Updated on: 04/10/2019
People change roles quite often which means that most of your list can be outdated in six months. The statistics show that 30% of your list is completely unusable within a year.
What Is Email List Cleaning?
Email list cleaning consists of removing inaccurate and inactive contacts from your email database.
A good rule of thumb is to remove people who have unsubscribed from your email list and anyone else who hasn’t been active for a certain period of time.
Depending on the size of your email list, you can do the cleaning manually or automatically. We recommend the latter.
Before we go on with a list of our recommendations let’s take a look at some of the risks that are associated with keeping a list that is not regularly updated.
The Risks of Not Cleaning Your Email List
Higher Bounce Rate
Higher bounce rate means that your list is most likely outdated and contains a lot of inactive addresses. This can negatively influence your reputation as a sender with ISPs and it can also impact the deliverability status of your future emails.
A great way to decrease a high bounce rate is by implementing a double opt-in during the registration process.
Also, cleaning your email list after every campaign and removing bounces is going to be well recognized by ISPs.
Spam Complaints
If you’re not keeping your email list updated this can increase the number of spam complaints against your business. Some subscribers will forget that they even signed up for your newsletter and they may mark your email as spam.
Email providers like Google keep a log of these spam complaints. If there are too many of them, your emails will end up going to spam folder. And that means to everyone! Not just the people who reported you. This can significantly reduce your CTR and conversions.
A clean list will decrease the number of spam complaints and will improve your sender’s reputation with ISPs.
Decreased ROI
Every inactive user is costing your company money. Most email list providers charge according to the size of your email list. That’s the first incentive to keep your email list clean.
Clean email list means less money spent on marketing and an increase in marketing efficiency.
If you want to prevent or eliminate these risks, keep reading and find which tool is the right one for you and your business.
10 Best Tools For Cleaning Your Email List
1. Email List Validation
Email List Validation is a cutting-edge email list cleaning service that allows you to check your email list in bulk, detects invalid addresses, temporary emails, duplicate emails, and spam traps and also removes hard-bounced emails, and verifies syntax errors in just minutes with a verification process.
Notable features:
- Various integrations.
- Domain Validation.
- Syntax verifier
- 99% accuracy
- Can process up to 5 million emails.
Pricing:
- For 10,000 – $59 ($0.0059 per email)
- For 50,000 – $195 ($0.0039 per email)
- For 200,000 – $499 ($0.0024 per email)
2. DataValidation
Data Validation is deemed the best email cleaning tool by marketing and sales professionals. All you have to do is upload your list of contacts and it can tell you not only whether the email is correct or not, but even whether it’s been used recently. They have excellent user experience and they even provide you with a quality score explaining what percentage of your list is usable.
Notable features:
- 24/7 email and live chat support
- AutoPilot email list monitoring service
- Native integrations
- 99% deliverability guarantee
- Can process up to 100 million email addresses per month
- GDPR compliant
Pricing:
- Up to 500 emails – free
- For 10,000 – $70 (or 0.007 per email)
- For 100,000 – $500 (or 0.005 per email)
Link: http://www.datavalidation.com/
3. EmailListVerify
EmailListVerify can provide you with information about who are the main complainers on your list and whether you got caught in any spam traps. You can either upload your CVS file or connect it to your MailChimp account. Processing may take somewhere between 30 to 120 minutes depending on the size of your list. You purchase credits which you spend in the pay-as-you-go manner.
Notable Features:
- 1,000 email verifications for free
- Integrations with many email service providers
Pricing:
- 5,000 emails – $15
- 50,000 emails – $89
- 100,000 – $169
Link: https://emaillistverify.com/
4. Email Hippo
Email Hippo has been in the business for over 10 years. It prevents soft and hard bounces and they are able to process large quantities of email (about 40 million per month) which can be valuable for big companies. Another thing that might be important for big players is that they are GDPR compliant.
Notable features:
- 100 free email validations
- Flexible payment options
- 24/7 service
Pricing:
- 10,00 email verifications – $85
- 50,000 email verifications – $400
- 100,000 email verifications – $500
Link: https://www.emailhippo.com/
5. Neverbounce
Neverbounce offers free signup and you can test any size of data for free. They have unlimited platform integration which means you can use it with Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, Contact Forms, Mailchimp, Marketo, Pardot, etc. Neverbounce has the ability to check 10k emails in 2 to 10 minutes, while a list of 100k will use up only 45 minutes.
