Ensuring your client’s email addresses are valid is crucial for your business. It helps you filter out incorrect IDs and spammers, keeping your mailing list accurate. One common method to check email validity is using an API, such as Abstract’s Email Verification and Validation API, which quickly determines if an email address is valid. Here’s a detailed guide on why and how to validate email addresses. Learn how to validate email address format
Checklist for a Valid Email Address
A valid email address consists of four parts:
- Recipient name: Represents an email mailbox belonging to a person, organization, or department. It can have up to 64 characters, including letters (A-Z, a-z), digits (0-9), and special characters (e.g., ! # $ % & ‘ * + – / = ? ^ _ ` { | .).
- @ symbol: Separates the recipient name from the domain name.
- Domain name: Indicates the space on the internet owned by the mailbox provider, such as Gmail or Yahoo Mail. It can be up to 253 characters long, with letters, digits, hyphens (-), and periods (.).
- Top-level domain (TLD): The highest level of the domain name system, like .com, .net, and .org.
Example: In johndoe52@gmail.com:
– Johndoe52: Recipient name
– @: Separator
– gmail: Domain name
– .com: TLD
Acceptable Email Prefix Formats
A valid email address has an email prefix (left of @) and domain (right of @). Both must be correctly formatted.
Invalid email prefixes:
– abc-@mail.com
– abc..def@mail.com
– .abc@mail.com
– abc#def@mail.com
Valid email prefixes:
– abc-d@mail.com
– abc.def@mail.com
– abc@mail.com
– abc_def@mail.com
Acceptable Email Domain Formats
The email domain can include letters, numbers, and dashes. The final part must have at least two characters (e.g., .com, .org, .cc).
Invalid email domains:
– abc.def@mail.c
– abc.def@mail#archive.com
– abc.def@mail
– abc.def@mail..com
Valid email domains:
– abc.def@mail.cc
– abc.def@mail-archive.com
– abc.def@mail.org
– abc.def@mail.com
Regular Expression for Email Validation
A regular expression (regex) can validate email addresses. It ensures the presence of an @ symbol with preceding and following strings. For instance, using regex in JavaScript, valid email addresses will pass, while malformed ones won’t.
Checking for Disposable Emails
Disposable email services provide temporary addresses, often used by spammers for fake sign-ups. Identifying and eliminating disposable emails is essential. Using an email validation API like Abstract’s can help detect these addresses easily by making an API request with the email IDs.
DNS Lookup
DNS Lookup finds information about a domain name, including availability, IP addresses, and owner details. This can be done through a console app command to retrieve necessary domain data.
Conclusion
Email validation ensures your mailing list is accurate and reduces bounce rates. Utilizing APIs and other methods can help maintain a clean list of genuine email addresses, enhancing your marketing campaigns.
