Email lists are like dirty laundry – after a certain amount of time, they need to be cleaned.

But it’s not just about maintaining the hygiene of your data. Bad email addresses can deteriorate your email deliverability and make it nearly impossible for your message to reach a potential lead’s inbox.

So how do you know if your email address list needs verification services? Well, like laundry, it’s pretty easy to identify. The two key metrics you need to worry about are bounce rate and click-through rate.

1. Bounce Rate

A high bounce rate can compromise even the best email campaigns. Take action to reduce bounce-backs by ensuring your rate never exceeds 20%. Older or stale lists can contribute to high bounces.

The more bad addresses you have on your email list, the higher your bounce rate, which spam filters associate with behavioral patterns often linked to spammers. This will increase your spam sender score and mitigate the chances of your emails reaching your prospects’ inboxes.

If you think your list is bad, reach out to an email address verification service to remove bad addresses, malformed emails, moles, honeypots or keys. By actively monitoring your bounce rate, you can prevent spam filters from marking your email message as junk.

2. Click-through Rate

Focus email campaigns to better connect with clients. And carefully craft your subject lines to cut through the clutter and boost open rates. Then write content your readers want to receive to increase click-through rate.

However, if you notice a dramatic difference between the clickthrough rate found in your email sender dashboard versus your Google Analytics account, chances are you’re not reaching the inbox.

The high spikes in your email sending platform are false and are associated with spam filters clicking on the links found in your campaign. Again, a bad email list may be the cause of this. Work with a company that specializes in email address verification to improve results.

What are some of the email address verification criteria?

Acquiring an email list from a reputable data provider can expand your marketing reach. But they have to be good lists. That means that email address verification is the critical first step before you send a campaign to them.

Although there are many data providers (and many of them are partners of Clickback) that perform exhaustive email address verifications before selling lists, it’s still critical that whatever system you use for sending email campaigns continually conducts its own list validation activities. Clickback sets the standard for email address verification to ensure your email lists are as effective as possible. In fact, we:

• Test every email address in your list to verify validity
• Remove all known bad email addresses.
• Removes or flags all known or potential spam trap email addresses

Broaden Your Reach

While many marketing automation platforms and email service providers make the same claim about email address verification services, it can be misleading, since they only work with warm, opted-in lists— meaning … they only verify names that have already been verified. In fact, those systems won’t even let you send to cold or stale lists.

Only Clickback and its Email Lead Generation (ELG) platform does that: it was made for it. And we ensure that your lists stay valid, by continually performing health and efficiency tests on a regular basis. And it does more than verify lists. Clickback’s ELG software fully integrates with your mainstream marketing solutions and processes.

Want to learn how we can help your email addresses stay fresh with good list hygiene and verification? Sign up for a software demo.