About: Email Validation

Why This Matters

Email validation is your insurance policy against wasted effort and damaged reputation. Every invalid email address—whether misspelled, fake, or abandoned—hurts your ability to reach real customers. Email providers like Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo track your bounce rates and spam complaints. If you send to too many bad addresses, your future messages start landing in spam folders, even for people who want to hear from you.

Think of validation as quality control for your contact list. It identifies typos, filters out fake or disposable addresses, and verifies that the inbox on the other end actually exists. Your CRM handles this automatically in most cases, so you can focus on writing great emails instead of worrying about whether they'll get delivered.

Here's the bottom line: a list of 500 validated, opted-in contacts will outperform a list of 5,000 random addresses every single time. Quality always beats quantity.

What Email Validation Actually Checks

Email validation runs every address through a comprehensive three-step verification process:

Format and Spelling: The system scans for common typos and formatting errors like "Gmail.con" or "Yahoo.co," missing @ symbols, extra spaces, and invalid characters. These small errors cause hard bounces that damage your sender reputation.

Domain Verification: The system confirms that the email domain exists and is configured to receive mail. For example, john@totallyfakecompany.com looks legitimate at first glance, but validation fails if the domain doesn't have active mail servers or doesn't exist at all.

Deliverability Assessment: The validator checks deeper technical and historical data. Has this address received messages successfully before? Is it a known spam trap used to detect bad senders? Is it a disposable or temporary email address that will stop working soon? Is it a role-based address like info@ or admin@ that's not intended for personal marketing?

Addresses that fail any of these checks get flagged so you can handle them before they damage your sender reputation.

How Validation Works in Your System

Your CRM validates email addresses automatically in key areas:

Landing Page Submissions: When someone fills out a Landing Page form, their email address is validated before entering your database or triggering any workflow. Only legitimate addresses are added to your system.

Workflow Triggers: If you pull contacts in through automated workflows or integrations from external lead sources, validation runs automatically as they're added. Invalid emails are flagged immediately, preventing problematic addresses from entering your workflows.

Email Campaign Reminders: When preparing to send a campaign, look for the red alert triangle next to the send button. This validation reminder prompts you to validate addresses if you haven't already. It's your final safeguard before launch.

Manual Validation Options: You can validate on demand when needed. For individual contacts, click on a contact's email address to open the Email Info Box where the validation status appears. Click Validate for an instant recheck. For group validation, select multiple contacts and use Group Actions → Validate Emails to run checks in bulk.

Why Validation Protects Your Business

Sender Reputation is Everything: Email providers assign every sender a reputation score based on their sending behavior. High bounce rates, spam complaints, and invalid sends lower your score, which leads to your messages being filtered into spam folders. Validation keeps your bounce rate low and your reputation high.

Deliverability Equals ROI: Every undeliverable address wastes time and money. If 20% of your list contains bad addresses, you're throwing away 20% of your campaign budget and effort. Validation ensures you're only investing in contacts who can actually receive your emails.

Avoid Spam Traps: Spam traps are fake addresses created by email providers and anti-spam organizations to catch senders with poor list hygiene. If you hit a spam trap, your domain could be blacklisted, causing all your emails to be blocked. Validation identifies these traps before they harm your domain reputation.

Protect Long-Term Sending Ability: Once your sender reputation is damaged, it's difficult and time-consuming to repair. Some businesses never recover and have to switch domains or email service providers. Validation is preventive maintenance that protects your ability to reach customers for years to come.

The Validation and Opt-In Connection

Validation and opt-in work together to keep your list healthy and compliant:

Validation confirms the address is real and deliverable. It answers the technical question: "Will this email reach an inbox?"

Opt-in confirms the person wants to receive your emails. It answers the permission question: "Am I allowed to send marketing messages to this person?"

A validated address without permission is still risky and potentially illegal under email marketing regulations. You might reach the inbox, but you'll generate spam complaints that destroy your reputation. An opted-in address that isn't validated wastes effort when it bounces and counts against your sending limits.

Your CRM handles both when contacts come through Landing Pages—validated for deliverability and opted-in for permission. Together, these two processes create a clean, compliant, high-performing email list.

