How to Validate Emails at Scale in Salesforce: A Step-by-Step Guide for Admins

Prerequisites

Before we dive in, let’s establish some prerequisites for optimal email validation.

• Salesforce admin permissions.
• Access to Leads, Contacts, and any custom object with email fields.
• It’s highly recommended to have a sandbox for testing validation rules.
• Optional: a sample set of records with known invalid emails for testing.
• For advanced validation, consider your email sending volume and compliance requirements.

4 steps to validate emails with native Salesforce tools

Step 1: Set up basic email format validation

Create validation rules to catch obvious format errors before they enter your system.

• Go to Setup > search “Validation Rules”
• Select your object (Lead, Contact, or Account)
• Click New to create a validation rule
• Use a formula like NOT(REGEX(Email, “^[a-zA-Z0-9._%+-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9.-]+\\.[a-zA-Z]{2,}$"))
• Add an error message: “Please enter a valid email address format”

Pro tip: This catches basic format issues but won’t detect if the email address actually exists or can receive email.

Step 2: Identify problematic patterns with reports

Find common email issues already in your database.

• Create a new Contact or Lead report
• Add filters for email patterns you want to catch:
  • Email contains “test”
  • Email contains “noreply”
  • Email contains “example.com”
  • Email ends with “.con” (common typo for .com)
• Use the Email field and add a filter: Email NOT EQUAL TO blank
• Save as “Potential Invalid Emails” for ongoing monitoring

Step 3: Set up bounce handling (if using Marketing Cloud)

Configure bounce management to identify undeliverable addresses.

• In Marketing Cloud, navigate to Email Studio > Admin > Delivery Profiles
• Enable Bounce Management in your delivery profile
• Set bounce categories (Hard Bounce, Soft Bounce, etc.)
• Configure automatic suppression for hard bounces
• Create reports to track bounce rates by campaign and time period

Note: This only works if you're sending emails through Marketing Cloud and doesn't help with data imported from external sources.

Step 4: Manual cleanup and verification

For existing data, manually review and clean suspicious email addresses.

• Use the reports from Step 2 to identify problematic records
• Export the data to Excel for bulk editing
• Manually correct obvious typos (gmial.com → gmail.com)
• Delete or flag clearly fake addresses
• Re-import the cleaned data

Pro tip: Create a custom field like "Email_Status__c" to track validation results and maintain a history of your cleanup efforts.

Limitations of native Salesforce email validation

Salesforce's built-in tools provide basic coverage, but they have significant limitations:

• Format-only validation: Native validation rules only check if an email looks right, not if it actually works
• No real-time verification: You can't verify if an email address exists and can receive mail during data entry
• Manual cleanup required: Existing invalid data requires time-consuming manual review and correction
• Limited bulk processing: No native way to validate thousands of email addresses at once
• No ongoing hygiene: Emails can become invalid over time, but there's no automatic way to detect this
• Bounce tracking gaps: Only works if you're sending through Marketing Cloud, missing data from web forms, imports, and API integrations
• No domain validation: Can't check if the email domain exists or has proper mail servers configured
• Missing advanced patterns: Native regex can't catch sophisticated fake patterns or disposable email services

Want to validate emails like a pro? Meet Plauti Verify

Plauti Verify brings enterprise-grade email validation to Salesforce, without exports, external tools, or risky data handling. Format and validate email, phone, and address fields with real-time verification and bulk processing.

What Plauti Verify does for email validation

• Real-time verification: Check if email addresses exist and can receive mail as users enter them
• Bulk validation: Process thousands of email addresses in minutes, not hours
• Format and syntax validation: Catch typos, format errors, and invalid patterns automatically
• Domain verification: Validate that email domains exist and have proper mail server configuration
• Disposable email detection: Identify and flag temporary or throwaway email services
• Role account detection: Flag generic addresses like info@, admin@, or noreply@ that may not be monitored
• Validation date tracking: Store the date and time an email was last validated in a custom Date/Time field. This lets you see when an address was last checked and when it’s time to revalidate older records or confirm if a contact still work at that company.
• Integration ready: Works with web-to-lead, data imports, API integrations, and manual data entry
• Confidence scoring: Get detailed validation results with confidence levels for decision-making
• 100% native Salesforce: All processing stays inside your org with full audit trails

The 15-minute setup guide

Step 0: Test in a sandbox

• Install Plauti Verify in a sandbox from AppExchange
• Run validation on a small sample (e.g., 50-100 email addresses)
• Review validation results and confidence scores
• Test real-time validation on a web form or manual data entry

Step 1: Install and configure permissions (5 minutes)

• Install Plauti Verify from AppExchange in your production org
• Assign the Plauti Verify permission set to admins and users who need access
• Create a custom Date/Time field on the objects where you want to track the last validation date
• Open the Plauti Verify app from the App Launcher
• In PV Setup, map:
  • Your email fields (e.g., Email)
  • The custom Date/Time field that will store the validation date
• Configure your validation settings and map fields to store status code, status message, and validation date

Step 2: Set up real-time validation (5 minutes)

• In the Plauti Verify app, choose your objects (Leads, Contacts, Accounts)
• Enable real-time validation for email fields
• Decide when validation should run:
  • On create
  • On update
  • Both on create and update
• Configure auto process options based on returned status codes. For example:
  • If status = “Invalid” -> clear the email field, or set a custom status field, or add the records to a “Needs new email” queue
  • If status = “Risky” -> do not clear the email, but flag it for manual review
• Choose when auto process should run:
  • When Job Results are in (for batch validation)
  • Directly when incoming records are validated (real-time or near real-time)
• Test with a sample record to confirm that:
  • The status codes are set as expected
  • The validation date is written to your custom Date/Time field
  • Auto process action run correctly

Step 3: Process existing invalid emails (5 minutes)

• Use Plauti Verify's bulk validation feature
• Select records with email addresses (use reports from your native cleanup)
• Choose validation options (Email, Phone, Address). Most of the time you want to pick Email)
• Run bulk validation job
• When job results come in:
  • Use auto process to act on status codes at scale (for example, clear clearly invalid emails, or mark them for follow-up)
  • Review a sample of records for quality control
• Set up scheduled jobs or flows if you want recurring validation for specific segments (for example, key accounts or active customers)

New! Combine Plauti Verify results with Plauti Manipulate for bulk actions based on validation status codes, or use Plauti Assign to route records with invalid emails to data stewards for manual review.

Want to see Plauti Verify in action? Check out the dedicated Plauti Verify demo hub to explore email validation features below.

Plauti Verify

Easily validate every email

Plauti Verify

Easily validate every address

Plauti Verify

Easily validate every phone number

Get started

Ready to stop bouncing emails and start reaching real people? Try Plauti Verify in your sandbox first, validate a sample of your email data, and see the difference clean email data makes for your campaigns.

Want to see Plauti Verify in action? Check out the dedicated Plauti Verify Demo HUB to explore more features.