Email Validator: Weed Out Dead Addresses Before You Send

Paste a list or upload a CSV, get back which addresses are worth sending to, and see the result as a dot on the lead so nobody blasts a dead list again.

The Email Validator checks whether the addresses on a list can actually receive mail, before your dealership sends to them, and records the result where the rest of the CRM can see it. That is the one sentence version. The dock tile that opens it reads Catch bad emails early, and early is the operative word: a dead address caught before a blast costs nothing, while a dead address discovered by a bounce has already told the receiving servers something about your store's sending habits.

Inside the tool, the page is titled Email Verification Tool. There is a List Name field, a box that takes one address per line, and a CSV File upload for a list that came from a spreadsheet. Below that is Email Lookup History, a table with Date, List Name, Pulled By, Total Number and a Report Link for each run, so the internet director can see that the pre-owned inquiry list was checked last Tuesday by the BDC manager and open the report without running it again.

It is a separate, purpose built tool, not a checkbox on the composer, and it has a sibling: the Phone Validator does the same job for numbers. Both live under Marketing Tools with Bulk Email, Email Automation, Bulk Texting, Text Automation, Texting Chatbots and Voicemail Drops, and the full features list shows where they sit among everything else.

A store's used car manager hands the BDC manager a spreadsheet of eight hundred customers who bought pre-owned units over the past three years and asks for a trade appraisal event email. Half of those addresses were typed at a desk by a salesperson in a hurry, and some of the customers have changed jobs, changed providers or stopped using the address they gave. Sending to all eight hundred blind means a wave of bounces on the store's sending domain right before the event.

So the BDC manager opens the CRM, clicks Marketing Tools on the dock, then Email Validator. She names the list, uploads the CSV, and runs it. The results come back as a report she can open from the Report Link in the history table, and the addresses that are not going to deliver are plain to see. She builds the campaign list from the good addresses, opens Bulk Email, and sends the event invitation to a list that will actually arrive. The addresses that failed go back to the salespeople as a to do: call the customer, confirm the address, fix the record.

The same scene plays out in miniature every day on individual leads. A lead detail page carries a validity dot for the email address, so a salesperson who is about to send a vehicle by email sees at a glance whether the address has been checked and what it came back as. If the dot says the address is bad, he asks for a better one on the phone rather than sending into a void and waiting for a reply that will never come.

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The tool is on the dock. The bottom taskbar in LeadLocate CRM carries My Office, Marketing Tools, Referral Program, Design Studio, My Inventory, SecureWebX, Reports, Feedback, More Options and Jax. Click Marketing Tools and the Email Validator is one of eight tiles, the one that reads Catch bad emails early, two tiles from the Phone Validator that reads Weed out dead numbers.

The results also live on the lead. Validation results are shown as validity dots on the lead record, next to the email address and the phone number, so the person working the lead sees the outcome of a check that a manager ran on a list without opening the tool. That is the part most dealers do not expect: the list tool and the lead view share one result, which is what makes a validation useful for the salesperson as well as the marketer.

On the phone, the LeadLocate mobile app shows the lead record with the same information, so a salesperson on the lot knows whether an address is worth using before he taps the email composer. The list tool itself is a desktop job, which fits how it is used: a manager with a spreadsheet, not a salesperson between customers.

A run produces a report, reachable from the Report Link in the Email Lookup History, that tells the store which addresses on the list are deliverable and which are not. The value is in the second group. An address that fails is a record to fix, and the fix is usually a phone call, which is a reason to talk to a customer that a salesperson can use. An address that passes goes onto the campaign list with confidence.

The history table is the audit. Date, List Name, Pulled By and Total Number answer the questions a manager asks a month later: was this list checked, when, by whom, how big was it. Lists drift. A list that was clean at the start of the year has dead addresses in it by the end, and the history shows how long it has been since the last run so the manager knows when to run it again.

Validation draws on lookup credits, shown as a Credits figure on the page and topped up from My LeadLocate, the account portal, so a manager knows before a large run whether the whole list will be checked. The tool checks addresses; it does not touch leads. Every lead delivered to your store is delivered whether or not its email address validates, and a lead with a bad address is still a lead with a phone number, which the what to expect from car sales leads page explains is often the better channel anyway.

