Contact Data Solutions

Email Validation

Valid– These emails are associated with a real person and have been confirmed by the recipient’s email server.
Invalid– These emails are either malformed, the domain doesn’t accept email, or the recipient’s email server reports the email address is bad.
Catch All – These email addresses cannot be validated, just the domain, because the recipient’s server returns no credible deliverability information.
Deterministic – These are Catch All email addresses but we add a layer of confidence that the email was once delivered successfully.
Unknown – Not enough information was given to validate this email address. It could be the server wasn’t taking requests or taking too long to respond.

Deterministic Emails - A Closer Look

When a customer downloads email records from our system, we run them through an email validation provider for SMTP validation. SMTP validation is an iterative process that identifies if the mail server will validate a record and if so, validating the mailbox. The process works like this:

First the mail server is checked to see if it is Catch All - meaning the SMTP results cannot be trusted for mailbox validation. Catch All servers are usually associated with larger companies that have greater email security. If the mail server is not Catch All – then the results can be trusted for mailbox validation. That is where the Valid / Invalid results are derived.

For our purposes, we label Catch All email addresses that have been delivered OR can be found on the web as Deterministic for a higher level of confidence. Since email validation is so challenging – most companies add a layer of contact validation to their methodology. Our records are sourced from social profiles and have a last updated date so this is one of the main reasons people choose RampedUp.

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