When to Validate Email Addresses

After importing new contact lists: Always validate imported lists before sending your first campaign. Imported data often contains outdated or incorrectly entered addresses that need verification.

Before sending any email campaigns: If you see a red validation reminder in your email sending interface, don't skip it. It's faster to validate now than repair your reputation later.

When adding individual contacts manually: Use the Email Info Box validation feature when entering contacts by hand to catch typos immediately.

Periodically for inactive lists: Revalidate your list every few months, especially if you haven't emailed certain segments in a while. Email addresses become invalid over time as people change jobs, abandon accounts, or domains expire.

After any bulk data operation: Whenever you merge contacts, clean up duplicates, or perform other bulk changes, validate the affected addresses to ensure accuracy.

What Happens to Invalid Email Addresses

When an address fails validation, the system flags it and provides notifications. You then have several options:

Review for typos: Don't delete invalid contacts immediately. Check for obvious typos you can correct. Someone might have entered "gmial.com" instead of "gmail.com," which is easily fixable.

Find alternate contact methods: The contact may still be valuable for phone calls, text messages, or direct mail. Keep them in your database but exclude them from email campaigns.

Request updated information: If you have other ways to reach the contact, ask them to provide a current email address.

Remove persistently invalid addresses: After confirming an address is truly invalid and you have no way to correct it, remove it from your email marketing lists to maintain list hygiene.

Invalid addresses remain in your contact database by default—they're simply flagged as undeliverable for email purposes. This preserves your relationship data while protecting your email reputation.

Questions and Answers

Q: Will email validation slow down my campaigns?

A: No. Validation actually improves campaign efficiency. While there's a brief processing time for validation (usually seconds to minutes depending on list size), this prevents wasted effort sending to invalid addresses and dramatically improves your overall delivery rates and sender reputation. The time saved avoiding bounce processing and reputation repair far outweighs the validation time.

Q: What happens to contacts with invalid email addresses?

A: Invalid email addresses are flagged in the system and you receive notifications about which addresses couldn't be validated. You can then choose to correct typos, obtain updated email addresses, remove the addresses from email campaigns while keeping the contacts for other purposes, or delete the contacts entirely if they have no value.

Q: Does validation affect my sending limits?

A: Email validation helps you make better use of your sending limits by ensuring you're only sending to deliverable addresses. Invalid sends often count against monthly limits, so validation prevents wasted sends and improves your success rates. You get more value from each send when you're reaching real inboxes.

Q: Can I turn off automatic validation for Landing Pages and workflows?

A: Automatic validation for Landing Pages and workflows is enabled by default to protect your sender reputation. This safeguard ensures clean data enters your system from the start. If you have specific business requirements that need different handling, contact support to discuss your needs.

Q: How accurate is email validation?

A: Email validation is highly accurate but not perfect. It correctly identifies the vast majority of invalid, risky, or problematic addresses. However, some addresses may pass validation but still bounce due to full mailboxes, temporary server issues, or other factors that occur after validation. Validation significantly reduces risk but doesn't eliminate all delivery challenges.

Q: Does validation guarantee my emails won't go to spam?

A: No. Validation ensures the email address is deliverable, but spam filtering depends on many factors including your sender reputation, email content, recipient engagement history, and opt-in status. Validation is one essential piece of deliverability, but you also need good content, permission-based sending, and consistent positive engagement to avoid spam folders.

Q: What's the difference between a hard bounce and a soft bounce?

A: A hard bounce means the email address is permanently invalid (doesn't exist, domain is fake, etc.). These addresses should be removed immediately. A soft bounce is temporary (mailbox full, server temporarily down, etc.). Soft bounces may resolve themselves, so the system typically retries them. Validation primarily prevents hard bounces by catching invalid addresses before you send.

Q: Should I validate email addresses I collected years ago?

A: Yes. Email addresses decay over time as people change jobs, abandon personal accounts, or domains expire. Industry estimates suggest email lists degrade by about 22-25% annually. If you haven't emailed a list in months or years, validation before sending is critical to protect your sender reputation.

Guide Type: Reference Guide

Estimated Time: 7 minutes

Next Guides: About: Opt-In Email, How to Validate Email Addresses, How to Send an Email Campaign