Email verification - how it works

It is a sophisticated process of checking if the email addresses are deliverable, without sending an actual email to their inboxes.


Why you need it

There are several reasons why email verification is absolutely needed:

1. It protects your sender reputation

2. It secures deliverability

3. It saves you time and energy

Deliverable, catch-all, undeliverable?

Deliverable

Safe to send to? Yes.

A 'Valid' status means the email address exists, is active, and can receive emails. It’s like confirming that the mailbox at the given address is ready and waiting for mail.

Catch-all

Safe to send to? Depends.

A catch-all email address is an account that receives emails, even when you send to a non-existing email address (so no matter what you write before the '@', it will be received by the domain).

These servers are set up so no email goes missing.

The best thing: BetterContact is the only enrichment platform that offers real-time catch-all verification. With a proprietary algorithm we look for a 'digital handshake' with the firewall to identify the catch-all addresses where you can safely send emails to.

If you want to know more about them, we wrote a full blog article about them.

Undeliverable

Safe to send to? No.

When an email's verification status is 'Undeliverable', this email does not exist. There are several reasons for that, including the domain no longer exists, the person at that company left/never existed etc.