To verify Salesforce emails, export your Contacts or Leads to CSV, run the addresses through an email verification tool, then update or suppress the records that come back Invalid or Risky. This removes stale addresses before they hit your campaigns, protects sender reputation, and keeps bounce rates under 2% on every send.
Why Salesforce email data decays
Salesforce is only as accurate as its last update. People change jobs. Companies rebrand domains. Reps type addresses into the lead form during a call and miss a character. Research on B2B databases puts email decay around 22% to 30% per year. That means roughly a quarter of your contacts could be undeliverable twelve months after you captured them.
The damage shows up at send time. Hard bounces above 2% signal mailbox providers that you are not maintaining your list. Gmail and Outlook throttle or filter senders who cross that line. One bad campaign to a stale Salesforce segment can drag your domain reputation down for weeks.
How do you verify Salesforce emails?
Export the Contact or Lead records you plan to email as a CSV, keeping the email column and a record ID. Run that file through an email verification tool that checks syntax, MX records, and mailbox status. Import the results back into Salesforce and act on each verdict before your next send.
- In Salesforce, build a list view or report of the Contacts or Leads you want to clean. Filter to records with an email and, ideally, ones you have emailed or plan to email soon.
- Export the report to CSV. Include the record ID and the email field so you can match results back later.
- Open the Free Email Verifier and drop the CSV in. The file is parsed in your browser and never uploaded, so customer data stays on your machine.
- Let the local scan catch bad syntax, duplicates, and disposable domains first. Remaining addresses get MX and SMTP-level mailbox checks.
- Export the results as CSV or JSON. You now have a verdict next to every address.
- Use the Salesforce Data Import Wizard to update a custom Email Status field, matching on record ID.
- Suppress or clean the Invalid and Risky records before your next campaign.
Matching on record ID is the part people skip. Without it, you are pasting statuses back by hand and errors creep in. A custom picklist field called Email Status, updated from the verifier's export, gives every rep a clear signal on the record and makes future filtering trivial.
What each verdict means for your records
Not every questionable address should be deleted. Verdicts tell you what to keep, what to fix, and what to hold back. Here is how to map our verification engine's results to a Salesforce action.
| Verdict | What it means | Salesforce action |
|---|---|---|
| Deliverable | Mailbox exists and accepts mail | Keep and email normally |
| Risky | Catch-all, role, or disposable address | Segment out, send cautiously or not at all |
| Invalid | Syntax fails or mailbox does not exist | Mark inactive, remove from active campaigns |
| Unknown | Server did not give a clear answer | Re-verify later, do not bulk send |
Role addresses like info@ or sales@ and catch-all domains sit in the Risky bucket for a reason. They may accept mail without a real person reading it, and catch-all servers accept everything, so a Deliverable-looking result there is not a guarantee. Keep those out of cold outreach.
Should you clean leads or contacts first?
Start with whichever list you are about to email. If a cold campaign to Leads is queued this week, verify those first, since unvetted lead-form and list-buy data bounces hardest. Contacts are usually cleaner because they have engaged before, but re-verify any that have sat untouched for six months or more.
Leads often come from webforms, trade show scans, and purchased lists. Those sources carry the most typos and fake entries. Typo suggestions help here: when someone writes gmial.com or a missing letter in a company domain, you get a corrected address to review instead of a silent bounce.
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Keeping Salesforce clean over time
One cleanup helps for a quarter. A process keeps you clean for good. Verification works best as a habit tied to the moments data enters or leaves Salesforce.
- Verify at capture: check webform and lead-form addresses before they create a record.
- Verify on export: run any list through a check before it enters a campaign tool.
- Re-verify on a schedule: sweep active Contacts every three to six months.
- Track a status field: store the last verdict and date so reps can see it on the record.
The status field pays off in reporting too. You can build a Salesforce dashboard that shows the share of Deliverable, Risky, and Invalid addresses across your database. When Invalid climbs, you know a source is feeding you bad data and can fix it upstream instead of cleaning the same mess every quarter.
How often should you re-verify Salesforce emails?
Re-verify active Salesforce contacts every three to six months, and always re-check any list before a large send. B2B email decays around 2% per month, so a segment verified in January is meaningfully staler by summer. Records that have sat unused for a year should be verified before you email them again.
Clean Salesforce data is not about perfection. It is about keeping bounce rates low and your sender reputation intact so the emails you send actually land. Verify before you export, act on every verdict, and re-check on a schedule. Your delivery numbers will show the difference within a campaign or two.