Export your contacts from Apollo as a CSV, then run the file through an email verification tool before you sequence anyone. Drop the CSV into a free verifier, review the Deliverable, Risky, Invalid, and Unknown verdicts, and sequence only Deliverable addresses. This protects your sender reputation and keeps bounce rates low.
Why verify an Apollo export before sequencing?
Apollo pulls emails from many sources, and some are guesses, old, or catch-all addresses. Sending to them raises bounces and hurts your domain reputation. Verifying the export first removes invalid and risky addresses, so your sequences reach real inboxes and mailbox providers keep trusting your sending domain.
Apollo does not guarantee deliverability. The email field often reflects a confidence score, not a confirmed mailbox. Contacts can sit in the database for months or years. People change jobs. Companies get acquired. Domains lapse. Any of these turns a good address into a hard bounce. Mailbox providers watch your bounce rate closely, and once it climbs past 2%, they start throttling or filtering your mail. One careless send can undo weeks of domain warmup. Verifying first is cheap insurance.
How to export emails from Apollo
Start in Apollo with the exact list or search results you want to reach. Resist the urge to export everything. A focused list is faster to verify, easier to personalize, and produces better reply rates. Pull only the contacts that match your ideal customer profile, then move to the export step.
- Open your saved list or run a people search in Apollo.
- Select the contacts you want, or select the entire list.
- Click Export and choose CSV. Include the email column plus any personalization fields you need, like first name, company, and title.
- Save the file locally and do not import it into your sequence tool yet.
How to verify your Apollo CSV
Now clean the file before it touches your sequence tool. You do not need to install software or sign up for anything. A browser-based verifier reads the CSV locally, so your prospect data never leaves your machine. That privacy matters when the list contains named contacts and company details.
- Open the Free Email Verifier and drop your Apollo CSV onto the page. The file is parsed in your browser and never uploaded.
- A local safety scan flags bad syntax, duplicates, and disposable domains instantly, without spending any quota.
- The remaining addresses get MX-record and SMTP-level mailbox checks from our verification engine.
- Review the verdicts, apply any typo suggestions, and export the clean list as CSV or JSON.
What each verdict means and what to do
Every address comes back with one of four verdicts. Here is how to treat each one before you build your sequence.
| Verdict | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Deliverable | The mailbox exists and accepts mail | Sequence it |
| Risky | Catch-all, role, or disposable address | Hold or send with caution |
| Invalid | The mailbox does not exist or the syntax is broken | Remove it |
| Unknown | The server gave no clear answer | Retry later or skip |
Do not treat a Deliverable result as a promise that every message lands. It confirms the mailbox exists and accepts mail. Deliverability still depends on your content, your domain reputation, and your sending volume. What verification does is remove the addresses that guarantee a bounce, which is the single biggest factor you control before the first send.
Ready to clean your Apollo export? Drop the CSV into the Free Email Verifier and check up to 10 addresses a day with no signup, or enter just an email to raise the limit to 100 a day. No password, no card. If you would rather skip list building and cold outreach entirely, Synthisia runs done-for-you lead generation and books meetings for you.
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Which contacts should you sequence?
Sequence Deliverable addresses only. Drop every Invalid address, since it will bounce. Hold Risky addresses out of cold sequences, because catch-all and role accounts inflate bounce and complaint rates. Retry Unknown addresses in a day or two, and if they stay Unknown, leave them out of your main send.
Match each verified verdict back to your Apollo contacts using the email address as the key. Push only the Deliverable rows into your sequence. Keep Risky and Unknown rows in a separate file for a slower, more careful touch later, maybe a single plain-text email rather than a full sequence. This one habit keeps your bounce rate under 2% and your domain reputation intact.
Common Apollo data problems to catch
A handful of patterns show up in nearly every Apollo export. Knowing them helps you read the verdicts faster.
- Guessed patterns. Some addresses are built as [email protected] and never confirmed. Verification catches the ones that do not exist.
- Stale contacts. The person left the company. The domain still resolves, but their mailbox is gone, so it returns Invalid.
- Catch-all domains. The server accepts every address, so a clean-looking result is actually Risky. Send to these with caution or not at all.
- Duplicates. The same person shows up across several lists. The local scan strips them out before they cost you any quota.
Keep your Apollo lists clean over time
Verification is not a one-time task. Re-verify a list if it has been sitting for more than 30 days, because B2B data decays fast. Roughly 2% of business contacts change jobs every month, which adds up to more than a fifth of any list going stale within a year. Build a simple habit: export from Apollo, verify, sequence the Deliverable contacts, and re-check before every major campaign. Your open and reply rates reflect the quality of the list, not just the copy.