Verify Emails Collected In Store, at a Kiosk or on a Tablet
Emails collected in store, at a kiosk or on a tablet need a clean-up before the first message, because they are the likeliest to be mistyped. A web form gets a person at a desk with their own keyboard and, usually, a confirmation email that exposes mistakes at once. A counter sign-up gets a quick tap on glass and nothing after it.
What goes wrong at the counter
| Where it is collected | Typical slip |
|---|---|
| Touchscreen kiosk | Wrong key on a small keyboard: gmial.com, hotmal.com |
| Tablet handed to the customer | A name typed in the email field, or a phone number |
| Paper sign-up | Handwriting read wrongly later: 0 and o, l and 1 |
| Typed by staff | Spoken form heard wrongly, missing letters |
| A promotion sign-up | A throwaway or made-up address to get the discount |
Most of these are fixable. A few are not. The aim is to sort them before they reach your email platform.
Step 1: Export and put the addresses in one column
Export the sign-ups from the kiosk or form tool as a CSV with the date, the location and the address. Keep the location column: it tells you which till or which staff member makes the most slips. Open house sign-in sheet emails is a close cousin of this process for paper sheets.
Step 2: Repair the slips that rules can fix
Paste the column into the scanned email address repair tool. It corrects typo domains and endings (gmial.com, .con), strips spaces and wrapping characters, reads a spoken at and dot, and flags names with a 0 or 1 between letters. The change list on every row lets you see what it did.
For the background on the common domain errors, read catching email typos at signup.
Step 3: Check which addresses exist
Upload the repaired list on the verify page. Each address comes back valid, risky or invalid with a reason. For this kind of list the likely ones are:
- Mailbox not found. The typo changed the name. Repair cannot know what was meant.
- Disposable address. Common on sign-ups that offered a discount. Find disposable emails already in your list covers handling them.
- Role address. A shop's own info@, typed because the customer did not want to give a personal one.
- Accepts all addresses. A company domain. Fine to send, not confirmed.
Read email verification statuses explained for the rest.
Step 4: Decide what to do with each group
- Valid: send the welcome email now, while the visit is fresh.
- Risky: send after the valid rows, in a small batch.
- Invalid: do not send. If the customer is a regular, have staff ask for the address again at the next visit and show them the screen as they type.
- Disposable: if you promised a discount code, honour it; do not add the address to your marketing list.
If you want to keep the first email warm, the welcome email matters. Get that out within a day or two; a welcome sent a month after a visit is a stranger's email.
Step 5: Stop the slips at the counter
The cheapest list clean-up is a better sign-up. In rough order of effort:
- Suggest the domain. When the customer types
name@gm, offergmail.com. Most kiosk and form tools can do this. - Show the address big before they confirm, and have staff read it back.
- Ask for it twice, or ask for it once and send a confirmation immediately. A confirmation email that bounces tells you at the till.
- Check as they type. A check on the device that rejects an obvious typo catches it while the customer is still there. Verifying emails on WordPress forms shows one version.
- Keep the incentive honest. If the sign-up is for a code, give the code on screen and do not make the email the only path to it. People who feel forced to give an address give a fake one.
Double opt-in vs email verification compares the confirm-by-email approach with a mailbox check, and when each fits.
Keep a record of where each address came from
Tag every sign-up with its location, date and channel. If one till produces most of the invalid rows, you have a training problem to fix. If one promotion produces most of the disposable ones, you have an incentive problem. A provenance log records the source for the file as a whole.
What this does not do
It does not prove that the customer agreed to marketing. Make the consent step visible at the counter and keep a record of it. Rules differ by country and by platform, and this is not legal advice. Verification only removes addresses that would bounce.
A weekly habit
Run the check on each week's sign-ups before the welcome email goes out, and read the invalid rows by location. A few minutes a week stops dead addresses from building up in the list. If the same till keeps producing slips, a short word with the team or a change to the sign-up screen costs far less than months of bounced welcome emails.
Check the list
Check the sign-up list on the verify page before the welcome email: 100 free checks, Google sign-in, no card.
Related: Booking and appointment emails for local businesses.
Common questions
Why do in-store sign-ups have so many bad emails?
They are typed on small touchscreens or written on paper by people who are standing up, in a queue and thinking about something else. Slips such as gmial.com are common, and nobody sees the error because nothing is sent at the time.
How do I clean a list collected on a tablet?
Fix typo domains and spacing first, then verify the list and send the welcome email only to valid rows. Rows that fail go to staff to fix at the next visit.
Should I send a welcome email to unverified addresses?
A welcome email to a dead address is a bounce on a new list. Verify first, and ask any address that fails to be re-entered on the next visit.
Can I stop typos at the point of capture?
Mostly. Suggesting the common domain (gmail.com after gm...), asking for the address twice or checking it as it is typed all reduce slips. Staff confirming the screen aloud also helps.
Check your list before you send
Real mailbox checks over SMTP, and nothing is sent to the address. Sign in with Google and your first 100 email checks are free, no card. Plans for bigger lists are on the pricing page.