Email Validation: What Is It?

Email validations make sure that email addresses exist. The email address list you use will be clean, thereby protecting your IP/domain reputation and improving your deliverability. As such, there is no need to concern yourself with temporary addresses or ones that are role-based (such as “info@email.com”). Also, the email budget you have won’t be wasted on any phony contacts.

Each address that is verified will give you one of the following results: “Unknown,” “Risky,” “Undeliverable,” or “Deliverable.” These results are defined as follows:

Unknown – a result will turn up as “Unknown” when it doesn’t receive any response from a mail server associated with the recipient. This tends to happen if a destination server is temporarily unavailable or too slow. In some instances, retrying the requests after approximately five minutes can return either an invalid or valid response. Addresses that are Unknown do not count against a verification balance.

Risky – “Risky” results imply that an address has a quality issue, one that could result in either low engagement or a bounce. Use caution if you are sending a message to an address considered Risky. Some addresses considered to be Risky include ones that are “Disposable,” “Role,” and “Accept All.”

Undeliverable – when a result is “Undeliverable,” an email address either doesn’t exist or isn’t syntactically correct (and therefore doesn’t exist).

Deliverable – when a result is “Deliverable,” the mail server of the recipient confirms that a recipient exists.