And how to ensure you don’t lose contact with your customers
You may be aware that Verizon announced in late 2016 that it had decided to shut off its email business.
Thousands of consumers with verizon.net email address have been notified that they need to choose whether to retain their email address or switch to a new email address with another email provider.
Those who choose to keep their verizon.net email address will now be supported and serviced by AOL. Verizon will no longer provide email service, choosing instead to focus on internet, TV and phone customers.
Anyone who chooses to switch to a new email address from other popular providers like Gmail or Yahoo will lose their verizon.net email access.
Verizon is sending email service notifications to customers over the next several weeks with effective dates for the conversions. Consumers that hadn’t accessed their verizon.net email account in more than 180 days were the first to be notified.
Folks who receive a Verizon notice will no longer be able to send or receive email using their verizon.net email address if they don’t take action by the effective date. Verizon plans to delete these accounts, and people will lose their contacts, calendar, and email.
So what does this mean for marketers?
People rarely remember which businesses and loyalty programs they’ve registered for using their email addresses that are current at the time they signed up. So don’t expect them to notify you that their email address has changed and then supply you with a new one.
Marketers will want to weed through their databases to identify customers and prospects using a verizon.net email address to determine if that address is still valid. In order to minimize bounce rate, increase email deliverability and boost email campaign ROI, marketers will want to validate their email address database soon.
When sending email campaigns, it’s important for marketers to build and maintain their sending reputation by sending to only valid email addresses. This will mitigate the risk of your email campaigns being blocked or blacklisted.
Here are some ways you can make sure your marketing emails are hitting the intended inbox:
1) Use an email validation service, like AccuValid, to determine which email addresses in your customer database are valid. AccuValid assigns a code to each email address to determine if it is valid, invalid, on a global opt-out list or blacklisted.
2) Once you’ve determined which email addresses are no longer valid, you’ll want to replace them with current, deliverable email addresses. Using a data append service, like AccuData’s, will append alternate valid email addresses to the ones that are undeliverable.
Both of these tips should not be a “one and done” event either. The verizon.net email shutoffs are still unfolding, but aren’t the only reason your customers’ email addresses could be incorrect. In fact, 30% of consumers change their email address annually. And even more importantly, email lists with 10% or more undeliverable email addresses, get only 44% of their emails delivered by their ISPs.
If you need help keeping up with the fast-paced email changes in the email industry, the digital experts at AccuData Integrated Marketing are available for a free consultation.