Why verification is the unglamorous key to attendance
You can plan the perfect reunion, but if the invitations never reach half your class, none of it matters. Contact data decays fast. Email marketing data shows business and personal address lists degrade by roughly a quarter to a third every year as people switch jobs and providers. Stretch that across the 10 or 20 years since graduation and the old spreadsheet you inherited is mostly dead ends. Verification is how you stop pouring outreach into a leaky bucket.
A four-step verification workflow
Let the RSVP do the work
The single best verification tool is your own RSVP form. When a classmate registers, they enter their current email, phone, and mailing address themselves. That is self-verified data, more reliable than anything you dig up. Make these fields part of the form so every RSVP cleans your list automatically.
Send a low-stakes confirmation ping
For classmates you have not heard from, send a short message: "Hey, is this still the best email for you?" A one-line reply confirms the address is live and reopens the relationship. Do this before any big mailing so you are not printing invitations for dead addresses.
Cross-check the ghosts
For anyone who does not respond, cross-reference a people-search site or LinkedIn to sanity-check the city and confirm they still live where your records say. Never mail a physical invitation to an unverified address, returned mail is money and time wasted.
Watch your bounces
After each email send, review who bounced and flag those addresses as bad immediately. A bounced address is a signal to switch channels, try a phone number, a Facebook message, or a mutual friend, rather than emailing the same dead inbox again.
Keeping the list clean for good
Verification is not a one-time chore, it is a habit that pays off for years. The committees that dread every reunion are the ones that rebuild their list from scratch each time. The committees that breeze through it kept one living master list and updated it as people confirmed. Build that discipline now:
- One source of truth. No parallel spreadsheets on three volunteers' laptops. One shared list everyone edits.
- Update on confirmation. The instant someone gives you a new email or address, change it, do not wait.
- Tag the status. Mark each contact verified, bounced, or unknown so you always know who still needs chasing.
- Hand it forward. Pass the clean list to the next committee so the 25th reunion starts a decade ahead.
Frequently asked questions
How do I verify a classmate's contact info?
Why do so many reunion emails bounce?
How do I keep my contact list current?
Let RSVPs keep your list clean
Class Reunly captures each classmate's current email, phone, and address at RSVP and stores it in one master list you keep forever.
Start your free reunion page →