Is My Email List Safe to Send To? A Pre-Send Checklist

A list is safe to send to when every row you will mail has been confirmed, the unconfirmed rows are held back for a small test, and addresses that previously bounced, unsubscribed or complained are removed. You can find out where yours stands in a few minutes: verify 100 random rows free with a Google sign-in, no card, and read the split.

The pre-send checklist

1. Know where the list came from. A list you collected yourself last month is a different risk from a scraped export or a bought file. See verifying a purchased list.
2. Check its age. Addresses decay. If the list is months old, assume some have gone, and re-check anything verified more than about a month ago.
3. Remove what you must never send to: unsubscribes, complaints, past hard bounces and your suppression list.
4. Take a random sample, not the top rows. Upload about 100 rows on the verify page and read the valid, risky and invalid split. A small random sample gives a rough picture, not exact numbers.
5. Verify the full list if the sample shows a meaningful share of invalid or risky rows. How: how to verify an email list.
6. Send only the safe rows in the main campaign. In the results, send_advice is safe, care, retry or do_not_send. Safe is valid; care and retry are risky rows; do_not_send is invalid.
7. Test the risky rows separately. Group them by reason, send 100 to 300 from a warmed inbox, and compare the bounce rate with the main send before sending more. What to do with catch-all emails covers the biggest group.
8. Send in waves and watch the first one. If bounces jump on wave one, pause. What to do after a high bounce rate.

What "safe" does not cover

• Consent. Verification does not tell you whether you may email someone.
• Inbox placement. A confirmed mailbox can still filter your message to spam; check authentication with the deliverability check.
• Whether the person wants it. A role address like info@ may be monitored or not.
• Recycled addresses and spam traps. A mailbox that exists today may belong to someone else now.

Providers that cannot be confirmed

Some addresses cannot be settled by a mailbox check: Outlook, Hotmail, Live and MSN addresses currently come back risky, Yahoo addresses are hard to confirm, and catch-all domains accept everything. Treat them as a measured segment, not as valid. See splitting a list by provider.

Check yours

Upload the list on the verify page: the first 100 checks are free. After that, Starter is $9 a month for 2,500 emails, packs start at $15 for 10,000 checks and never expire, and Pro is $39 a month with the first 100,000 checks a month at full speed, then slower, never cut off. See pricing.