How to Verify Emails for Cold Email (Full Guide)

If you’re planning on sending cold emails, you’ve got to know that sending them to unverified emails is super risky. 

If an email bounces, your future emails could end up in the spam folder, which is a nightmare. 

So, let’s make sure every email you send is verified. I’m going to cover how verifying emails works, the best tools to use, and my personal favorites. Let’s dive in!

Why Do You Need to Verify Emails?

Most cold email discovery tools guess email patterns instead of knowing the actual email addresses. 

This means you don’t actually know if the email is real. The only way to know for sure is by verifying that email.

Why Are Email Bounces Bad?

Have you ever sent a bunch of emails and started getting a lot of bounces? Google and Microsoft see that as a sign that you might be spamming. 

If your bounce rate goes over 2-3%, they might start sending your emails to spam. Fewer people see your emails, and that means fewer replies. 

To avoid this, always verify your emails before hitting send.

How Does Email Verification Work?

Email verification works by pinging an email server to get a response. 

Sometimes, it even checks if the domain has MX records, which show if the domain can receive emails. It might even check if the domain has a website. 

Not every verification tool uses all these methods, but the best ones use multiple methods.

For example, LeadLoft checks:

• MX Records
• Website Checks
• SMTP Server Pinging
• And some secret methods we can’t share! 😉

Just make sure you’re using a reliable email verification tool.

How to Verify Cold Emails

Here are all the methods you can use to verify emails. 

Free Email Verification Tools 

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You can actually verify emails for free by using email verification tools like Verifalia. This is only useful for verifying a single email here or there however. 

If you want to verify automatically, you’ll need automated email verification tools. 

Email Search + Verification

There are many options for verifying emails. If you’re using a tool like LeadLoft, every time you save and find a new email, it’s verified in real-time. 

This ensures every email you find is verified and added to your CRM instantly. This is opposed to other tools that find emails and leave the task of email verification up to you to figure out.

Bulk Verification

If you have a newsletter and want to verify all the emails in your database, use a tool like NeverBounce.

It’s super affordable and great for verifying massive lists of emails, like a newsletter database.

BounceShield by LeadLoft 

Another option is using LeadLoft’s BounceShield email verification feature. You can add this BounceShield step as the first step in your playbook, ensuring every email is verified from the start of your outreach.

BounceShield is unique in this case too because it can verify emails that are usually unverifiable. LeadLoft has a unique partner sharing this data, allowing you to verify emails automatically. 

For most companies, about 40% of their emails are unverifiable. This means 40% of your cold emails might not be getting contacted. LeadLoft helps you verify these emails, updating their status to verified or invalid after the process.

I recommend using BounceShield for new outreach or when contacting old or stale data, like a new year follow-up or reaching out to contacts you haven’t spoken to in a while. This ensures you’re not contacting bad emails and getting high bounce rates.

Wrapping Up

Cold emailing is all about landing in the primary inbox. To do this, you need to avoid high bounce rates by only contacting verified emails. 

If you have questions about how to verify emails or want to learn more about LeadLoft, feel free to book a time with our team. We’re always here to help!