Email as a service, should I send verification emails on signup?

Question

Is it worth it for an email as a service platform to use verification links?

and

How negative of an impact have verification emails had on user signups in the past?

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I have an email as a service application where the monetization is mostly from emails, but can also come from a website and an app.

We have our fair share of gnail.com and gmail.con entries to which those users will not receive any emails. We also have had reports from people who claim to not have registered for the service and want to unsubscribe because they get blasted with emails from user interactions on the website.

I've read the other posts concerning verification links, and I firmly believe that some avenue of confirming email addresses should be established so we can capture the missed revenue opportunities. However, the business thinks that we will lose signups with an email verification link.

My working idea is to send a verification link, but not inhibit the user from using the website or app. Keep a persistent banner on the page reminding them to verify their email if they wish to receive emails from us.

Answer 1

Is it worth it for an email as a service platform to use verification links?

Yes, a verification email should be sent once a user applies for any registration, to confirm a desire of a user to receive subsequent emails.

When a user receives a multitude of emails that he or she didn't subscribe for, it's likely to be considered as spam, which is not good for a user, neither for a company.

We have our fair share of gnail.com and gmail.con entries to which those users will not receive any emails.

The possibility of such typos can be reduced at a registration stage by means of notifying a user of possibly mistyping an email address. It can be performed in multiple ways, and benefit both your company and a potential customer. Let's consider the following two:

1. Dynamically apply a metric like Levenshtein distance to the email's domain name entered by a user, and the most common email service providers (like gmail.com, yahoo.com, icloud.com, etc.). Between gmail.con and gmail.com such metric is 1, which signifies an probable typo of gmail.com that can be highlighted for a user.
2. Checking against a list of prebuilt typo patterns (like gnail.com and gmail.con) and suggesting the correct ones.

My working idea is to send a verification link, but not inhibit the user from using the website or app.

Though a user shouldn't be included to a mailing list prior to one's confirmation, it doesn't have to cause denial of access to your website functionality (or an application) for a user.

Depending on the kind of underlying business, it might be reasonable to allow a registered user to continue to enjoy your site's functionality without an email confirmation, while reminding to verify an email in whatever way is acceptable within your website (or application).