A Guide on How to Validate Email Addresses Syntax

If you want to validate email address, make sure that you know how to do it right. Although there are many companies that offer email validation services using application programming interface, they do not guarantee accurate results. Validating an email address correctly requires the use of different validation techniques.

Why it is important to check email syntax

The format of an email address comprises of a local part and a domain part separated by “@”. There are character limits for each part. However, internationalization of email address provides for a larger range of the characters. For email marketers and companies that conduct surveys, email validation is very important because it enables them to know whether email addresses in their mailing lists exist or not. A simple typing mistake or a missing sign can cause a problem when emailing the owners of the email addresses. Therefore, be careful and validate email addresses before you proceed to use them.

Ways of validating email addresses

There are many ways of validating email addresses. They include:

• Sending a dummy mail

This is the easiest way of validating an email address. You simply send a dummy mail to an email address that you are validating and wait for a maximum of one hour. If the mail bounces, then the email address is invalid or in-existence. Although this approach works, it is not ideal for most people especially those in need of instant results. 

• Sending the mail server a query

This method of validating email address syntax is slightly technical. It entails connecting to a mail server via telnet. Simply enter the email address that you use and the one that you want to validate. If the email address that you are verifying is invalid, the server will respond with an error code.

• Pretend that you have forgotten the password

This is an instant way of validating email address syntax. Simply visit the login page of an email service. Pretend that you have forgotten the password to your email account. You will be asked to provide an alternative email address by the service where you can be sent instructions for recovering your password. If the email address that you are validating is invalid, the service will tell you that the email address that you have entered or user name is in-existence. 

• Try to create an email account

Another way of validating an email address is trying to create a new account with an email service using the syntax of the email address that you want to verify. If the email address is valid, the service will tell you that there is another person using that user-name. 

If you are in email marketing or any other activity that requires the use of email addresses, the worst crime that you do not want to commit is to reject perfectly valid email addresses. You also do not want to accept invalid email addresses. As such, you must validate email address to ensure that each email address that you have in your mailing list can receive the emails that you send. This is precisely why you should use these methods to validate every email address that you add to your mailing list.

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