Ever heard of a ‘catch-all’, ‘accept-all’, or a ‘risky’ email?
A catch-all email address is an account that receives emails, even when you send them to a non-existing email address.
These servers are set up, so no email goes missing.
It’s important to mention that catch-all addresses are not invalid email addresses. Moreover, they will most often not make you land in the spam folder.
But what should we do with a catch-all email address? Should we just ignore it and use the email addresses that are marked as valid? Or should we find a way to separate a truly risky email account from a valid one?
Especially when you want to reach out to larger companies (that are not start-ups), we strongly suggest: Validate catch-all emails, as they can increase your pipeline considerably.
To substantiate the point, we assessed several data points and ran our own tests. We recognized that the average SMTP email validation tool marks around 21% of the email list belonging to ‘catch-all account‘.
These 21% are often ignored and just sorted out. But think about it like that: You are now shrinking your sales pipeline by 21%. This means you accept that these 21% qualified prospects (with a catch-all address) will never become potential customers.
Why catch-all is (not) used
There are several reasons why a company sets up a catch-all email address. Here are a few of them to help you understand why a company would or would not use a catch-all inbox in the first place.
Advantages of catch-all inboxes
1) Only one inbox
With a catch-all address, there is only one big mailbox where all those emails land. This makes it easier for them to manage their emails without jumping between various inboxes. Everything is bundled in a single place.
2) No email gets lost
Everyone has experienced this at least once: writing an email on the go without paying too much attention. And oops: You sent the email to’ helk@company.com’ instead of’ help@company.com’. Normally, you would receive an ‘undeliverable’ email back. But with catch-all inboxes, your email mostly goes through and finds its way.
3) Better domain reputation
Using catch-all email addresses can help maintain a company’s domain’s reputation. Emails sent to their domain usually don’t bounce back due to an incorrect address, reducing the risk of their domain being marked as unreliable or unresponsive.
Disadvantages of catch-all inboxes
1) Important vs Spam?
As thousands of emails arrive in a single inbox, differentiating between the (ir-)relevant ones can be hard. Sorting out the bad takes time and is tiresome. Even advanced techniques such as filtering can sometimes be inaccurate – the worry might persist: “Was there an important enquiry filtered out?”
2) Spam breeding ground
As discussed in the article, many spammers exploit the catch-all advantages. They bulk send unsolicited emails, ransomware, and phishing attempts to as many domains as possible, quickly transforming an inbox into a dangerous minefield.
3) Occasional bounce
Although it does not happen frequently, the chance of emails sent to this domain bouncing back persists. However, as this has happened more often lately, the probability of domain reputation damage increases.