Notable features:
- An API built for developers
- 1,000 free API verifications every month
- Instant bounce analysis
- Monthly verifications
- Fast turnaround – 10k emails in 3 minutes
Pricing:
- Up to 10,000 email verifications – $0.008 per mail
- Up to 100,000 email verifications – $0.005 per mail
- Up to 250,000 email verifications – $0.004 per mail
Link: https://neverbounce.com/
6. Bounceless
Bounceless is the new player in the game compared to the other tools we mentioned. It’s pretty simple and easy to use so you won’t need to waste your time trying to figure it out and browse tutorials. Bounceless recognizes spam traps to keep you away from that dreadful folder. They also offer integration with Mailchimp, but customer service tends to be a bit slow.
Notable features:
- Intelligent spamtrap indicators
- Removes all duplicate email addresses
- Risk validation
- Many integrations
- Detailed reports
- GDPR compliant
Pricing:
- 2,500 email verifications – $19
- 10,000 email verifications – $49
- 50,000 email verifications – $139
Link: https://www.bounceless.io/
7. Zerobounce
Source: Infinigeek
This is the last of the bounce bunch. Zerobounce does data appending (location, company, telephone number) as well as email verification and they recognize spam traps. You can even enter the exact amount of the emails you need to verify and their calculator will show you the price. Zerobounce has customer support that is available 24/7 in case you need any help verifying your emails.
Notable features:
- Email bounce validator
- A system that uses AI to learn more about your results
- Email address list append
- Email validation API
- Toxic domain verifier
- Email typo correction
Pricing:
- 5,000 emails – $40
- 10,000 emails – $80
- 20,000 emails – $160
Link: https://www.zerobounce.net/
8. Xverify
Xverify has a superb customer service and you can call them anytime to speak with a deliverability consultant. Their reporting is very detailed and they offer the highest accuracy rates of up to 98%. For those searching postal addresses in the US and Canada, Xverify is able to check those as well.
Notable features:
- 98% accuracy
- Auto-correction
- Mobile ready
- EU-based data center
Pricing:
- 5,000 emails – $40
- 10,000 emails – $70
- 50,000 emails – $250
Link: https://www.xverify.com/
9. Email Hunter
Email Hunter will help you check the contacts you already have, but it also finds emails from different websites and LinkedIn. It is quite simple to use and you can even download a free extension for Google Chrome that allows you to get the email addresses behind any website. Sometimes it can be a bit inaccurate.
Notable features:
- Bulk email verifier
- Available in the API
- Google Chrome plugin
- 95% accuracy
Pricing:
- 100 emails per month – free
- 5,000 emails per month – $77
- 20,000 emails per month – $156
Link: https://hunter.io/
10. Verifalia
Verifalia is an Italian company so get ready to exchange your dollars for euros once again. It is developed and maintained by Cobisi, one of the best software companies out there. In order to use their services, you will have to purchase credits from your free account. After you upload your emails, you will get a detailed report on which addresses were bad or outdated and why.
Notable features:
- Real-time email verification
- Batch email validation
- Available in the API
- Flexible pricing
Pricing:
- 5,000 emails – $37
- 25,000 emails – $139
- 50,000 emails – $239
Link: https://verifalia.com/
The Best Email List Cleaning Free Solution
Budget is of utmost importance for entrepreneurs and startups. If after reading this list you still feel unsure about which tool to choose, we recommend narrowing your choice down to 2-3 tools. Experiment with the tool and see which one works the best for you and your team.
We recommend starting out with Email List Verify (1000 validations per month), Neverbounce (1000 validations per month), and Data Validation (500 validations per month).
How to add value to cleaned contact data?
Once you got your email list cleaned from existing email, our data updating and appending service is a perfect next step to maximize the value of your contacts. if you want to maintain the quality of the data on the highest level, our semi-automated process is the most effective way to go.
Add new contacts to the existing account – If you realize that a majority of contacts related to one account is outdated, our research team could find new employees, matching your ICP.
Update CRM Fields – In addition, if you have changed or added new fields in your CRM our team can add the missing data to leads/contacts.
So, go ahead, use any of the above-mentioned tools and then let us know if you need any help with the incorrect CRM data.