What is a Valid Email Address Format?
Email marketing is one of the strongest ways to connect with your target audience and convert them. But to run email marketing campaigns, you need ‘valid’ ✅email addresses.
Why do we say ‘Valid’🤔?
Firstly, it is important to ensure that the email address is correct and actually exists so that you know you are reaching out to a real person.
Secondly, invalid email addresses can ruin your database, resulting in hours of wasted effort and expense.
Secondly, invalid email addresses can ruin your database, resulting in hours of wasted effort and expense.
So let’s dig into what makes a valid email address format and how Clearout can help you validate email address formats.
What is a valid email address format?
First of all, let’s understand what a valid email address contains:
1. The local part or username – Indicates a unique mailbox name, which can consist of any combination of letters, numbers, and 7bit ASCII special characters (more on those later).
In the local part, periods are also acceptable, provided they aren't the first or last character.
2. The symbol – You cannot have an email address without the symbol. It is the connector between the person who owns the email address and the domain.
Including the @ symbol allows your email program to recognize the first half of your address as the username and the second half as the domain name.
3. The domain – Each domain occupies a unique place on the web and is controlled by a particular mailbox provider or association.
It consists of one or more parts separated by a dot. Each part must be no longer than 63 characters and can contain any combination of letters and numbers without having a hyphen as the first or last character.
Hence, an email with all of these elements per the guidelines is a valid email address format.
1. The local part or username – Indicates a unique mailbox name, which can consist of any combination of letters, numbers, and 7bit ASCII special characters (more on those later).
In the local part, periods are also acceptable, provided they aren't the first or last character.
2. The symbol – You cannot have an email address without the symbol. It is the connector between the person who owns the email address and the domain.
Including the @ symbol allows your email program to recognize the first half of your address as the username and the second half as the domain name.
3. The domain – Each domain occupies a unique place on the web and is controlled by a particular mailbox provider or association.
It consists of one or more parts separated by a dot. Each part must be no longer than 63 characters and can contain any combination of letters and numbers without having a hyphen as the first or last character.
Hence, an email with all of these elements per the guidelines is a valid email address format.
Examples of valid email address formats:
Examples of invalid email address formats:
Why Do You Need To Validate Email Addresses?
Such invalid emails entering your system should not be taken lightly as there can be serious consequences of sending out email campaigns to these emails. Wasted resources, high bounce rate, poor ISP rating, and more -- you will end up tarnishing your reputation.
For example, a 10% hard bounce rate in an email marketing campaign causes email provider blockades, resulting in only 44% of emails reaching inboxes. Moreover, fewer emails in the recipient's inbox already affect your results, exacerbated by email provider blockings such as soft and hard bounces.
Therefore, if you don’t want to land in a lot of hot water by sending out emails to invalid email addresses, you need to set up a system to identify, validate, and stop such emails from degrading your database.
For example, a 10% hard bounce rate in an email marketing campaign causes email provider blockades, resulting in only 44% of emails reaching inboxes. Moreover, fewer emails in the recipient's inbox already affect your results, exacerbated by email provider blockings such as soft and hard bounces.
Therefore, if you don’t want to land in a lot of hot water by sending out emails to invalid email addresses, you need to set up a system to identify, validate, and stop such emails from degrading your database.
How to validate an email address with Clearout?
As mentioned, an invalid email address can cause a host of troubles for your organization.
And an invalid address isn’t just due to invalid syntax. Let’s have a look at some ways in which you can end up with invalid email addresses.
Invalid syntax
Typo while entering the email address
Mailbox no longer exists
A user intentionally provided an invalid email address
Bad, spammy data collected from a third party or untrusted sources
And an invalid address isn’t just due to invalid syntax. Let’s have a look at some ways in which you can end up with invalid email addresses.
So how do you ensure you do not fall prey to these scenarios and only collect emails that both exist and benefit your company?
Clearout not only validates an email syntax but also verifies if the email address is real, exists, and is not spammy. Here’s how:
Clearout not only validates an email syntax but also verifies if the email address is real, exists, and is not spammy. Here’s how:
Real-time verification to keep out invalid entries:
With Clearout’s real-time email verification, you can ensure that you capture only valid email addresses, leading to a clean and reliable database. There are multiple ways– from a custom API to a JavaScript widget – to connect your landing pages, forms, apps, and more to Clearout.
Bulk Verification for maintaining a healthy database:
Moreover, you can verify millions of emails already existing in your database/ CRM using Clearout’s bulk email verification. You can either connect your tools with an API, native integration, Zapier, Make, etc., or upload your list to Clearout for bulk validation.
With Clearout, you can be confident in sending out email campaigns without worrying about bounces and a bad reputation!
Email Validation FAQ
What is the syntax of a valid email address?
The syntax of a valid email address is [email protected], where the local part may be up to 64 octets long, and the domain may have a maximum of 255 octets.
What is Email Validation?
Email validation is the process of determining the deliverability and validity of an email address. It entails employing various methods, such as syntax checking, typo checking, SMTP verification, and so on. It makes it simple to detect and eliminate bogus email addresses. As a result, you can keep your mailing list clean by including only valid email addresses.
How Do You Set Up Email Validation?
Email validation can be easily set up using Clearout’s API, integrations, widget, and plugins. It makes it simple to validate email addresses. All you need to do is an API key, embed it and start validating email addresses.
How do I validate an email address without sending an email?
The extra step to verify an email address before sending out your email campaign will drastically improve deliverability and reduce email bounces and spam complaints. Some ways to validate an email address without sending an email are– email validation tools, email finder tools, using databases like Apollo, Zoominfo, etc.