As an email manager, you want to maximize sign-up capture at the top of the funnel. But as user friction points are removed—such as email confirmations, deferred opt-ins, and CAPTCHAs—invalid addresses are allowed into your database.
We're excited to announce a solution to this common problem with SendGrid's Email Validation API. Now in beta, this is an intelligent, industry-friendly tool that validates emails before sending them–decreasing bounces and increasing delivery rates to the intended mailbox.
Unintentionally sending email to fake email address is a very common pain point and has negative effects on email deliverability rates. Many times users don’t realize that they are entering invalid emails. After all, haven’t we all made accidental typos when signing up for an account or requesting a resource online?
Some of us have even used one-time or disposable email services to sign up for free trials, knowing that we would not engage long term.
Entering "bad" email addresses is a widespread occurrence, but it can wreak havoc for an email program long-term.
In fact, 8.4% of emails captured on your website are misspelled, fake, or invalid. Sending emails to incorrect email addresses causes them to bounce. These bounces have detrimental effects on your reputation with mailbox providers. A spike in email bounces may cause your email to be placed in the spam folder or it may not be delivered at all.
Through our own internal research, we have discovered that with a bounce rate of 5% or above, deliverability is on average 71%.
But a bounce rate of 2% or below increases the mean deliverability to 91%.
More than that, customers who sign up on your website expect to hear from you. When you think about it, are your customers going to have a positive brand experience after submitting an email error in a sign-up form? Probably not. So when you ensure email address accuracy before you send, you are drastically improving customer experience, as well as potential lifetime ROI.
This real-time API uses machine learning, leveraging Twilio SendGrid’s massive scale, as well as record checks to detect email addresses that are mistyped, inactive, non-existent, disposable, or shared (team@, help@).
Email Validation also checks for:
Proper syntax
DNS record checks (MX/A)
Disposable domains
Shared role or distribution
Suspected bounces
Known hard bounces
Let’s dig into how you can use Email Validation API to optimize your sending program:
Harness the power of machine learning and leverage our massive dataset to accurately validate email addresses. The AI-powered tool also provides data security and protects your customers’ personal data with GDPR compliance.
Implement the API in your lead capture forms to catch accidental typos and provide users with correction suggestions. This will guarantee that recipients get the emails they want from you and provides a better overall customer experience.
View validation results in your UI dashboard, showing you a riskiness score, which is the probability of validity. Use the scores and reasons provided to make informed sending decisions that work for your business.
Maintain data hygiene by only allowing quality email addresses into your database. Reduce the opportunity for spam or fraud emails to enter your email program, while also saving money by storing and sending to only valid email addresses.
Represent yourself as a trusted sender by avoiding the practice of a broken SMTP handshake. SMTP is how servers communicate, so when the broken handshake is used, the email is sent almost to the inbox and then yanked back before being fully delivered. Mailbox providers don’t appreciate this tactic and will respond with inaccurate feedback.
Easily access all validation and sending metrics in your one Twilio SendGrid dashboard. Manage your email address contact list, suppressing invalid addresses directly in the sending source.
The Email Validation API Beta is now LIVE! Create an API Key in your Twilio SendGrid dashboard and check out our documentation to try the tool for free (available only to current Email API Pro and Premier customers).
