Catch typos in email addresses

Invalid email addresses can reduce your conversion rate, delay invoice payments and frustrate residents and their families.

CareHQ now makes it easier to catch typos in email addresses with real-time checks for common spelling mistakes and domain validation.

Simple validation misses typos

Simple email address validation, where only the syntax of the email address is validated, generally doesn't catch typos because most typos will still be syntactically correct.

Consider the following email address: jenny.jones79@yahop.co.uk

This email address has a valid syntax but it points to the domain yahop.co.uk. At the time of writing this article, this domain is for sale and isn't in use so most likely this is a typo and not the intended email address. It's far more likely the user meant to enter jenny.jones79@yahoo.co.uk because Yahoo is a well-known service that offers email.

Catching typos

It's common for applications to only check syntax. However, CareHQ runs a number of additional checks against the email addresses of care seekers, resident contacts and location contacts, including:

• Does the domain name for the email address exist?
• Are there MX or A records set up for the domain (these are needed in order for email to be accepted by the domain)?
• Does the email appear to be a misspelling of a well-known email service such as Gmail or Yahoo?

If any of these checks flag a potential issue then the user is alerted in real-time via an on screen prompt, allowing them to take steps to correct the email address if necessary.

Delivery status

Even with the additional checks in place it is still possible (though less likely) for an invalid email address to be entered for a care seeker or contact.

To further help detect invalid email addresses, CareHQ logs all emails sent via the application and keeps a record of any instance where a message cannot be delivered and the reason why. The send issues folder lists all messages where there was an issue with delivery, making it easy to identify affected recipients in order to correct their email addresses.