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Suggest: Mailing list cleaning & verify email IDs
Hi all,
In one of the ongoing projects we have a 1.5 million user's subscriber list.
We are going in for double opt-in sign up, but right now the sign up is single opt-in where someone can enter his email ID to become a member. Problem is -- people for fun sometiumes use email ID's like [email protected] which is an undeliverable email ID. This bloats our email list alot and increases our BounceRate.
Can you suggest what we can do to CLEAN up out mailing list ? and Verify all email IDs to be Valid and Deliverable ?
I’ve contacted some third party Email address verification services and here is their price point for verifying 1.5 Million Email IDs.
BriteVerify = $7500
Data Validation = $2250
Kickbox = $2000
xverify = 2200
I seek your kind suggestions to what lower cost alternatives we have for this task.
Comments
You can probably cut heaps out of your list with a simple PHP script that queries the mail server and checks if the address is deliverable. Some mail servers won't respond properly to this but enough will to give you a better bounce rate.
You could also do some more things like checking if the domain is registered and if it has MX records.
If you want I can do this for you and customize a script that will work with other providers that do not respond correctly to the above. Please send me a PM if you would like to discuss it.
Make a small script that uses SMTP's VRFY command.
So, when someone subscribes, you first connect to the MX in charge and VRFY the entered email address. If - and only if - the address is OK, you enter it into the DB.
For the one time big checking/cleaning job of 1.5 Mio email addresses I could offer that as a service for considerably less than the offers you mentioned above.
Such set for a clean start you can use the script you could make along the lines drawn above. In case you'd order me to clean your 1.5 Mio EAs, I'd throw it in with the package.
Double opt in is the only way to go these days. People will gladly enter a valid email that isn't theirs, for whatever reason. I see it every day. It risks your emails being marked as spam. Spam and malicious activity are certainly not on the decline. Good for you for improving your standards. As an email provider I thank you
That still doesn't mean that it's ok and why not just use double opt in if you're going to go to all the trouble?
Kindly note that my point wasn't single or double opt-in but rather what the OP had asked, i.e. checking email addresses.
Yes, my point was that just your method will not actually check that the email is valid. In some cases it will, in some it will not.
I clearly stated that my approach is to check on a technical level. Evidently I can't check, whether Joe enters Petes email address, nor can anyone without sending a confirmation mail, which again might be considered spam.
I'm afraid you're too focused only on the anti-spam and consumer protection and whatnot. But there is also a senders perspective, which is what my point was about.
If that makes you feel happier: I personally dislike all kinds of spamming and I would not offer any help or work for spamming.
But this request of @mehargags seems to be about cleaning existing addresses and verifying new addresses. And that's a valid concern.
@bsdguy I'm not even talking about spamming... I was just pointing out that some mail servers will not correctly respond to your method to prevent this type of thing.
Double opt in is required for any legitimate mailing list. I think it's surprising that any hosting provider lets you send so many emails without double optin.
@trewq is right about SMTP servers not helping spammers verify addresses like this. I believe all the top free email hosting providers implement this.
Oh, well, there's more methods to check the adresses. It's, however, evidently preferable to first try a check that doesn't actually send an email to the user. And the relevant RFC provides a clean and correct way to do that.
If anyone feels like criticising me for a) sticking to the RFC and b) trying to avoid sending an email: Sorry, I couldn't care less.
And yes, double opt-in plus an easy way out is the correct approach. May be it will be used in that case here. But if it wasn't used, would I then be supposed to hate and nuke that guy or would it not be more reasonable to support him in cleaning up?
Sorry, I'm an engineer, not a priest or a psychiatrist. At least cleaning up something unpleasant is something that I do support.
No ones criticizing it's just discussion
I feel so relaxed on your responses, thats why I love this forum!
@trewq, check your PM
@bsdguy, Yes sure... lets talk further for this.
@Jar... Yes I do acknowledge dbl-optin is the way to go... getting it implemented with the Devs. Honoured to have your Thumbs up --!
I understand the email ID verification doesn't work all the times... and it'd be just too much to do other than implementing a simple double opt-in to keep the notorious sign-ups sided.
so My major challenge is to get my current mailing list cleaned... as much as accurately possible.
Any more thoughts are duly welcome...
Can you not just send a newsletter with an offer and remove anyone who bounces?
Yes you might remove a few legitimate addresses but its fast and cheap and with an offer like 'send this email to a friend for 10% off each' you might even end up with more subscribers and sales.
Crap. Someone let a spammer through. Anyone know how to perform an exorcism?
Ive never had a business / site that emails people so maybe my opinion is skewed. I dont mind getting emails when they have a decent offer in them, i just forward them to one of my alternate domains (Hosted with you infact, thanks), too many of them though is obviously spam.
Something like this is too much. I shouldn't have to deal with 7 emails when I want to pay you less than $10
Maybe you can ask your email marketing provider if it's possible to send email verification (people just need to click a link to confirm that they want to receive your emails) to those who are already in your mailing list.
I know a cheaper service (https://proofy.io/) for your purposes, recently I found on betaliste price of 1125 $
I agree with you. I have been using proofy.io for about a year now and I would recommend their service. They’re really nice people to work with and seem to care about their customers.