Just imagine … how much more business could they have generated if only these addresses had been entered correctly? Now think about this…How much money is YOUR company losing because of poorly encoded email data?

FreshAddress Inc., a US-based email database services provider, recently conducted a study of fifty top e-tailers’ ability to catch email registration errors.  The study’s findings showed that:

By not investing in effective, user-friendly options for improved email address validation, retailers risk losing
sales, wasting marketing dollars, alienating customers, and being blacklisted.

Bottom Line: The estimated average net revenue NEVER realized per year by e-tailers with ineffective email validation on their websites: $6,808,871.

Some interesting findings from the study (which tested the online registration processes of companies such as Amazon.com, Gap.com, and more) :

• None of the websites tested flagged common typos (ex: “yaho.com), dead domains (ex: “attbi.com”), and suspect emails (ex: test@test.com).

• 24% of websites tested allowed an email with a double period (.) to pass through without an error message (down from 44% in 2006).

• 12% of websites tested allowed an email with a double @-sign to pass through without an error message (down from 16% in 2006).

• 86% of websites tested allowed an email with .cmo to pass through without an error message (slightly up from 84% in 2006).

Lessons to learn? 

• Manual encoding = BAD IDEA. We’re only human and humans make mistakes. Let’s keep that in mind and plan accordingly.

• Online registration is BETTER.  People are still likely to make mistakes, but since they’re only entering their own details (and not the details from say, a thousand forms or business cards) they’re less likely to get sloppy.

• Adding validation mechanisms to online registration is BEST.  I found a good example of simple but effective data validation when I recently signed up at Picnik.com.  You have to enter both your email address and password TWICE, so typos are caught and errors are minimized without too much drama.  Check it out!

You can also find some other useful list building and cleaning tips from FreshAddress (as well as the full details of their Email Address Validation Study) in their Whitepaper library.  Have a look here.