Have you ever wondered if you could check if an email address you have on file for somebody is valid? Say you were talking to a client on the phone and they gave you an email address or you are trying to decipher an email address from a sign-up sheet. You might want to verify it’s valid before sending. While there are no foolproof method for e-mail verification, there are some ways you can at least make an attempt at checking.

Use an Online Email Checker: Services like Email Checker and Verify Email are online services that will make an attempt to connect with the email server for an email address to see if it’s valid. I’ve used the tools to verify a few known email addresses, and it was able to find validity in about 90% of them. Some email servers respond differently to these types of requests, or deny them outright, so you’ll never get 100% accuracy with tools like this. They’re also fairly worthless if you can’t read the email address you scribbled down on a sticky note on your desk in the first place.

Check The Company’s Web Site: While we don’t list our individual email addresses on our team profile page, many companies do. So head to the company’s web site and see what you can find.

Search Engines and Social Media: The contact you’re looking to email probably has some sort of online presence. If you Google them or what you think is their email address, you might be able to find a page that confirms the validity of the address. Your contact may also have a social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc… . ), and they may publish their work email address on those sites. When searching for the users, also be sure to try misspellings of their name, include cities and states – anything that can narrow down the results at all.

You don’t want to miss out on a potential business opportunity because you have an incorrect email address. Hopefully the above tools and a little investigative work will get you to the right inbox.