Shape Email Validation lets you verify email addresses in bulk directly from your CRM. Whether you are cleaning an older database, preparing a large email marketing campaign, importing contacts from another system, or simply trying to improve the quality of your data, Email Validation makes it easy to identify which email addresses are more likely to be deliverable.
You can validate a few selected records, an entire list or audience, or incorporate Email Validation Status into automated workflows using Shape Triggers.
The results are stored directly on each record, giving your team a clearer picture of your reachable email audience without exporting your database to a separate email verification service.
What Is Email Validation?
Email validation, sometimes called email verification, checks an email address to determine whether it appears capable of receiving email.
Email data does not stay accurate forever. People change jobs, switch email providers, abandon old inboxes, mistype addresses, or enter incorrect information on forms. Even a database that started with clean contact information can accumulate outdated or invalid email addresses over time.
Shape Email Validation checks selected email addresses and assigns a validation status that can be viewed and used throughout the CRM.
Email addresses can return the following statuses:
- Deliverable: The email address appears valid and able to receive email.
- Risky: The address may be deliverable, but there are factors that make successful delivery less certain.
- Undeliverable: The address is unlikely to successfully receive email.
- Unknown: There was not enough information available to confidently determine deliverability.
- Not Validated: Email validation has not yet been performed on the address.
The validation result is stored directly on the record so it can be viewed, filtered, reported on, and used in Shape automations.
Why Should You Validate Email Addresses?
A large contact database is only valuable if you can actually reach the people in it.
Invalid and outdated email addresses can create unnecessary bounces, waste marketing sends, make campaign reporting less useful, and potentially affect your email sender reputation.
Validating your email list helps you better understand the quality of your database before you send.
Improve Email Deliverability
Email providers evaluate many signals when deciding how to handle incoming mail. Consistently sending email to invalid addresses can contribute to poor sending performance.
Cleaning your email list and reducing unnecessary bounces can support healthier email deliverability over time.
Get More Value From Email Marketing
A database containing 50,000 email addresses does not necessarily mean you have a reachable audience of 50,000 people.
Email Validation helps you understand how much of your database appears deliverable before launching a campaign.
This gives you a more accurate picture of your real marketing audience and can make metrics such as delivery rate, open rate, click rate, and response rate more meaningful.
Clean Older or Imported CRM Data
Bulk email validation can be particularly valuable when working with:
- Older lead databases
- Past customers
- Imported CRM contacts
- Purchased or transferred books of business
- Records migrated from another system
- Large marketing audiences
- Contacts that have not been emailed recently
Before sending a large campaign to older data, validating the email addresses can help identify records that should be reviewed or excluded.
Build Smarter Marketing Automations
Because Email Validation Status can be used with Shape filters and Triggers, email verification does not have to be a one-time database cleanup project.
You can use validation results to help:
- Suppress undeliverable addresses from future email campaigns
- Create tasks to obtain updated contact information
- Notify users when an email address is invalid
- Route risky or unknown addresses for additional review
- Build marketing audiences containing validated email addresses
- Change workflows based on the quality of the contact information
This allows Email Validation to become part of your ongoing CRM data management strategy.
How to Validate Email Addresses in Shape
Email Validation is available through Bulk Actions on Shape list pages.
You can validate individual records, a group of selected records, or a large list or audience.
Open a List Page
Navigate to the Shape list containing the records you want to validate.
For example, you might validate:
- All Leads
- A filtered group of leads
- Past customers
- Referral partners
- A specific marketing audience
- Records imported from another CRM
If you only want to validate a particular segment of your database, apply your filters before selecting the records.
Select the Records to Validate
Use the checkboxes on the list page to select the records you want to validate.
For larger audiences, use the available list selection options to select the records on the current page or the larger list.
This makes it possible to validate anything from a handful of email addresses to a large CRM audience without exporting your data.
Select Email Validation
Once your records are selected, click Bulk Actions and choose Email Validation.
Before anything is processed, Shape displays a confirmation screen showing:
- The number of email addresses being validated
- The current validation rate
- The estimated total charge
- The payment method that will be used
Nothing is processed until you confirm.
Confirm the Validation
Confirm the action to begin validating the selected email addresses.
Shape will process the selected records and automatically save the resulting Email Validation Status to each record.
If there is no payment method available for the account, Shape will prompt you to update your billing information before continuing.
Validation usage is also recorded within Billing & Transactions.
