there are a bunch of behind the scenes tests that take place to, towards every single email that is in your contact list. 02:08 It validates the syntax of the email, so there's certain known typos and formatting errors that it'll check for. It's going to check that that domain has the right records to actually accept email in the first place. 02:26 If it does, it will then ping that email server and basically simulate a send and just basically ask it hey if I were to send you an email would you accept it and then our system updates those emails accordingly and the goal is to help prevent bounces because you can indeed prevent a whole bunch of bounces 02:54 by running those tests that I just ran through. And so why does the email verification matter? First of all, it mitigates bounces, and that helps protect your sender reputation, in other words, helps prevent you from being labeled as a source of spam. 03:14 And then, of course, your account, as an editor, as an user, has 10,000 email verifications per month included, which really is just about all that anybody ever really needs. 03:30 So, if you're an enterprise user, we definitely encourage you to make the full use of this feature and help, uhm, help ensure that your emails are deliverable. 03:41 So, uh, it's actually quite easy to do this, uh, in our account. Oh, and by way too if you're not an enterprise user this is still something that you can do with third parties and we definitely encourage you to do it if it doesn't make sense for you to upgrade to enterprise. 04:00 So, uh, yeah, this is definitely not unique to us. It's just more convenient to do it in ByteCloud. So, here we go, without further ado. 04:13 You first, uh, this is all done, like I said, from your contact list. So, head to the contacts button in that left sidebar and then go to contact lists. 04:25 This is done per list, so let's take a look at a list that we would want to do this with. 04:33 So you just hover over the contact list that you want to verify, and then go ahead over to the right side of that row where it says more, the three dots. 04:45 Click on more. You'll see a whole bunch of options that open up, including, second from the top, verify emails. And, you get a whole breakdown in this pop-up that, uh, that shows up. 05:03 So, first First of all, you'll see that the estimated time to do this is about 5-10 minutes, so it does not happen instantly, and you'll get an in-app notification when it is done. 05:18 You will see a breakdown of your account limits. Like I said, $10,000 per account per month. So, you'll see a count of how many you've done, and a count of how many will be verified if you verify right now. 05:38 So, see if you have the capacity for this. You'll then see a breakdown of your list. and so you're able to verify a contact once every six months. 05:53 There's actually no reason to verify contacts more frequently than that because if you've already verified them generally speaking, there's a very low possibility of that inbox being deleted in the next six months. 06:11 So, you'll see a breakdown of verified. So, in other words, contacts that have been verified in the last six months, they are considered to be safe. 06:20 You will see stale as an option right here. So, what that means is that they were verified before, but it is more than six months ago they were verified, so they are due for another verification. 06:38 And then you'll see new, and that's it. New are going to be contacts that have been never verified by our system, and it's the stale and new that will be verified if you verify it right now. 06:51 Um, now, you'll see right here there's a, um, a checkbox next to undeliverable, which is going to, um, like, like, which is always going to be checked. 07:05 And what that means is that these are going to be, You're choosing what contacts are going to be filtered out from your list, and you of course always want the undeliverable contacts to be verified. 07:20 Or to be filtered out. But you have a choice to also filter out risky contacts. And as you can see right here, those are going to be accept all and disposable email addresses. 07:36 Disposable email addresses you definitely don't want to, to send to since those are kind of throw away. But accept all, uh, these are a little bit more nuanced. 07:49 And what an accept all inboxes is basically it's a somewhat unverifiable entity. It's a, uh, an inbox or like a, really like a domain that will accept any email that is sent to it. 08:10 So, uh, when, when our verifier pings them and says, hey, would you accept an email that is sent here? It will always respond back, yes. 08:22 However, if there is no inbox associated with that, that specific email address that you send to them, you'll still get a soft bounce, and so it'll still ding your reputation. 08:35 And so basically there's no right answer whether or not you should filter out the risky. But as some guidelines, I would say that if you have a low tolerance for, uhm, for bounces and your list is not, you know, each contact, each specific contact on that list isn't really absolutely mission critical 09:01 , then I would recommend filtering out the risky. You'll just save the most high quality, the most verified contacts on your list. 09:10 And if you have a list where maybe it's a little bit of a higher quality, lower quantity list, where you really do actually want to value sending each email to that list, uhm, maybe then, and you have a strong reputation for your domain, then it might be worthwhile to leave on those risky, uh, emails 09:36 in that list knowing that you might receive some bounces in that first send that you send to this list. So, all you have to do then is click verify, and you will, in a few minutes later, receive an in-app notification, and you'll also know, that your, that your list is verified when you see a shield 10:06 icon next to the list, and also those contact records will have shield icons next to them, I believe in the row and also on the contact record, and, uh, that's how you know that these have been, uh, have been verified. 10:22 And so, just some best practices to keep in mind here. Just know that email verification, it, it mitigates your risk of bounces. 10:34 It should, it'll always like reduce the bounces that you might've otherwise gotten, but just know. That email verification is not a, uh, it's not infallible. 10:45 You very well might still get a bounce or two, uhm, so it's not perfect, but it is a best practice, most definitely, to verify a contact list before you send to it, especially those older contact lists, which can be like, just even like a couple of years is a long time in, uh, in the world of data. 11:07 So verification cannot fix a poor quality list. Remember quality in equals quality out and just use it as a part of your overall strategy towards send your reputation. 11:20 Make sure your DNS is squared away, uh, and that you are sending messages to people that they actually want to, uh, that they want to receive. 11:28 Uhm, so yeah, I hope that this answers any of your questions. By all means, reach out to us if we can help further. 11:38 Thank you so much.