How to verify emails in forms & surveys?

Whenever you collect email IDs on forms and surveys, it is difficult to verify whether they are valid emails. It’s only when you send an email received that you know whether it is going to bounce. Many times, you would use a service like an email bounce checker to see if it is good or not. BlockSurvey does provide an option to validate emails for bounce. This said all bounce checkers do their job to an extent but it is not foolproof. With the rise of free temp emails and services like Hide My Email(offered by Apple, which acts like a relay to your original email) - it is difficult to collect the actual email. This is where BlockSurvey helps. Read further to learn how to collect verified emails from Gmail, Outlook, and more.

Why Use Email Verification in Forms & Surveys?

• Reduces Spam and Bots: Spammers and bots often use invalid or temp email addresses. Email verification helps weed out these unwanted entries, giving you cleaner, more reliable data.
• Protects your Email Reputation: When contacting people by email using addresses you have collected, if the addresses are not validated, there is a risk of the emails bouncing back. If you receive a lot of bounce reports, your email address can be flagged as spam, which can be costly and damaging to your domain's reputation. By using email verification when collecting addresses, you can prevent these issues and have peace of mind.
• Reduces Maintenance: By filtering out invalid or duplicate email addresses from the start, you’ll save time on data cleaning and maintenance later. This means less manual work for you and more time to focus on analyzing the results.

How do you use Email verification in BlockSurvey?

BlockSurvey offers two ways to collect email addresses

1. Email Component: This is the classic approach where users enter their email address in the input field. 
   
   
   By default, all the emails received are checked against our internal privacy-focused email bounce checker, which tells you whether it is going to bounce or not. You’ll see this in the responses as hard bounce, soft bounce, and no bounce.
   
   
2. Email Providers: This is a new approach BlockSurvey is offering to solve this problem for real. You can directly add email providers like Google(Gmail), Microsoft(Outlook), and many more coming soon to collect verified email IDs. This takes out the guesswork of worrying about whether the email is valid or not. I’m enclosing the screenshot of how it looks. See the difference.
   
   Google(Gmail)
   
   
   Microsoft(Outlook)
   
   

What’s more? You can verify the authenticity of the submission by accepting only once by using the prevent duplicate submissions. By default, the prevent duplication feature is turned on under the Options tab of the email verification questions.

Let’s see, what are some use cases you can unlock using this feature?

Here are a few sample use cases we have used this feature for. But feel free to get creative with this feature.

• Event Registration: Events often require pre-registration through online forms. Verifying email addresses ensures that the registered people are legitimate and not spam bots and helps streamline communication and event planning.
• Newsletter Sign-Ups: Businesses and bloggers use email forms to grow their subscriber lists. Email verification helps build a quality subscriber list, reducing the chances of sending newsletters to fake or non-existent email addresses.
• Surveys that have Rewards: Usually people try to game the surveys when there is a reward attached to them. During such times, use the actual email provider to collect email IDs. By this, you can prevent automation, bots, and spam.

Conclusion

Email verification is a powerful tool for combating spam, bots, and duplicate entries, giving you cleaner, more reliable results. BlockSurvey's email verification is flexible, allowing you to cater to respondents with various email providers. Plus, the automatic prevention of duplicate submissions ensures the integrity of your data. Take your data collection to the next level using BlockSurvey today and experience the benefits of email verification.