The document discusses the challenges and implications of collecting accurate email addresses through offline methods, highlighting common errors and their consequences. It offers strategies to improve data accuracy at the collection point and during the transfer to digital formats by following RFC standards and specific rules for various email providers like Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail. Additionally, it emphasizes the importance of validation and customer guidance to minimize incorrect entries.

1. Verify and Validate email addresses collected offline

2. The Challenge
Data collected offline (Retail Stores, Financial Institutions, Paper Forms) is often
susceptible to errors. Offline KYC or registration forms require customers to enter
data through hand, which leaves a lot of room for mistakes.
The customer himself/herself can make a writing mistake. Conventionally this
data is then processed by data entry operators into digital form. Here, there is
further room for mistakes such as misinterpretation of handwriting, typing errors
and so on.

3. The implications
The Time, Cost, & Effort put into the process of collecting customer email
addresses goes in vain when the data ends up being incorrect. This has the
following major implications:
1. Email addresses are only verified, when the first mail is sent. Incorrect or
invalid email addresses return a hard bounce and negatively affect your
Domain / IP reputation.
2. You, as an email marketer loose out on being able to communicate with
email addresses that return hard bounces.
3. You will again need to establish contact with these customers through
alternative means and verify their contact details. This results in additional
costs and may even negatively affect the customer satisfaction scores.

4. What can be done?
There are multiple things you can do to ensure you collect the right data the
very first time.
To ensure that customer’s fill in data correctly:
1. Ask them to enter email addresses in capital letters (email addresses are not
case sensitive)
2. Request customers to re-write the email address.
3. Print the name of the most popular email providers and only ask customers
to fill their “user name” i.e. the part to the left of @ symbol.
4. Give special instructions for confusing characters such as “L & I & 1”, “0 & O”,
etc. You can require customers to represent zero with a stroke: Ø
5. Request them not to put in any blanks or spaces in the email address, as
email ids can’t have blank characters in between.

5. What can be done?
A good deal of validation can also be done while transferring email addresses
from an offline medium to a digital one. All email addresses private, free, and
corporate must satisfy a set of conditions, often referred to as the RFC standards.
An understanding of these standards can help easily identify invalid email
addresses.
An email addresses contains two fundamental elements. The @ character in the
middle separates these two elements and is absolutely necessary in an email
address.
Example: myemail@example.com
The User Name: myemail
The Domain Name: example.com

6. The User Name
The RFC Standards allow the User Name (also know as the local part) to contain numbers,
letters and certain special characters. However ISPs such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail etc have their
own set of unique standards that must be followed.
Gmail
Letters allowed: a to z
Numbers allowed: 0 to 9
Special Characters allowed: period (.)
Specific rules:
1. A Gmail address cannot start & end with any special character, and must start & end with a
letter or a number.
2. The special character: period (.) can be used multiple times within the user name (provided
it is not the first and last character.
3. A Gmail address cannot contain blank spaces.
Examples:
.myemailaddress@gmail.com (incorrect)
my.email.address.@gmail.com (incorrect)
my_emailaddress@gmail.com (incorrect)
my.email.address@gmail.com (correct)
myemailaddress@gmail.com (correct)
1myemail.address@gmail.com (correct)

7. The User Name
Yahoo
Letters allowed: a to z
Numbers allowed: 0 to 9
Special Characters allowed: period (.) & Underscore (_)
Specific rules:
1. A Yahoo address cannot start with a special character or a number. The first character must
be a letter.
2. The special character: period (.) can only be used once and should not be the first and last
character.
3. The special character: Underscore (_) can be used multiple times, provided it is not the first
and last character.
4. A Yahoo address can’t contain blank spaces.
Examples:
_myemailaddress@yahoo.com (incorrect)
my.email.address@yahoo.com (incorrect)
my_email_address_@yahoo.com (incorrect)
my_emailaddress@yahoo.com (correct)
myemailaddress@yahoo.com (correct)
my_email_address@yahoo.com (correct)

8. The User Name
Hotmail
Letters allowed: a to z
Numbers allowed: 0 to 9
Special Characters allowed: period (.), Underscore (_) & hyphens (-)
Specific rules:
1. A Hotmail address can start, end, and contain any combination of letters, numbers, or
allowed set of special characters.
2. A Hotmail address can’t contain blank spaces.
Examples:
!myemailaddress@hotmail.com (incorrect)
my.email.address@hotmail.com (correct)
my_email_address_@hotmail.com (correct)
my_email-address_@hotmail.com (correct)
.my_email-address-@hotmail.com (correct)
1myemailaddress@hotmail.com (correct)
myemailaddress@hotmail.com (correct)

9. The User Name
Rediffmail
Letters allowed: a to z
Numbers allowed: 0 to 9
Special Characters allowed: period (.) &Underscore (_)
Specific rules:
1. A Rediffmail address cannot start with a special character or a number. The first character
must be a letter.
2. The special character: period (.) & Underscore (_) can only be used once and should not be
the first and last character.
3. A Rediffmail address can’t contain blank spaces.
Examples:
!myemailaddress@rediffmail.com (incorrect)
my.email.address@rediffmail.com (incorrect)
my_email_address_@redifffmail.com (incorrect)
my_email.address@rediffmail.com (correct)
my_emailaddress1@rediffmail.com (correct)
myemailaddress@rediffmail.com (correct)

10. The Domain Part
Generally the following rules apply to the domain part:
1. The domain part must contain at least one period (.)
2. The domain name cannot start or end with a special character or a hypen (-).
3. The domain name cannot contain blank spaces.
4. Special characters (such as !, $, &, , and so on) are never permitted.
5. The domain name always follows the @ symbol.
Examples:
myemailaddress@_example.com (incorrect)
myemailaddress@examplecom (incorrect)
myemailaddress.example.com (incorrect)
myemailaddress@mail.example.com (correct)
myemailaddress@example.co.in (correct)
myemailaddress@example.org (correct)

11. Other helpful information
1. Blank spaces within an email address cannot be replaced with an underscore
(_) or a period (.)
2. An email address cannot have more than one @ symbol.
3. Any mistake in an email address should not be manually rectified. Such emails
should be rejected and sent back for verification.
4. Email addresses are not case sensitive: MyEmaiLADDresS@ExaMPle.CoM is a
valid address, and can be stored as myemailaddress@example.com

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