The direct replacement is a standalone email verification service: a separate account, a separate login, an export from the CRM, an upload to the service, a download of the results, and an import back. Every one of those steps is a place where a list gets stale or a column gets misaligned, and every one of them is a reason the check does not get done. Having the validator two clicks from the send button, sharing the contact records, is what makes the check routine rather than occasional.

The cost of a dead list is paid in reputation, and reputation is paid back slowly. Receiving servers watch how much of a sender's mail bounces. A store that blasts eight hundred addresses and bounces two hundred has told those servers something, and the next blast, the drip step, and even the one to one reply from a salesperson carry that history. Email domain authentication gives a store its own domain to build a reputation on; the validator keeps that reputation from being spent on addresses that were never going to deliver.

The Email Validator is part of every LeadLocate plan, from CRM Only at $199 a month to the lead plans, with lookup credits managed from the account portal. The pricing page lists what each plan includes.

Email compliance for a dealership comes down to sending to people who asked and being able to show it. A validated list supports that in two ways. First, a bad address is a signal that the record is wrong, and a wrong record is how a store ends up emailing someone who never asked. Fixing the address with the customer on the phone is also the moment to confirm they want to hear from the store, and to note it. Second, the lookup history is a record that the store checked its list before sending, with a date and a name attached, which is the kind of ordinary diligence that reads well when a question is asked later.

The validator is about hygiene, not consent. It says whether an address can receive mail, not whether the customer wants it. Consent lives in the lead record, in the communications log that shows what the customer asked for and when, and in the campaign lists a manager maintains by removing anyone who asks to stop. For texting, the rules are stricter and the tools are different, covered on the do not call scrub and blacklist page.

There is nothing to turn on. The Email Validator is part of LeadLocate CRM from the day the account is created and appears under Marketing Tools for every user with access to the dock. The first run takes a list and a name. If the store's contacts are not in the CRM yet, contact import brings the spreadsheet in first, and the validator can be run on the imported list before any campaign list is built from it.

Lookup credits are managed by the Master Administrator from My LeadLocate, and the Credits figure on the validator page shows the balance before a run. Our team walks through the tool on the onboarding call, and the pre-recorded live demo shows a list going in and a report coming out if you want to see it before you sign up.

Pair it with Bulk Email every time a list is older than a few months, and with Email Automation before a list enters a drip, because a drip sends to the same bad address five times instead of once. Pair it with the Phone Validator so a list is checked on both channels in the same sitting. Pair it with email domain authentication, which is the other half of keeping the store's sending reputation clean.

Pair it with contact import for any list arriving from outside the CRM, and with the lead detail view, where the validity dot turns a manager's list run into information a salesperson uses on the next call. And pair it with the Reports dashboard on the dock, where email activity by user and by day shows whether cleaner lists are earning more replies, which is the number the internet director actually wants.

Is the Email Validator free with LeadLocate?

The tool is part of every plan, from CRM Only up. Lookups draw on credits that the Master Administrator tops up from My LeadLocate, and the Credits figure on the validator page shows the balance before a run.

How do I check a list of email addresses?

Open Marketing Tools on the dock, choose Email Validator, give the list a name, then paste addresses one per line or upload a CSV file. The results are reachable from the Report Link in the Email Lookup History table below the form.

Do validation results show on the lead?

Yes. Validity dots on the lead record show the outcome for the email address and the phone number, so a salesperson sees whether an address has been checked without opening the tool.

Does validating change which leads I receive?

No. Every lead delivered to your store is delivered regardless of whether its address validates. The validator is a list hygiene tool for your outbound email, not a filter on your leads.

How often should a list be validated?

Before any bulk send or drip on a list that has not been checked in a few months. The Email Lookup History shows the date of the last run for each list name, so a manager can see how long it has been.

Is there a matching tool for phone numbers?

Yes. The Phone Validator is a separate tile under Marketing Tools that takes the same one per line paste or CSV and keeps its own lookup history.

The Email Validator is part of every LeadLocate plan, month to month. See a list go in, a report come out, and the validity dot appear on the lead.

Prefer to talk right now? Call or text 844-376-2274.