Email Change of Address Services Key Terms

Terms you'll run into when learning how email change of address services work

Email change of address services are an attempt to help people make sure friends and family can find them when they change their email addresses. Businesses attempting to use email marketing may use these services to try and locate their customers when their current addresses become undeliverable or bounce.

There are many reasons an email message might bounce, or why someone might have one address in the from field of an email and another address in the reply-to field. Email validation services can help check some of these, but it's never possible to keep track of every person who changes his or her email address.

 

Email address search or email address directory

Email providers are not like the phone company in that they don't provide a list of the addresses of their customers for anyone to search through. This is why it's difficult to find a person's email address if you search for their name on the Internet. This is also a reason why email change of address services exist.
Try: Read all about email address search and how it works at Audit My PC.com.

Reply-to

Some email messages have a reply-to field in their header and list a different address than the sender. If you click on reply to such an email, it will go to the address in the reply-to field, not to the sender. This is usually if the sender uses more than one address, and it is a way of verifying the correct address.
Try: Check out a glossary of email-related terms, including reply-to, at Email Experience Council.

Bounce

A bounce occurs when an email you send returns to your address rather than proceeding to the inbox for the person to whom you sent it. There are different kinds of bounces: a soft bounce is usually a temporary problem, so you should try again later, but other bounces may mean there's a permanent problem with that address.
Try: Find an email glossary that includes complete definitions of several types of email bounces at Deliverability.com.

Unknown user

An unknown user is one of the error codes that will result in a bounced email. It generally means an address is nonexistent.
Try: Check out an email terms glossary that includes the definition of unknown user at Return Path.

Deliverability

Email deliverability refers to whether or not the emails you send make it into the person's inbox. There are many reasons why messages might not be make it to the intended address, and it's good to know more about what affects an email's deliverability.
Try: Read information discussing email deliverability at Email-Marketing-Reports.com.

Validation or verification

An email validator is a tool that checks whether an email address is deliverable without actually sending an email to the person's address. It can tell you that an address is deliverable, but you still may not know if it's the address of the person you think it is.
Try: Find out more about email validation at Apex Pacific.

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