Email Enrichment: Validate Email Address

Last month, we introduced our free email verification tool, an Email Enrichment that allows Gigasheet users to quickly clean and verify email lists. The Enrichment answered the following questions about an email address:

1. Did we get valid email addresses?
2. Are they real email addresses, or throw-away "burner" accounts?
3. What company do they work for?
4. Is the company big enough for us to care about?

But there was still one lingering question:

Will this email address actually work?

There are two ways to go check if an email is valid:

1. Option 1 is to just give it the old college try and fire away, but this can lead to trouble!
2. Option 2 is to use a third-party service that will validate the email address for you, taking the risk out of your email send.

Validating emails before sending will improve your delivery rate, and keep you in your target's inbox, not spam folder. We want to make the latter option easy, so Gigasheet's Email Enrichment now offers a quick and easy email validation option.

As part of the Email Enrichment, Gigasheet has enabled Abstract API's industry-leading email verification API. Simply provide your Abstract API code to Gigasheet to authorize the API, and you will be able to run the enrichment within Gigasheet. Abstract's evaluation of email address deliverability is returned in two columns within your sheet: Deliverability and Quality Score.

Below we will walk through setting up and running the improved Email Enrichment with email validation.

The Abstract API Key

If you don't have an API key from Abstract API, signing up is easy. You are given 100 free requests per month to evaluate the API results before any purchase, and no credit card is required to try it out. Simply navigate to the Email Validation and Verification API page and click the Get Started button.

Once signed in, you will find your private API key on the Try it Out tab. This is what you will copy and paste into Gigasheet. While you are here, you can also test the API using the Make test request button.

Filter Your Sheet to Abstract API Limits

In Gigasheet, Enrichments are only applied to the current results set. Thus, any rows that have been filtered out will not be enriched. Since we are using a trial version of the Abstract API key, we only can make 100 calls a month. Rather than burn through the API limit, let's try running the enrichment on the first 10 rows.

Pro Tip: Gigasheet always tracks the original row numbers in the column labeled "#". Use this in Filters to quickly select a certain number of rows.

Below we will create a filter to select only the first 10 rows. Once applied, we are ready to test the Email Enrichment.

Apply the Email Enrichment

The Enrichment tool is accessed from the Tools Menu and selecting Enrichments or by clicking on the desired column and selecting Enrich from the pop-up column menu.

Once the Enrichment appears, ensure that the column containing the email addresses is selected. In this example, the column is simply "Email."

Paste in your Abstract API key from above and hit Apply. And just like that, Gigasheet will go and check each email address against the Abstract Email Verification and Validation service. While the enrichment is running, you will notice colors across the top of your sheet. Depending on the size of your list, this may take some time.

Email Validation Results

Once the Enrichment is complete, you will notice two new columns appearing in your data, initially highlighted in blue:

1. Deliverability
2. Quality Score

The Deliverability column will display Abstract's evaluation of the deliverability of the email. Possible values are DELIVERABLE, UNDELIVERABLE, RISKY, and UNKNOWN.

The Quality Score column displays a decimal score between 0.01 and 0.99 reflecting Abstract's confidence in the quality and deliverability of the submitted email.

These columns behave just like any other column in your file, and can be sorted, grouped, and filtered. To summarize the results, let's quickly add a group to the "Email-Deliverability" column.

That yields these results:

Based on the validation from our Email Enrichment, we know that 3 of our 10 sample email addresses are invalid and worth removing from our email send.

Conclusion

As you can tell, the Abstract API addition to the Email Enrichment is simple to use, yet powerful. Now Gigasheet users can validate and verify email lists to help improve their email marketing deliverability.

And if you missed last month's post, be sure to check out how to Quickly Clean & Verify Email Lists. The best part, it's all free!

Sign up and try Gigasheet today!

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