How to View Email Validation Results
Once an email address has been validated, the result becomes part of the contact’s record and can be viewed throughout Shape.
View Email Validation on List Pages
Shape displays the Email Validation Status alongside the email address on supported list pages.
This gives users a quick way to identify the quality of an email address while reviewing a larger audience without opening every record individually.
View Email Validation on a Record
Within the individual record, Shape displays the current Email Validation Status.
Additional validation information may also be available, including:
- Validation risk
- Last validation date
This gives users working directly with the contact immediate visibility into the quality of the email address.
How to Filter by Email Validation Status
Email Validation Status is available as a filter within Shape.
This makes it easy to build CRM and marketing audiences based on email quality.
For example, you could filter for Email Validation Status = Deliverable to create an audience of contacts with deliverable email addresses before launching a campaign.
You could also filter for Email Validation Status = Undeliverable to identify records that may need updated contact information.
Other useful email validation segments can include:
- Risky email addresses requiring review
- Unknown email addresses
- Records that have not yet been validated
- Deliverable contacts from a particular lead source
- Deliverable past customers
- Deliverable leads created during a specific time period
Because the validation result is stored directly in Shape, you can combine Email Validation Status with your other CRM fields instead of maintaining separate email-cleaning spreadsheets or lists.
Using Email Validation With Shape Triggers
Email Validation Status can also be incorporated into Shape Triggers, allowing you to automate workflows based on email quality.
For example:
Request Updated Contact Information
If: Email Validation Status = Undeliverable
Then: Create a task for the assigned user to obtain an updated email address.
Suppress Invalid Emails From Marketing
If: Email Validation Status = Undeliverable
Then: Remove the record from an email marketing workflow or prevent additional email communication based on your organization’s workflow.
Review Risky or Unknown Emails
If: Email Validation Status = Risky or Unknown
Then: Route the record into a data review workflow.
These automations are especially helpful for organizations managing large contact databases where manually reviewing every email address would be impractical.
Who Can Perform Bulk Email Validation?
Bulk Email Validation is controlled through Shape Role Permissions.
Administrators can manage access under Settings › Role Permissions › Feature Authorization › Bulk Email Validation.
Administrator, Director, and Manager roles are generally configured with this permission by default. Other roles can be granted access when appropriate.
This allows organizations to control which users can initiate bulk email validation and its associated usage charges.
When Should You Validate Your Email List?
There is no single email validation schedule that works for every organization. In general, validation is most useful when you are about to rely on a group of email addresses for marketing or follow-up and are unsure about the quality or age of the data.
Consider validating email addresses when:
- Importing a large database from another CRM
- Preparing to email older leads
- Launching a past customer campaign
- Taking over a transferred book of business
- Re-engaging contacts who have not been emailed recently
- Cleaning a database with a high number of bounced emails
- Building a new long-term nurture campaign
- Preparing a large audience for an important email campaign
For frequently changing databases, filters and Triggers can also make email validation part of your ongoing data-quality process.
Frequently Asked Questions About Email Validation
Can I validate email addresses in bulk?+
Yes. Select the records you want to validate from a Shape list page and choose Email Validation from Bulk Actions. You can use list selection tools to validate larger audiences as well.
Does Email Validation automatically delete invalid email addresses?+
No. The validation result is stored on the record so your organization can determine how the contact should be handled.
Can I filter records based on email validation results?+
Yes. Email Validation Status is available as a filter, allowing you to create audiences based on statuses such as Deliverable, Risky, Undeliverable, Unknown, or Not Validated.
Can Email Validation be used in automations?+
Yes. Email Validation Status is supported within Shape Triggers, allowing you to create workflows based on validation results.
How much does Email Validation cost?+
Email Validation is usage-based. Shape displays the current validation rate, number of records selected, and estimated total charge on the confirmation screen before you approve the validation.
Why should I validate emails before a large campaign?+
Validating an older or unfamiliar email list can help identify undeliverable addresses before sending. This can reduce unnecessary bounces, provide a more accurate picture of your reachable audience, and support healthier email deliverability.
Keep Your Email Database Clean
Email marketing works best when the data behind it is accurate.
Shape Email Validation gives you a simple way to verify email addresses and clean your CRM data without exporting contacts, uploading them to a separate email verification tool, and importing the results back into Shape.
Select your audience, run Email Validation, and Shape stores the results directly on each record.
From there, you can filter audiences, build automations, identify contacts that need updated information, and send campaigns with a clearer understanding of who you can actually reach.