How to verify an email list

Verifying a contact list is a good practice that allows us to know which emails exist and which do not. This helps us to improve our deliverability, by having a clean list to send emails to, we prevent our newsletters from ending up in spam. In addition, it allows us to have more accurate statistics of openings and clicks of our mailings since we will contact only those users whose email exists.

In this article we explain how to:

1. Find out how much it costs to validate a mailing list
2. Verify a single email address
3. Verify an existing contact list in Acrelia
4. Verify a mailing list by importing a file
5. View the results of a verification
6. Understand the results of a verification
7. Download the results of an email verification
8. Add valid emails to an Acrelia list
9. Distributing verification credits between sub-accounts

How much does it cost to validate an email list?

Most email verification providers force you to buy verification packs, which means that most of the time you have to buy more verifications than you really need. With Acrelia on the other hand, you only pay for the actual emails you are going to validate.

Use our calculator to find out our verification prices.

Verify emails: First steps

To verify email addresses from Acrelia, log in to your account and if you don't have one yet, sign up.

Go to the menu option "Verify emails", you will see the following screen:

In it you can choose between two options:

• Existing contact list: Allows you to choose one of the contact lists you already have in Acrelia and verify it.
• Import a file: You can upload a file in Excel format (csv) with the email addresses you want to verify.

Verify a single email address

If you only want to verify one email, you have the option of verifying it manually for that single email. To do this, simply go to the "Verify emails" section of the main menu, copy the email in the box marked "Enter email to verify" and click on the "Verify email" button.

The system will show you if it is a valid email address or not, if it is an email from a free provider (e.g. gmail, hotmail, yahoo...) or a professional one, and it will tell you if that address is a spam trap, a temporary address, a generic address or "Accept all".

How to verify an Acrelia contact list

Click on the option "Existing contact list" in the "Verify emails" section.

Choose the list you want to verify.

Optionally you can choose to receive a notification when the validation of your contacts is finished. To do this, choose "Yes" in the "Notify me by email" option. If you click "Yes", enter the email address where you want to be notified.

Finally, click the "Next" button.

Before starting with the process, you will see the details of the number of emails to be verified and their cost, where:

• Contacts: indicates the number of emails you have requested to verify.
• To validate: indicates the actual number of emails to be verified. When you verify a list that already exists in Acrelia, the number of "Contacts" and "To be validated" always matches.
• Available credits: indicates if you have previously purchased credits that you can use in the verification. One credit is equivalent to one email verification.
• Credits to be spent: indicates the credits you need to verify your list.
• Minimum purchase: in Acrelia the minimum purchase is 1.000 credits. If you are going to verify a higher number of emails you will pay exactly for the number of verifications to be done. If you are going to verify a number of emails lower than 1.000, you will pay for 1.000 verifications and the credits you do not spend can be used in future verifications.
• Total VAT excl: Indicates the cost of the verification, taxes not included. If you have credits available, you will only be charged the difference.

If you have not yet entered your billing and credit card details, you will need to fill them in in the next step. If you have already entered them, you only need to confirm your purchase. Finally, we will connect you to your bank's payment gateway so that you can pay for the service.

How to verify an email list by importing a file

Click on the "Import a file" option in the "Verify emails" section.

Then, indicate the file to verify.

In the import options you can indicate if the first row of your file has field names by clicking on "Yes". If your file only contains emails, leave the option "No" selected.

Optionally you can receive a notification when the validation of your contacts has finished. To do this, choose "Yes" in the "Notify me by email" option. If you click "Yes", enter the email address where you want to be notified.

Finally, click the "Next" button.

You will then see the details of the number of emails to be verified and their cost.

How to view the results of a verification

The results of your email validations can be viewed on the "Verification details" section available in the "Verify emails" menu option. By clicking on the button with a graph next to each verification, you can check the result.

Understanding the results of email verification

After doing a verification, you have at your disposal a report where you can see the result of the validation that has been done.

At the top you can see three coloured boxes where:

• Amount: indicates the number of verified emails.
• Valid: are the emails that exist and therefore you can safely use in your next email marketing campaigns.
• Invalid: are the emails that do not exist or that you cannot be sure that they exist.

Invalid emails are classified as follows:

• Invalid: These are the addresses to which you should not send emails, because they do not exist.
• Accept all: these are emails that may or may not be valid. What does this mean? There are email providers that accept emails to any recipient, whether they exist or not, although this is not common. Therefore, if the result is "Accept all" we cannot be sure of the existence of that email address.
• Spam traps: these are email addresses used by Internet Service Providers to identify senders who add email addresses to their lists without the consent of their owners. Having spam traps on your mailing lists is very harmful, so you should remove them from your lists.
• Disposable (Temporary): these are email accounts that disappear after a few days or weeks. It is better not to send to this type of addresses, as their life is limited.
• Role address (Generic address): These are addresses that are not linked to a particular person, such as admin@, support@, contact@.... You should only send emails to these addresses if you really know that it is an email account managed by someone.
• Duplicate: these are addresses that are on your list several times. In Acrelia you only pay unique verifications. That is, if the same email address appears three times, you will only pay for one verification.
• Unknown: These are addresses for which it has not been possible to verify their existence.

Email addresses that are invalid, unknown, accept all, generic or temporary, should be considered as high-risk addresses and it is better not to include them in your email marketing campaigns.

How to download verification results

On the verification report you can download the validation results of your emails. Just click on "Download all", "Download valid" or "Download invalid".

You will get the results in Excel/csv format and it will be very easy for you to filter the emails based on the status returned in the verification.

How to add valid emails to an Acrelia list

If you uploaded a csv file to verify, once the process is finished you have the possibility to automatically import it to an Acrelia list to start sending emails.

Access the verification report and click on the "Import to a list" button.

Follow the steps of the import process.

If you verified an existing list in Acrelia, you don't need to do anything, the system automatically updates the status of the contacts in your list leaving as subscribed only valid emails.

Distributing verification credits between sub-accounts

If you work with several sub-accounts, when you purchase a verification pack, you can distribute the credits and assign the amount you want to each sub-account. To do this, go to "Settings" - "Sub-accounts", click on "Verifications" and then on "Distribute verifications".

On the next screen, to confirm the action, you will have to click on the button "Activate distribute credits between sub-accounts". Once in the management panel, you will be able to see the total credits available and assign the amount you want to each sub-account. As they are spent, the data will be updated automatically.