What Is Email Age Score and Why It Matters
Email Age Score is a 0–100 value available as a Real Contact API add-on that estimates how long an email address has been active online. Lower scores (30 or below) correlate with fake or fraudulent signups. Used alongside Real Contact’s contact grading and IP-based intelligence, it helps you filter risky leads before wasting sales cycles on them.
Most businesses evaluate email legitimacy by checking whether an address is valid and deliverable. But there’s another critical signal that can help you assess risk and improve lead quality: Email Age Score.
That’s why we launched the Email Age Score, which is now available as an add-on for Real Contact API. It’s designed to give you more insight about the email addresses you’re collecting or contacting. Here’s what it is and how it works.
What Is the Email Age Score?
The Email Age Score is a value between 0 and 100 that estimates how long an email address has been active online. It serves as a proxy for risk – newer, low-activity email addresses often correlate with fake or fraudulent signups. This score is powered by activity seen across our database and is available to all Real Contact API users, including trial, self-serve, and enterprise customers, for an additional price of $0.005/query.
How Is the Score Calculated?
The score is based on two key data points:
- First Seen Date: The earliest time the email was observed in our database.
- Activity Signals: How consistently the email has been seen over time in legitimate online contexts.
Important note: The first seen date is not the email creation date. Instead, it’s the first time our systems saw the email in action.
How to Use Email Attributes Effectively
The Email Age Score helps weed out risky leads. We recommend using it alongside other Real Contact API signals:
- De-prioritize invalid, disposable, junk emails.
- De-prioritize undeliverable emails.
- De-prioritize emails with an Age Score of 30 or below.
- Review Contact Grades to determine who to reach out to first.
- Evaluate IP-based intelligence signals to evaluate whether the lead originates from a legitimate user.
The score should be used to eliminate bad leads, not as the sole method of selecting good ones.
Benefits of Using Email Age Score
- Reduce Risk: Flag potentially fraudulent or throwaway emails.
- Prioritize Leads: Older emails with higher scores may signal more legitimate users.
- Boost Intelligence: Layer on new data to assess lead quality more confidently
Get Started with Email Age Score
The Email Age Score is live and ready to use. Whether you’re cleaning up a lead list, analyzing inbound signups, or building a fraud filter, this signal can benefit your business.
Want to learn more? Contact us or sign up to test it for free. We also have a knowledge base article available for more information.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Email Age Score included with Real Contact API by default?
No. Email Age Score is an add-on available for $0.005 per query on top of your Real Contact API usage. It’s available to trial, self-serve, and enterprise customers.
What does a low Email Age Score mean?
A score of 30 or below indicates the email address has limited or very recent activity in our database. These emails are more likely to be associated with fake signups, throwaway accounts, or fraudulent interactions.
How is Email Age Score different from email validation?
Email validation confirms whether an address exists and can receive mail. Email Age Score goes further by estimating how long the address has been active, which helps you assess the risk profile of the person behind it.
How do I interpret Email Age Score with IP intelligence?
Email Age Score pairs well with Real Contact API’s IP intelligence signals. Email Age Score evaluates the email itself, while IP signals evaluate the context, like whether the user’s IP location is consistent with their stated address.
