Email verification
Email verification is checking that an address exists and can receive mail before you send to it, so a message to a dead address never becomes a bounce against your domain.
Also called Email validation.
Email verification is checking whether an address can actually receive mail before you send anything to it. It matters because bounces are one of the fastest ways to damage a sending domain, and every bounce is avoidable: the address either exists or it does not, and that is knowable in advance.
Verification happens in layers, cheapest first. Syntax checking catches malformed addresses. Domain checks confirm the domain resolves and publishes MX records, which rules out typos and dead companies. An SMTP check opens a connection to the receiving server and asks whether the mailbox exists without sending anything, which is the layer that catches a real domain with no such person. Most services combine these and return a confidence rather than a yes.
Two things worth knowing. Some providers accept mail for every address and bounce it later, which makes an SMTP check inconclusive; these come back as "accept-all" and are a judgement call rather than a verified address. And verification decays: people leave jobs, so an address verified six months ago is not verified now. Lists have a shelf life measured in months.
In practice
- A domain with no MX record, ruled out before sending.
- An address at a real company where the person left, caught by an SMTP check.
- An accept-all domain that returns inconclusive, where sending is a risk you take knowingly.
Questions
Is verification worth the cost?
Almost always, because the alternative is priced in reputation rather than money. Verification costs a fraction of a cent per address; a bounce rate above a few percent costs inbox placement for every future send from that domain, and recovery takes weeks. The arithmetic favours verifying even quite large lists.
Can verification tell me if someone still works somewhere?
Only indirectly. An SMTP check tells you whether the mailbox exists, and many companies keep a departed employee's address alive as a forward, so it can pass for someone who left months ago. Job-change signals come from elsewhere, usually from professional profiles. Verification protects your domain; it does not tell you the person is still the right person.
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