ZeroBounce CEO on Email Validation, Landing in the Inbox and Boosting Email ROI

Photo: Liviu Tanase, Founder and CEO at ZeroBounce

It’s hard to imagine doing business without email. From sending transactional emails to newsletters and marketing campaigns, email allows you to connect with your audience on a deeper level. However, connecting with your prospects isn’t as easy as pressing Send. Billions of emails bounce or land in spam – every day. 

In this interview with Benzinga, ZeroBounce Founder and CEO Liviu Tanase sheds light on the culprits and offers simple, useful tips to help you: 

• Make the most of email validation and its benefits
• Optimize your campaigns so they can arrive in the inbox
• Convert your prospects and increase email ROI.

How do you see email evolving in 2023?

Email will continue to grow and be a key channel for brands to connect with their customers and prospects. The number of email users keeps increasing every year. More than half of the world population uses email in 2023, so we’ll see more companies tapping into its potential. We saw this in 2020, too. In times of economic uncertainty, businesses must focus on the channels that yield palpable results – and email is at the top of the list. 

What puts email at the top of the list – and how can we make it work?

Email is a more personal channel than any other. Think about it: you’re reaching out to a prospect in their inbox, which is like an online home for most people. It’s where they get their most important messages. There’s less noise than on social media, so it allows for more intimate conversations. 

To make it work, you must show up where those prospects can see you – in the inbox. This is one of the greatest challenges businesses are facing right now. Hitting Send on an email is just the first step. Getting in the inbox is another story.

What prevents senders from reaching the inbox?

In a nutshell, a poor sender reputation. Much like your reputation at work, your sender reputation lets Internet service providers (ISPs) gauge how legitimate you and your emails are. If your IP or domain are associated with spam-like behavior, your chances of landing in the inbox are slim. Your emails may not even make it to the junk folder, you’ll get blocked altogether.

How does ZeroBounce help with that?

ZeroBounce gives you more confidence to send emails. The email validator is 99 percent accurate and scrubs your email list of bounces and other risky email contacts. Aside from that, we’ve built an entire suite of email deliverability tools so you can test your emails before you send and be sure they’re going to the inbox. Showing up there is the only way to connect with your prospects and see a boost in your conversions.

If you were to suggest one crucial step to improve email deliverability, what would it be?

Start with checking your email list. When your bounce rate is over 2 percent, when you get spam complaints or your emails are hitting spam traps, your sender score plummets. So, before you invest in creating impressive emails, verify your email list so those emails can reach your audience. 

We’ve seen the recent JPMorgan - Frank disaster, where JPMorgan purchased educational startup Frank for $175M. Frank’s founders claimed the app had more than four million users. In reality, Frank had only 300,000 users – the rest were fake. JPMorgan only realized the deception when its team sent an email to all alleged Frank users. They got a bounce rate of 72 percent! If only they took the time to validate those contacts, this catastrophe could have been avoided.

What other tricks can you share to help marketers and business owners get their emails in the inbox?

Once you’ve verified your email list, make it a habit. About a quarter of your email list degrades every year, so check it every few months. Then, look into testing your email deliverability. It takes only minutes to use an inbox tester to see if your email is going to land in the inbox with widely-used providers.

If you want to boost your email deliverability even more, take segmentation to the next level. ZeroBounce’s Activity Data tool pinpoints your most active subscribers – people who spend time in their inboxes. It shows you which subscribers have interacted with an email in the past 30 days to a year. Segment those people, then target them with a personalized email campaign. Healthy engagement rates boost your sender reputation and increase your inbox reach. 

What’s new at ZeroBounce in 2023?

Our entire platform is new! After more than a year of work and countless tests, we’ve just relaunched it to give people a better experience. The accuracy of our email validator is now 99 percent. Security is even better as we integrate with Okta for identity protection and we got our SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001 certifications. The interface has improved, too, and we’re getting great feedback from customers.

Also, a new tool is coming soon. It’s something our customers have been asking for – and we’re almost ready to share it with everybody. For people in sales, PR, real estate or any other industry that revolves around cold emailing, it will be a huge help. 

Are you not getting the results you want from your email campaigns? Sign up for a ZeroBounce account and check 100 email addresses free, every month. Remove bad emails, improve your sender reputation and boost your email ROI right away.

This post was authored by an external contributor and does not represent Benzinga's opinions and has not been edited for content. This content contains sponsored advertising content and is for informational purposes only and not intended to be investing advice.