What probing is
How it works · 2 of 35 · 1:19
Transcript
Stay chill. Some email addresses can't be checked just by asking their mail server. Here's how the platform checks them anyway.
Before an address can join a campaign, it's checked. Does its domain take email at all? Does its mail server know this mailbox? When the server can't say, a probe. And the answer is kept, so the address isn't checked from scratch next time.
Some mail servers answer yes to every address. A real person: yes. A typo: yes. Someone who never existed: yes. So asking them proves nothing.
So the platform sends a probe: a real, one-line email called a mailbox check. If it's delivered, the address is real. If it bounces, it never reaches your campaign.
Probes go out from their own mail server and their own domains, at a steady pace for each mailbox provider. They run apart from your campaigns.
Every bounce tells the mailbox providers a list is out of date, and they remember. Probing keeps those addresses out, so your campaigns keep a clean record and more of your mail reaches the inbox.
That's probing: a real email for the addresses a server can't vouch for. Next up: meet the four mailbox providers every send is paced for. Don't freeze up!