What is the difference and why are they important for email deliverability?

Create your very own Auto Publish News/Blog Site and Earn Passive Income in Just 4 Easy Steps

Email Marketing is a powerful one, but its effectiveness depends on emails reaching their intended recipients. You may not know it, but there are two critical factors that play a significant role in Email deliverability. They are domain verification and email verification. Although they sound similar, these processes serve different purposes and are both essential for optimizing email deliverability.

Let's explore what domain and email verification are, the differences, and why they are important for email deliverability.

Free resource

Maximizing Deliverability: A Tactical Guide to List Management for Google and Yahoo's Email Policy Update

DOWNLOAD NOW

What is domain verification?

Domain verification confirms that you own the domain you use to send email. It involves proving to your email service provider (ESP) and receiving mail servers that you have legitimate control of the domain. This process is critical to the credibility and reputation of your domain.

This is how domain verification works:

1. DNS records: When you verify your domain, you will typically be asked to add certain Domain Name System (DNS) records to your domain's DNS settings. These records may include TXT, CNAME, or MX records that are used to verify your ownership.
2. SPF, DKIM and DMARC: Domain verification often includes Setting up SPF (Sender Policy Framework), DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail), and DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance) recordsThese protocols help authenticate your emails and prevent spoofing.
3. Verification by ESP: Once the DNS records are added, your ESP will verify these records to confirm that you are the owner of the domain. After successful verification, you can send emails from your domain with increased credibility.

What is email verification?

Email verificationis the process of checking the validity and accuracy of individual email addresses in your mailing list. Email verification is important because it ensures that the email addresses you are sending to are active and able to receive emails.

This is how email verification works:

1. Syntax check: The first step in email verification is to check the syntax of each email address to make sure it follows standard email formatting rules (e.g. username@domain.com).
2. Domain check: The verification process then checks the email address domain to confirm that it exists and has valid mail exchange (MX) records configured to receive email.
3. Mailbox check: The final step is to verify that the corresponding mailbox for the email address exists and is active. This can be done through Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) checks or other methods that verify the mailbox without sending an actual email.

Differences between domain verification and email verification

Although both domain and email verification are important for email marketing, they serve different purposes and involve different processes:

1. Purpose:
   • Domain verification: Ensures that you are the rightful owner of the domain from which you send email.
   • Email verification: This ensures that the email addresses in your mailing list are valid and can receive emails.
2. Scope:
   • Domain verification: This applies to your entire domain and affects all emails sent from that domain.
   • Email verification: This applies to individual email addresses in your mailing list.
3. Proceedings:
   • Domain verification: Includes adding DNS records and configuring SPF, DKIM and DMARC.
   • Email verification: This checks the syntax, domain and mailbox of each email address.

Free resource

Email Deliverability Basics: The Basics of Getting Into the Inbox

DOWNLOAD NOW

Why domain verification is important for email deliverability

Domain verification is critical to maintaining a good reputation as an email senderwhich directly affects the deliverability of your emails. That's why it's important:

1. Creates trust: By verifying your domain, you signal to email service providers and receiving mail servers that you are a legitimate sender. This helps build trust and reduces the likelihood that your Emails are marked as spam.
2. Prevents spoofing: Domain verification protocols such as SPF, DKIM, and DMARC help prevent email spoofing. Email spoofing is when scammers send emails that appear to come from your domain. By preventing spoofing, you protect your brand reputation and reduce the risk of phishing attacks on your recipients.
3. Improves deliverability: Emails from verified domains are more likely to land in the inbox than the spam folderThis is because ISPs (Internet Service Providers) consider verified domains to be more credible and trustworthy.
4. Ensures compliance with regulations: Many email service providers require domain verification when using their services as a compliance measure. This ensures that only legitimate senders can send bulk emails, thereby reducing the overall volume of spam.

Why email verification is important for email deliverability

Email verification is equally important to maintain high deliverability rates and ensure your email marketing campaigns are effective. Here's why it's important:

1. Reduces bounce rate: Email address verification identifies and removes invalid addresses from your mailing list. This reduces the bounce rate and improves your sender reputation, which is a crucial factor for deliverability.
2. Improves engagement: When you send emails to verified, active email addresses, your messages reach real people who are more likely to engage with your content. Higher engagement rates signal to ISPs that your emails are valuable, further improving deliverability.
3. Prevents spam traps: Email verification helps you identify potential spam traps and remove them from your list. Spam traps are email addresses used by ISPs to track down spammers. Sending emails to these addresses can seriously damage your sender reputation.
4. Optimizes campaign performance: Maintaining a clean and verified email list you can get more accurate metrics for your email campaigns, allowing you to make data-driven decisions to optimize your marketing strategies.

Both domain verification and email verification are essential components of a successful email marketing strategy. Domain verification ensures that you are a legitimate sender and builds trust and credibility with ISPs and your recipients. Email verification ensures that your emails are reaching valid and active addresses, reducing bounce rates and increasing engagement. Together, these processes play a critical role in ensuring email deliverability and the success of your email marketing campaigns. By prioritizing both domain and email verification, you can build a solid foundation for reliable email communications.

Sign up for Benchmark Email and use our list cleanup features to keep your email list clean.

Sign up for a free Benchmark email account today!

SIGN UP FOR FREE

Biography of the author:

by Jessica Lunk

Digital Marketing Manager

Create your very own Auto Publish News/Blog Site and Earn Passive Income in Just 4 Easy Steps