How to Validate Email Addresses in Salesforce

January 2026 · 9 min read

Your sales team sends 500 emails. 47 bounce. That's not just wasted effort. Every hard bounce chips away at your sender reputation. Enough of them and you'll find your emails landing in spam folders even for people who want to hear from you.

The fix isn't complicated, but it does require understanding what makes an email "invalid" and how to catch the bad ones before they cause problems.

Why Email Validation Matters More Than You Think

Most companies focus on email validation because of bounce rates. That's valid, but it's not the whole picture. Here's what bad emails actually cost you:

Sender reputation damage. Email providers track your bounce rate. Go above 2% consistently and you'll start seeing deliverability problems across your entire domain. That affects everyone at your company, not just sales.

Wasted sales time. Every email that bounces is time your SDR spent researching that contact, personalizing that message, and waiting for a response that will never come. Multiply that by hundreds of bad emails in your database.

Broken automations. Your marketing sequences, renewal reminders, and onboarding flows all depend on valid emails. One bad email doesn't just fail quietly. It throws errors, skips steps, or worse, triggers incorrect follow-up logic.

Inflated metrics. Your "database of 50,000 contacts" sounds impressive until you realize 12,000 of those emails don't work. You're making decisions based on numbers that don't reflect reality.

Types of Invalid Emails

Not all bad emails are the same. Understanding the categories helps you decide what to do with each contact.

Type	What It Means	What to Do
Hard bounce	Mailbox doesn't exist. Permanent failure.	Mark invalid, try to find new email
Soft bounce	Temporary issue (full inbox, server down)	Retry later, validate again in 30 days
Spam trap	Email exists but is monitored for spam	Remove immediately, never email again
Role-based	info@, sales@, support@ addresses	Flag for review, often low value
Disposable	Temporary email service (guerrillamail, etc.)	Remove, person didn't want real contact
Catch-all	Domain accepts all emails, can't verify	Flag as unverifiable, proceed with caution

Validation at Point of Entry

The best time to catch a bad email is before it enters your database. Here's how to validate emails as they come in.

Web Forms

Your website forms should validate emails in real-time. This catches typos (gmail.con, @gmial.com) and obvious fakes before they create Salesforce records.

Basic validation checks:

• Correct format (has @ symbol, valid domain structure)
• Domain exists (MX record lookup)
• Not a disposable email service
• Not a known spam trap domain

For Salesforce Web-to-Lead forms, you'll need middleware or a third-party validation service since native Salesforce forms don't do real-time email verification.

Data Imports

Before importing any list into Salesforce, run it through an email validation service. This is non-negotiable. Importing 5,000 contacts with 20% bad emails means adding 1,000 problems to your database.

Process:

1. Export your import file
2. Run through validation service (NeverBounce, ZeroBounce, Hunter, etc.)
3. Remove or flag invalid emails
4. Import only verified records

Yes, this adds time. It's still faster than cleaning up the mess later.

Salesforce Validation Rules

Salesforce's native validation rules can catch format issues but can't verify if an email actually exists. Still, they're worth setting up as a first line of defense.

A basic email format validation rule:

This catches obvious errors but won't tell you if [email protected] is a real mailbox.

Batch Validation for Existing Data

Your current Salesforce database needs validation too. Here's how to clean what you already have.

Step 1: Export Your Contacts

Pull a report of all contacts with email addresses. Include the Salesforce ID so you can match records when you import the validation results.

Fields to export:

• Contact ID (or Lead ID)
• Email
• Last Activity Date (helps prioritize)
• Account Name (for context)

Step 2: Choose a Validation Service

Several services can validate emails in bulk. Pricing is typically per-email, ranging from $0.003 to $0.01 per verification.

What to look for:

• Bulk upload capability (CSV processing)
• Detailed status codes (not just valid/invalid)
• Spam trap detection
• Catch-all domain flagging
• API access if you want to automate later

Popular options: NeverBounce, ZeroBounce, Hunter.io, Clearout, BriteVerify. They all work similarly. Pick based on your volume and budget.

Step 3: Process Results

Your validation service will return results with status codes. Here's how to handle each:

Valid emails: No action needed. These are confirmed deliverable.

Invalid emails: Create a custom field in Salesforce (Email_Status__c or similar) and mark these as "Invalid." Don't delete the contacts yet. Try to find updated emails first.

Risky/Unknown: Some emails can't be definitively verified (catch-all domains, for example). Flag these for manual review or test with a small batch.

Spam traps: Remove these immediately. Emailing spam traps gets your domain blacklisted.

Step 4: Update Salesforce

Import your validation results back into Salesforce using Data Loader or a similar tool. Match on Contact ID and update your Email_Status__c field.

Now you can:

• Exclude invalid emails from campaigns
• Create a task to find new emails for invalid contacts
• Report on email quality by source, date, or segment

Ongoing Maintenance

Email validation isn't a one-time project. Data decays. People change jobs. Companies get acquired. You need a system to keep your database clean.

Quarterly Validation

Run batch validation on your database every quarter. Focus on:

• Contacts added since last validation
• Contacts with no activity in 90+ days
• Contacts from older imports or acquisitions

Bounce Monitoring

Track bounces from your email sends. Most marketing automation platforms (Pardot, HubSpot, Marketo) can push bounce data back to Salesforce. Use this to update your Email_Status__c field automatically.

Lead Source Tracking

Some lead sources produce more invalid emails than others. Track email validity rates by source and address the root cause. That webinar you sponsored? Maybe 40% of the list was garbage. That event scanner? Might have captured business cards with outdated info.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Deleting contacts with invalid emails. Bad move. That contact might still be valuable. They might have a new email at a new company. Flag them, don't delete them.

Ignoring catch-all domains. Just because a domain accepts all emails doesn't mean yours is valid. Test carefully or treat as unverified.

Validating once and forgetting. Email validity has a half-life. That perfectly clean database from January will be 15% dirty by December.

Not checking your own team's emails. Your sales reps send from personal addresses. Make sure their email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) is set up correctly, or their bounces affect the whole domain.

Bulk emailing unverified lists. Purchased lists or scraped data should never go directly into campaigns. Validate first, then segment carefully.

What to Do With Invalid Emails

You've validated your database and flagged 8,000 contacts with invalid emails. Now what?

Try to Find New Emails

For high-value contacts, it's worth the effort to find updated information:

• Check LinkedIn for current job and company
• Look up the company website for email patterns
• Use data enrichment services to append new emails
• Cross-reference with other database records

Prioritize by Value

You don't have time to research every invalid contact. Focus on:

• Contacts at target accounts
• Contacts with recent activity or deal history
• Contacts in your Ideal Customer Profile

The rest can stay flagged. If they re-engage through other channels, you'll update their info then.

Consider a Data Enrichment Partner

If you have thousands of invalid emails and limited time, data cleaning services can find new emails in bulk. The economics work if the value of updated contacts exceeds the cost of enrichment.

When to Outsource Email Validation

DIY validation works for small databases or ongoing maintenance. But there are situations where it makes sense to get help:

• Large databases (50,000+ records): The volume of work becomes significant
• Post-acquisition cleanup: Merging databases with unknown quality
• CRM migration: Clean before you move, not after
• Compliance requirements: Some industries need documented data quality processes

If you're dealing with any of these situations and don't have dedicated RevOps resources, we can help. Email validation is one part of CRM data hygiene, and it's often more efficient to tackle it as part of a broader data cleanup project.