Guide to Email Change of Address Services (ECOA)

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.