TMCnet Feature Free eNews Subscription
March 23, 2021

Why Unverified and Disposable Email Addresses Are Probably Bad for Your SaaS Business



Software-as-a-service (SaaS (News - Alert)) providers, like pretty much any other software and web app vendor, rely on email marketing to boost their revenue. Why wouldn’t they? Targeted content translating to high open rates could bring in additional customers and higher returns on their investment.



But effective email marketing may require good email hygiene apart from reliable campaigns to truly work. That is where email validation in Python or other programming languages may come in handy, as it:

  • Allows your signup pages to catch typos that registrants may make while typing their email addresses into forms, something that may result in incorrect syntax or failed SMTP connection checks.
  • Lets you email customers instantly for credit card expiration, receipt, or new feature information issues; or enables users to reset their passwords securely if they forget it. Again, without verifying that the email address is valid, that may not be possible.
  • Prevents potential fraudsters and abusers from signing up for your service with disposable email addresses.

Why Would Threat Actors or Abusers Have an Interest in SaaS Businesses?

The pandemic pushed almost every business establishment to go digital to survive, which naturally led industry experts like Gartner (News - Alert) to predict that the SaaS segment would grow significantly in 2021. The increased adoption meant more companies would buy from today’s leading providers. But it also meant more opportunities for SaaS abuse in a way.

3 Ways Email Validation Helps SaaS Vendors

You may be wondering how exactly email address verification helps SaaS businesses. Here are three ways.

Phishing Protection

SaaS vendors, or any organization really, can reduce the chance of becoming a phishing victim by validating every email address that communicates with their networks. For example, they can detect and possibly filter addresses provided by free or disposable service providers. After all, it’s unlikely that legitimate businesses would not want to use branded domains for their employees’ email address. Therefore, addresses such as paypal-payment123@gmail[.]com most certainly doesn’t belong to someone working for the organization and should thus be treated with suspicion.

Freemium Abuse Prevention

Online business ventures typically offer freemium services to encourage users to sign up and eventually turn into paying customers. But are they really protected against potential freemium abusers? We put this to a test by signing up for free to Zapier.

We created a temporary email address for this test on TempMail and used it.

We successfully created a Zapier account. Note that freemium abusers can easily prey on Zapier by just generating temporary email addresses and signing up for free each time, thus enjoying the SaaS provider’s services without spending a dime.

Disposable email domain databases can help detect temporary email addresses like the one we used to sign up for a free account. That said, it can help Zapier and other SaaS providers protect against freemium abuse.

Marketing Database Cleanup

SaaS providers’ marketing teams are critical in that they generate leads. And email marketing is a huge part of that but it has its challenges. Boosting open rate, reducing bounce rate, and improving overall email marketing metrics are three of those, which you can improve by maintaining a clean marketing database.

A clean database should not have disposable, fake, or unverified email addresses, as these may land your emails straight to your recipients’ spam folder. Subjecting every email address in your database to an email validation check can boost your marketing performance while helping you avoid tarnishing your sender’s reputation.

Such a service can tell you which email addresses are improperly formatted, do not have matching SMTP servers or DNS records, are disposable, or point to a catch-all inbox. All these points may be signs of leads that are not worth or even feasible pursuing and so should probably be left out of your database.

---

While SaaS vendors have a bright future ahead, as predictions show, they are also bound to face several challenges. An email validation software can help to some extent not just bolster their marketing efforts but also detect suspicious email addresses.



» More TMCnet Feature Articles
Get stories like this delivered straight to your inbox. [Free eNews Subscription]
SHARE THIS ARTICLE

LATEST TMCNET ARTICLES

» More TMCnet Feature Articles