The Email Scoring third-party service allows you to verify email addresses and identify abusive or invalid emails. This way you can filter out undesirable leads based on various criteria, including validity, deliverability rate, spam trap score, etc.
To enable this service, go to the Fraud and Anomaly > iClear > Lead Processing Rules section and select a Product from the drop-down list.
Once you select the Product, you’ll be automatically redirected to the Lead Processing Rules (iClear) tab. You may also navigate here by selecting the System Management > Products section on the left-hand menu and clicking on the “Settings” button for the corresponding product (Lead Processing Rules (iClear) tab).
Before configuring the service, review the recommended logic below as an example of how to interpret service results based on your use cases for email deliverability or registration scoring. The best practice is to consider email addresses as valid when:
- For email marketing and delivery analysis: valid is true, deliverability is high, and spam trap score is not high.
- For stricter email marketing deliverability: excluding records with spam trap score as medium. For even stricter filtering, exclude emails with frequent complaints as true.
To configure this service, click the “Add Service” button in the Global Rules block. Fill in the following fields:
- Select Third Party Service: Select the “Email Scoring” option.
- Execution Type:
- Select the "Synchronous" option to wait for the service outcome before processing a lead. This execution type is recommended for real-time lead filtration based on the service status.
- Select the "Asynchronous" option to make a simultaneous request and process a lead without waiting for the service outcome. This execution type is recommended for analytical purposes, not real-time lead filtration based on the service status.
- Select the “On-Demand” option to enable leads filtration when the “% of lead to lookup” is set as 0 (null).
- % of leads lookup: Set the percentage of leads to be checked through this service. Note: This field is available only for Synchronous and Asynchronous Execution types.
- Select a field to retrieve the Email address: Select a field to retrieve the lead’s email (e.g., email).
- Use Cache Data Not Older Than (days): Enter the maximum period (in days) for cache data usage.
- Reject the lead if Fraud Score is greater than or equal (0-100, where 0 - never reject the lead): Set the minimum fraud score threshold at which a lead will be rejected. The overall fraud score is based on the email's reputation and recent behavior across the service’s threat network. The scores that are equal to or more than 75 are suspicious but not necessarily fraudulent.
- Reject the lead if Valid equals: Select the “False” option to reject the lead if the email is not valid.
- Reject the lead if Deliverability equals: Select the deliverability rate of the emails you want to filter out. The deliverability rate determines how likely is this email to be delivered to the user and land in their mailbox.
- Reject the lead if Frequent Complainer equals: Select the “True” option to filter out emails that frequently unsubscribe from marketing lists or report spam complaints.
- Reject the lead if Spam Trap Score equals: Select the score level(s) that will determine which emails should be filtered out. The score projects the confidence level of the email address being an active spam trap. The best practice is to filter out emails with a "high" status, particularly for promotional mailings. This aims to provide more accurate results for emails flagged as "frequent_complainer" and "honeypot", which are collected from spam complaints, spam traps, and similar techniques.
- Reject the lead if Catch All equals: Select the “True” option to filter out emails likely to be a "catch-all" where the mail server verifies all emails tested against it as valid. It is difficult to determine if the address is truly valid in these scenarios since the email server will not confirm the account's status.
The “Add to PL&DNPL” configuration block allows you to use the service to add more filters to your existing DNPLs. Read more about Present and Do Not Present lists in this Knowledge Base article.
Fill in the following fields to configure:
- Fraud Score is greater than or equal (0-100): Set the minimum fraud score threshold that will determine which emails the system will add to the DNPLs: Enter a numeric value from 0 to 100. Typically, a score that is equal to 75 or higher is considered fraudulent.
- PL&DNPL: Select one or multiple Do or Do Not Present lists.
The “Advanced Settings” configuration block allows you to customize the lookup and timeout settings of the service according to the selected Execution Type.
- Lookup only in the local DB (Synchronous Execution only): Select “Yes” for the service to look up only in the local database of the instance. Select “No” for the service to look up both in the local database and API.
Note: The service fee won’t be applied if data is retrieved from the cache or instance's local database. - If local lookup fails, perform an Asynchronous run (Synchronous Execution only): Select “Yes” to perform the Asynchronous run in case the local database lookup is unsuccessful. Select “No” to disable the lookup override.
- API Timeout (Synchronous Execution): Fill in the service response timeout (from one to five seconds). The field is active only if the “Lookup only in local DB” option is disabled.
- API Timeout (Asynchronous Execution): Fill in the service response timeout (from one to five seconds).
- After a timeout, run as Asynchronous (Synchronous Execution only): Select “Yes” to perform the Asynchronous execution if the timeout runs out. Select “No” to disable the Asynchronous run override.
- No response service action: The system runs a lookup service, in case the service does not get any response you can select the preferable action:
- Select the “Continue Processing” option if you want to continue processing leads when the service does not respond.
- Select the “Reject the Lead” option if you want to reject the lead when the service does not respond.
The “Additional Run Settings” configuration block allows you to configure more options to determine at which stage you would prefer to run the service.
- Service run time: Select whether you would prefer to run the service before or after the leads are filtered out (After filtration / Before filtration).
Note: Please be aware that selecting this option may impact your invoice. Once this option is selected and no campaigns remain for the service to run, there will be no charges incurred. - Run service on (PingPost products only): Select one of the options to determine at which stage you would prefer to run the service for the Ping Post products (Ping / Post / Ping and Post).
- Run service on silent ping: Select “Yes” if you would like to run the service during the silent ping stage. Select “No” to exclude this option.
Click the “Add” button to confirm.
Read more about the Global Rules and Advanced Rules configuration in this Knowledge Base article.