What is the process for partner contact verification?

To maintain accurate and trustworthy partner contact information, Interact regularly verifies all partner email addresses listed on keep.eu. Every January, April, July, and October, a scheduled process in the system creates a partner contact email batch and sends verification messages to all addresses. This ensures that only valid and active contacts remain in the database.

Process steps:

1. Trigger email batch every month of January, April, July and October (keep.eu’s technical manager). To trigger a cron job in Django admin: Click menu item “Partner contact email batches”, once there click “Add partner contact email batch”, fill out the form, and click button “Save”.
2. Email is sent automatically overnight to all project partner email addresses in the database and keep.eu’s back-office (Django) administrators. The email content explains why the recipients are being addressed, keep.eu’s purpose, the recipient’s option to unsubscribe, and a reminder that emails are sent every three months to verify the validity of addresses*.
3. Bounces and unsubscriptions are automatically recorded.
4. Allow 1–2 weeks to allow recipients to unsubscribe if they wish.
5. Delete bounced and unsubscribed addresses (technical manager confirms removal in the system) by opening menu item “Partner contact email batches” in Django, checking the box “Cleared for removal of bounced and unsubscribed addresses”, and clicking button “Save”.
6. Automatic deletion occurs during the next night.

As a result of this process, only valid and active partner contact emails are kept in the keep.eu database. Addresses that bounce or are unsubscribed are automatically and permanently removed, ensuring data quality and reliability.

*Full text of the email (sent through Mailgun from address: “Interreg projects database”, keep@interact.eu):

Subject: Your contact details in the Interreg project database keep.eu

Dear Interreg project partner,

Your email address is listed in the keep.eu database (either you signed up or a programme that funded you sent us your contact). That’s why you are now receiving this email.

Keep.eu promotes good ideas for projects, networking and, overall, better results of EU Funds. That is why we want organisations interested in partnering up with yours to be able to contact you. If these contacts do not interest you please click on the link below and we will make sure that we will remove your contact details. If keep.eu and the possibilities it offers interest you, visit it and take advantage of it. This is a website maintained and updated by the community of Interreg and IPA-IPA CBC programmes.

Emails such as this one are meant to guarantee that we only keep in our database existing and functioning email addresses. We send them every three months.

Wishes of success in your European projects.

Best regards,

Your keep.eu team at Interact