10 Email Validation Terms: The Glossary

Getting into any new field is daunting. There are so many new terms, the jargon seems unclear, and it takes a lot of research to find what you’re looking for. Email marketing is one of those fields that looks way too confusing for anyone on the outside.

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A major part of email marketing is email validation, which is usually done through a tool like an email checker. But, this part of email marketing is also full of terms you might not understand yet, so we’re here to help you.

In this article, we’ll go over the ten most common terms related to email validation.

Email Validation Glossary

Application Programming Interface (API)

API helps you integrate two applications together, and in the case of email validation, it usually means that your email checker will check email addresses as they come into your forms.

Blacklist

As an email sender, the last place you want to end up on is on a blacklist. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Email Service Providers (ESPs) block domains, IPs, or emails they find “sketchy.” Bad lists are usually the cause of blacklists, so make sure you’re using your email checker to clean your lists regularly.

Bounce Rate

Bounced emails are emails that couldn’t get delivered for a variety of reasons. Bounces can be hard or soft, and the bounce rate is the percentage of your emails that were undeliverable.

Deliverable Address

A deliverable address is an email address with a valid format.

Disposable Emails

Disposable emails or temporary addresses are emails that expire after some time. People usually use them to get freebies, and you’ll probably see them in your lead magnet forms.

Email Validation

Terms like email validation, email verification, email checking, and email clean-up describe using an email checker or another solution to check your email list. These solutions will look for disposable addresses, fake emails, stale emails, etc.

Greylisting

Greylisting is a way for ESPs to protect their users from unwanted communications. If this happens, the recipient’s server will temporarily reject your email and notify your server to try again in a few minutes. The email will go back and forth between the recipient’s server and the sender until it’s accepted or rejected.

Spam Traps

ESPs and blacklist providers use abandoned email addresses and repurpose them as spam traps. They are using them to lure spam senders and add them to the blacklist.

Toxic Domain

These are domains known for spam, bot-created content, and other malicious practices. If your email checker marks one of your contacts as toxic, remove them from the list.

Whitelist

Whitelisting a domain, IP address, or email address means that the sender wants to receive communication from this address. Usually, users can whitelist a domain or email within their email settings. Or, in the case of a company, it is done on a company-wide level by the IT department.