Email Validation in SuperSend

Purpose

Email validation checks whether an email address is likely to be deliverable before you send to it. This article explains how validation works, when to use it, what it costs, and how to interpret validation results.

Why Validate Emails

Sending to invalid or non-existent email addresses generates hard bounces. High bounce rates damage your sender reputation and can get your mailboxes flagged or suspended by email providers. Most well-maintained lists have some percentage of invalid addresses — people change jobs, companies merge, domains expire.

Validating before you send keeps bounces low, protects your sending reputation, and makes your campaign metrics more meaningful (you're measuring engagement from deliverable addresses, not wasted sends).

How Validation Works

SuperSend's email validation checks:

• Format validity — is the email address formatted correctly?
• Domain validity — does the sending domain exist and have active MX records?
• Mailbox existence — does the specific mailbox exist at the domain? (This is done without actually sending an email, via SMTP verification.)
• Risk signals — is the address a catch-all (accepts all mail), a disposable address, or a known problematic address?

Validation is not 100% definitive — some addresses can only be verified by actually attempting a send — but it eliminates the obvious invalids and catches a significant portion of risky addresses.

When to Validate

At CSV upload: The last step of the CSV upload flow is an email validation prompt. If you have credits available, validate your list during import. This is the most efficient time.

Before a large campaign launch: If you have a large list that wasn't validated at upload, run a batch validation before activating the campaign.

For lists older than 6 months: Email addresses decay over time as people change jobs. Lists that are 6–12 months old should be re-validated before reusing them.

Credits

Validation costs 1 credit per email address. Credits are consumed from your organization's global credit pool.

Check your balance: Admin → Global Credits tab.

Purchase more credits: Contact SuperSend or upgrade to a plan with higher credit allocation.

Validate During CSV Upload

When you upload a CSV:

1. After field mapping, the upload modal shows: total contacts, available credits, and estimated validation cost.
2. Check Validate all emails (only enabled if you have sufficient credits).
3. Click Upload.

SuperSend validates the emails immediately after import. The contact list will show validation status on each contact.

Validate Existing Contacts

If contacts are already in a campaign without validation:

1. Open the campaign → Contacts tab.
2. Look for a Validate button or bulk action option.
3. Select the contacts you want to validate.
4. Confirm the credit cost and run validation.

Understanding Validation Results

After validation, each contact has a validation status:

Catch-all addresses are common in enterprise companies — they accept any email sent to the domain. This means validation can't tell you if the specific mailbox exists. Most catch-all sends do reach someone, but bounce rates are higher than validated addresses.

The "Skip Incomplete Emails" Campaign Setting

This is related to validation but different. Campaign Settings → Sending Rules → Skip Incomplete Emails controls whether contacts with missing template variables are skipped at send time. It doesn't use credits — it's a content completeness check, not a deliverability check.

Both can be relevant simultaneously: validate for deliverability, and enable Skip Incomplete Emails to avoid sending Hi {{first_name}} to contacts whose names are blank.

Expected Result

Your campaign contact list has validation statuses, and clearly invalid addresses are removed or suppressed before sending starts.

Troubleshooting

• Issue: Campaign is skipping more contacts than expected.

Fix: Check the validation status of contacts — "Invalid" and potentially "Risky" contacts may be excluded based on the campaign's list health settings. Campaign Settings → Sending Rules → List Health Level controls which risk levels are included.

• Issue: You validated emails but the bounce rate is still high.

Fix: Catch-all addresses can still bounce after validation. If a significant portion of your list is catch-all, expect some bounce rate. Also verify your sending domain's DNS records are correct — a misconfigured DMARC or SPF record can cause bounces unrelated to address validity.

Related Articles

• Upload Contacts via CSV
• Contacts Overview

Updated on: 17/03/2026