Email change of address services basics include changing your business email when necessary and keeping up with your customers' change of address. Emails change frequently for many reasons, such as changing your ISP or changing to a free email service or away from one. When a loyal customer changes his or her email address and forgets to tell you, it is possible to lose business if you do not have another means of reaching this person.

Keep up-to-date with email by using an email change of address service. Make sure you have the correct email address for your customers and likewise, make sure your customers have your new address if it changes. Look at the following when using email change of address services basics:

1. Find companies who provide changing email address services automatically.

2. Use email address change software to accomplish your change of address.

3. Locate individual customers after email change of address efforts fail.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Choose companies that provide email change of address services to keep up with important changes

Your customers may not move too frequently, but they do change email addresses frequently. Every time an email bounces back to you, it is possible to lose business. Stay on top of these changes and keep in touch with your customers.

I recommend: Email Addresses offers several companies who provide email change of address service. Choose one for your needs. The Free Library offers an article addressing the use of a free email service that allows customer notification whenever they send an email to an outdated address. Check this important service to keep your business email updated.

Obtain e-mail change of address software and update addresses automatically

Use software to notify you whenever you send an email to an outdated address or whenever an email bounces back to you.

I recommend: Address Harvester lists many software programs that will update and remove dead email addresses from your current list. Choose the one that is best for your business. Issue Marketing provides information on the best business email marketing software programs along with information on bounced emails and how to handle them. Make the correct software choice for your business based on the many factors such as price, monthly minimums if any, and effective location of new email address if the old address fails.

Update your email records manually with email address change program

Most of the time when an email does not make it to the correct party it will 'bounce' back to you. Just like receiving a regular piece of mail back that sends 'return to sender, addressee moved,' these bounce notices let you know your customer changed email addresses. Many services allow you to find a change of email if you have the old email address or other information about the person. Plug in the information you have to obtain the new address, then contact your customer.

I recommend: Free Searching is a directory of sites that allow you to search for an individual's new email address. Try reverse email search if you know an address or check in the phone books for updated email addresses. Audit My PC gives information on how to search for the correct email address when you have exhausted your efforts to find the change of email address. Use these tips to locate the correct address for your customer.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Check the email address you used before you consult any email change of address service. If you did not address the email correctly, it misdirected and only needs you to correct the address in order to reach the intended party.
• •  Collect alternate email addresses from your customers if possible. Instead of using e-mail change of address services, send an email to the alternate address and advise that you received a return email from their main address.

Whether you’re changing your own email address or trying to keep up to date with customers’ new email addresses, take advantage of email change of address services and ECOA software. When people move physical locations, they send out change of address cards. But if you regularly send customers email — either as a marketing tool or business communication, you know that 30 percent of people change their email address per year and don’t send an email change of address to let you know their new email address. That results in bounce-back emails that don’t reach the intended audience. There are several email change of address services you can use to update your records. The benefits of using email change of address services include:

1. Maintaining the accuracy of your customer database. By using ECOA software or outsourcing email change of address services, you decrease undeliverable email and increase your customer retention.
2. Informing colleagues or clients about your email change of address. There are numerous free sites that allow you to post your old and new email addresses to help people keep in touch.
3. Saving time. By using ECOA software or outsourcing to email change of address providers, you save time hunting down customers’ new email addresses.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Register you email change of address so customers and colleagues can find you

If you don't depend on email as a marketing tool and only use it for business communication, you have probably changed email providers at least once in your career. Whether you changed jobs, or went from a job to starting your own business, you need to provide an email change of address to your important contacts. And it works the other way, too. You email an old work colleague or client to share news about your business and the email bounces back to you. The solution is to register online for email change of address services. It works when someone enters your old email address, and the email change of address service provides your new email address to them.

I recommend: EmailChange.com, MyFreeEmailSearch.com and ContactClean let you register your new email change of address for free and allow you to search for other people by their old email address.

Hire email change of address providers to find accurate email addresses for your customers

Many businesses collect customer email addresses to communicate news, sales, new products and services, special offers and business communications to the customers. If you've ever used email addresses to reach a large amount of people, you know that you're never 100 percent successful. Many emails bounce back to you because the customer has changed their email address. The solution is to hire email change of address providers who can update your emailing list for your communication or marketing efforts.

