Components of an Effective Email Verification Template
A verification email template doesn’t need to be long or complicated. It’s simply an automated message you send to your user after signup that includes a link or button for them to click to verify their email address. Let’s take a look at the components.
Clear Subject Line
This is possibly the most important part of your confirmation email because it will help the user find the email in their inbox. It’s possible that the confirmation email could end up in spam, so make sure the email subject line is easy to spot and clearly states what the email is for. Include your company name and the words “verify email” somewhere.
Personalization
Including the user’s name if they provided it during signup is a nice touch. It helps foster familiarity and begins the process of onboarding the user to your email list right away.
You may also want to send a follow-up email if the user has not verified their email within 24 hours of receiving the activation email.
Concise Content
You don’t need much in a verification email template. A line stating what the email is for, reminding the user why they are receiving it, and clearly pointing out the link they need to click to verify is all you need.
Call to action (CTA)
This is the most important part of the email verification content. The user needs to click some kind of link to verify their email address. Make sure the CTA is big, clear, and easy to click on.
Designing Your Email Verification Template
Your email verification template should be clean and minimal. Remember: the most important components are the subject line and the call to action. Anything else is a nice-to-have, and too much text risks confusing the user or getting in the way of the single action you want them to take (clicking the verification link.)
If you use Mailchimp or another big email marketing campaign provider, it’s very likely they have a generic template that they can send to all new users for you. Consider using this - it should be as simple as checking the “double opt-in” box in your account settings.
Design Items to Keep In Mind
If you do go the route of designing your own template, remember a few key things:
- Branding. Although minimal, your template should still include at least your company logo to communicate your brand to the user. If your website and other marketing materials have a color palette, use this wherever possible too.
- Images. Images are unnecessary in a verification email template. If you must include images, make sure the images do not communicate any important information, as many users simply don’t display images in emails.
- Responsive email design. Not all users will be viewing your emails on a desktop computer or laptop. Make sure all the important components of the email are easily viewed on a mobile device, that nothing is hidden or cut off, and that the user can still click the CTA.
- Unsubscribe and privacy policy links. These are required to be in every email you send by law, so don’t forget to include them.
Email Verification Template Ideas
Here are some examples of highly effective verification email templates.
Mailmodo
This template from Mailmodo is a great example of a clean, well-branded email. The template includes a variable for the first name and company name, a space for the company logo, and unsubscribe and privacy policy links, plus links to social media.
Lyft
Lyft’s verification email is simple and clear. It includes language that compels the user to click the CTA (“You’re one step away” and “In order to start taking rides with Lyft...”) and has a nice, well-branded image.
The Job Box
The Job Box has a nice, friendly salutation that includes the user’s name and begins the onboarding process immediately. You can identify the tone of this company right away. It also includes some helpful information to orient the user and let them know what’s coming next.
Ring
Ring has a similarly familiar/friendly tone and a nice clear CTA. There is also a helpful link at the bottom to let the user alert Ring that something is wrong if they did not in fact sign up for the service.
Sellfy
Sellfy’s verification email is strongly branded with their company logo and colors. They provide a link as well as a CTA button, in case the button doesn’t render or something goes wrong.
Top Email Verification Tools
The easiest way to create a welcome email is to use the custom email templates provided to you by your email marketing provider. Transactional email services like Mailchimp, Mailerlite, Sendgrid, and others usually provide a “double opt-in” option. When you toggle this on, the service will automatically send a verification email to any user who joins your list. You should have the ability to customize this email too.
Validation
Another important email verification step is email validation. This can be done in real-time before you attempt to send the verification email. Email validation is the process of making sure that the email a user-provided is correctly formatted, contains no typos, and is a real email address.
There are many free and paid email validation tools available online. AbstractAPI’s Free Email Validation API is one example of this. The API allows you to send a simple network request containing the email to a secure endpoint. The API then validates the email using several methods and returns a response to you.
Let’s take a look at what the request and response look like:
Request:
Response:
The API looks at MX records, deliverability, typos, SMTP, and several other factors to determine whether the user’s email is valid and if it can be delivered to.
Conclusion
Email address verification is a non-negotiable step in user onboarding if you want a healthy email list full of valid emails. It’s important for any e-commerce business to run email campaigns periodically, and in order to make sure that those email campaigns make it to the right users, you should validate and verify all incoming email addresses before you save them to your database.
