Invalid email addresses increase your bounce rate, which damages your reputation and makes it less likely that you’ll reach your audience. It can also hurt deliverability and cause your messages to be blocked by spam filters and email service providers. If you don’t regularly check an email address for validity, you could end up spending ages crafting the perfect message that will never get delivered.

There are lots of different ways to check an email address, and some methods are easier than others. One of the most common involves using a free online tool that will verify an email address in just a few clicks. These tools can also help you identify typos and other errors in an email address. There are also standalone email verifiers that can run a more in-depth check, although they may be more expensive.

Inbox Intelligence: The Why and How of Checking an Email Address

Another quick and easy way to verify an email address is to use a search engine. Most real people have a digital presence on the internet, so their emails are likely to appear in search results. However, this method is not suitable for checking large lists of email addresses, as it can take too long.

You can also try doing an IP lookup to see if the email address is valid. This process is more complex and not suitable for mass verification, but it can provide a good indication of whether an email address is valid or not. Each email message is sent from a server with its own IP address, and you can find this by looking at the source code of the email. You can then use an online tool such as whatismyipaddress to check the location of that IP address.