I recommend: FreshAddress’s patented email change of address technology keeps your email lists up-to-date by identifying bad emails and updating them with good ones. Return Path's email change of address service uses consumer-reported, permission-based email change information to update your file. Experian's email change of address service confirms email addresses by sending verification emails to consumers' old and new addresses to confirm accuracy of email addresses. TowerData’s ECOA service offers a free no-obligation test to see if they can provide new email addresses of your customers.

Purchase ECOA software to manage customer email lists

As with everything in the small business bag of tricks, there is a DIY approach to email change of address. ECOA software helps you take over the task of maintaining and updating customer email address lists.

I recommend: AtomPark Software’s Atomic Mail Verifier ECOA software uses three techniques to clean up your list including e-mail address syntax checks, mail domain existence and response checks, and complete SMTP mailbox checks. Dynamic Email Validator ECOA software from Apex Pacific connects directly to the SMTP server to check them without sending customers an email to verify their new address.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Email change of address providers regularly check the address that you have on file for each customer and either delete dead email addresses or update to the new email addresses.
• •  Many email change of address providers send emails to customers to verify that it's a working address. If you don't want your customers to know that you are using one of these services, choose a provider that doesn't send a verification email, but instead connects to the user's SMTP server to verify their address.
• •  Encourage new employees, especially sales people with previous contacts, to register their new company address on a free email change of address service. This allows old customers who want to keep in touch with them to find them in their new position.
• •  Ask new employees if they have sent out an email change of address email to their colleagues. A direct email identifying their new contact information usually motivates people to update it in their address book.
• •  Add an email change of address button or page to your website to enable regular users or customers to send you their new email address.

If your company is switching Internet or email providers and changing email addresses, you will be getting a new email address. You shouldn't run the risk of not being able to have clients or vendors contact you via email. Similarly, you don't want to be left without contact information if clients or vendors do their own email address changes. To keep on top of everything, look for some email change of address services pricing and costs.

Changing your company's email and alerting the contacts in your address book can be as simple as using the Internet to find a service that will do all of the work for you. The same goes for updating your address book with the current business email address of your contacts. When it comes to ecoa services, you have the following options:

1. Find a no-cost email change of address program to notify clients and vendors.

2. Use a paid service to keep tabs on customer or vendor email address changes.

3. Notify your contacts yourself for free.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Use a free email change of address service

If you'd like to save some money from the budget and put it to better use, like a year-end celebration, use an email change of address service that is free. Free services typically require the person who receives a notice that your email address has changed to go to a specific site and run a search. It's a little extra work, but again, it's free.

I recommend: For a no-cost solution to an email address change, visit Contact Clean. They have a service that will alert people who search for your address on their site that you have an e-mail change of address. Prior to giving out the new address, you are contacted for permission. This step can help when dealing with spam or vendors you no longer wish to use. Another option is to go to Find mE-Mail. It offers the same type of service but lacks the permission step. Both of these companies offer free service.

Pay for an email change of address program to keep client lists updated

You can take all the proper steps to keep your email address current with clients, but what can you do if clients don't do the same? If you see your inbox filling up with undeliverable emails day after day, you should consider hiring a company to verify that the email addresses you have are valid.

I recommend: Fresh Address will take your client list, verify the addresses on it, and return to you a list of client emails that contains a 15% increase in validity. They charge a minimum of $2,500 for this service, and the price changes based on the size of the list. At StrikeIron, you can choose a monthly, annual, or one-time purchase pricing plan for email validation. Monthly plans start at 5,000 verifications for $100, annual plans start at 60,000 for $1,200, and a one-time purchase of 5,000 verifications is $200.

Purchase email change of address software

If farming out your email change of address services is not ideal, you can purchase software that will scan your customer lists and validate them. If your customer base is small to medium sized, this might be a very good option for you at a mid-range cost.

I recommend: If you prefer to do it in house, Live Software offers a program that will clean up your mailing lists for $75 and verify 50,000 addresses an hour. The email address change program from Apex Pacific offers both a freeware version and a registered version for $99. The freeware version will verify only 500 email addresses, but the registered version will verify unlimited amounts.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Save yourself some time and effort by making sure that you have current email addresses for everyone in your address book before you send out your change of email address notification.

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.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

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.

I recommend: 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.

I recommend: 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.

I recommend: 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.

I recommend: 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.

I recommend: 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.

I recommend: Find out more about email validation at Apex Pacific.