The power of the ping

A ping is a digital ‘beep’ that establishes if the email server and domain exist, contacts that server, and then checks if the email address is real.

Positive results will tell you that your email (and other) marketing is reaching a real and active address (and a real and active customer). You’ll also get bounces, either ‘hard’ or ‘soft’, but it’s important to understand that a bounce doesn’t necessarily mean the email address is bad. The ping test delivers a range of responses ─ flags ─ that you can action to up your email accuracy:

Result: Bad

What this means:

The email address is bad and should not be used. There are a number of specific reasons that will be returned to explain the nature of the error.

What you can do:

Emails should be suppressed from your system. Attempting to send emails to bad addresses can seriously impact the deliverability of all your email campaigns, so this is the first action you should take. You should mark these as likely ‘gone-aways’ in your CRM system and validate whether they are still at the company.

Result: Consumer

What this means:

The email address is a consumer address and cannot be processed.

What you can do:

The address is not ‘owned’ by an organisation and won’t be processed. If you still intend to use these email addresses you must have the recipient’s permission to send them emails.

Result: Good

What this means:

Good news! You have a valid, usable email address.

What you can do:

Continue using the address as planned. Be mindful, however, to adhere to local email permission regulations. Just because an address is valid it doesn’t necessarily mean you have permission to send that person emails.

Result: Good – Catch All

What this means:

The server indicates that the email address is good ─ but the server is configured to accept mail sent to any address and will therefore report that any address is good.

What you can do:

Proceed with caution. There’s no guarantee that this email address is good. You might want to build a segment including these addresses and monitor for error messages or low open rates when sending from your Email Service Provider (ESP) or Marketing Automation (MA) platform.

Result: Mal-formatted

What this means:

The email address does not conform to the accepted syntax and was not processed.

What you can do:

This can often be due to errors made during data entry. You should review these addresses for obvious errors, such as missing or duplicate symbols, and update accordingly.

Result: Unknown

What this means:

The status of the email address could not be accurately determined.

What you can do:

As with ‘Good – Catch All’ you should proceed with caution and consider building a segment that will allow you to monitor for issues from your ESP or MA platform.

Result: ISP Address

What this means:

Address was found in the ISP lookup table and is not valid.

What you can do:

You should suppress these addresses from email campaigns and take steps to review the data in more detail.

Three steps to up-ping your accuracy

Using the right data partner, Ping testing is a low cost, easy and highly effective means of establishing your email accuracy. Avention holds the UK’s largest repository of business email addresses ─ and coverage counts. We are able to check and authenticate more effectively than any other vendor. I advise my customers to take three simple steps:

1. Ping test, at the very least, every 30 days or ideally before every campaign, because B2B data degrades quickly (Marketing Sherpas estimates 2.1% a month!) ─ with key contacts changing jobs, companies and sectors at speed.
2. Send Avention your email databases ─ these can even be in Excel ─ and we will ping test in a matter of days.
3. With the results in hand, you can bolster accuracy, either in house or by using a data partner to do it for you.

Told you it was simple. Ping testing gives you an idea of the good, bad and inconclusive emails in your database. In knowing what you can and can’t rely on, you narrow down the search for bad email data.