Introduction

Need a simple, efficient method to perform email validations on a large scale quickly? Welcome to Bulk Validations!

Our Bulk Validations feature provides a simple, easy-to-follow set of steps for validating a large number of email addresses and retrieving the results quickly. From there, you can take proactive steps to protect the reputation of your sending domain(s) and your IP(s) by removing the invalid email addresses from your mailing lists or contacts. This due diligence, in turn, aids in maintaining an excellent quality of recipients, as well as minimizing bounce and suppression events. We're all about optimizing your sending to help enable the full range of your success!

How to Use Bulk Validations & Retrieve the Results

Existing contact list

To validate an existing contact list (already uploaded to your account), go to Contacts → Contact lists and choose the list you want to validate. Once done, click 'Validate'.

Enter a name for your validation and click ‘Save’. Then confirm that you accept the cost of the validation by checking the box and pressing 'Validate'.

The newly validated list will appear under 'Contact lists' on your Validations page. 

Keep in mind that the validation takes some processing time, depending on the size of the list. You'll see the display demonstrating the validations as being in progress. Once complete, just click 'Show details'.

Uploading a contact list

To validate a contact list, go to Contacts → Validations and click on 'Upload list'.

Enter a name for your validation, then click ‘Save’.

Once this is done, import your contact list via CSV file and click 'Continue'.

Note: Please be aware that CSV file imports are limited to a maximum file size of 20 MB.

The next step is to confirm that you accept the cost of the validation by checking the box and pressing 'Validate'.

Keep in mind that the validation takes some processing time, depending on the size of the CSV file. You'll see the display demonstrating the validations as being in progress. Once complete, just click 'Show details'.

How to export the validation results

For a more detailed overview of the validation result, download the CSV or JSON file from the 'cogwheel' icon.

Note: Validations stores the results for a bulk validation job for 7 days. After that period the results are deleted, but the summary view will remain.

Validation results & risk score explained

RESULT

• Deliverable: An address that has a high likelihood of being legitimate and has passed all validation checks.
• Undeliverable: An address that is confirmed invalid and should be discarded from a list or corrected.
• Do Not Send: An address that may damage the sender reputation if messages are sent.
• Catch-All: The validity of the recipient address cannot be determined as the provider accepts any and all email regardless of whether or not the recipient’s mailbox exists.
• Unknown: The validity of the recipient's address cannot be determined for a variety of potential reasons. Please refer to the associated ‘reason’ array returned in the response.
   

RISK SCORE

• Low: Likely a legitimate address and sending has a low likelihood of damaging reputation if the address has been obtained with customer consent.
• Medium: Addresses that we cannot validate as legitimate but do not have any identifiable issues. These addresses are often role addresses, catch-all domains, or the domain isn’t on our list of trusted domains.
• High: An address that has a high risk of damaging sender reputation.
   

CSV/JSON export explained

Field Explanation

• address: Email address being validated
• did_you_mean: (Optional) Null if nothing, however, if a potential typo is made to the domain, the closest suggestion is provided
• is_disposable_address: If the domain is in a list of disposable email addresses, this will be appropriately categorized
• is_role_address: Checks the mailbox portion of the email if it matches a specific role type (‘admin’, ‘sales’, ‘webmaster’)
• reason: List of potential reasons why a specific validation may be unsuccessful.
• result: Either deliverable, undeliverable, catch_all or unknown. Please see the Result Types section below for details on each result type.
• risk: high, medium, low, or unknown. Depending on the evaluation of all aspects of the given email.
• root_address: (Optional) If the address is an alias; this will contain the root email address with alias parts removed.
• is_bot: Indicating potential bot activity.
• engagement_behavior (available for custom subscriptions only): Metrics and characteristics that indicate how a recipient interacts with the emails.
   
  • Bot: Excessive clicks detected from the recipient within a 30-day period, indicating potential bot activity.
  • Complainer: The recipient has marked emails as spam or submitted complaints during the past 30 days.
  • High Engager: The recipient has frequently interacted with emails (clicked or opened) within a 30-day period, excluding automatic opens.
  • Engager: The recipient has interacted with some emails (opened or clicked) but not enough to be classified as a High Engager.
  • Disengaged: The recipient has only received emails without any recorded interactions (no opens or clicks).
  • No Data: Engagement data is unavailable because the email address was validated using a 'provider lookup' within the last 30 days.
     

Reason Explanation 

• unknown_provider: The MX provider is an unknown provider.
• no_mx / No MX host found: The recipient domain does not have a valid MX host. 
• high_risk_domain: Information obtained about the domain indicates it is high risk to send email to.
• subdomain_mailer: The recipient domain is identified to be a subdomain and is not on our exception list. Subdomains are considered to be high risk as many spammers and malicious actors utilize them.
• immature_domain: The domain is newly created based on the WHOIS information.
• tld_risk: The domain has a top-level-domain (TLD) that has been identified as high risk.
• mailbox_does_not_exist: The mailbox is undeliverable or does not exist.
• mailbox_is_disposable_address: The mailbox has been identified to be a disposable address. Disposable addresses are temporary, generally one-time use, addresses.
• mailbox_is_role_address: The mailbox is a role-based address (ex. support@…, marketing@…).
• mailbox_quota_exceeded: The mailbox associated with the email address is full and cannot accept more mail.
• catch_all: The validity of the recipient address cannot be determined as the provider accepts any and all email regardless of whether or not the recipient’s mailbox exists.
• long_term_disposable: The mailbox has been identified as a long-term disposable address. Long-term disposable addresses can be quickly and easily deactivated by users, but they will not expire without user intervention.
• failed custom grammar check: The mailbox failed our custom ESP local-part grammar check.

• smtp_error: This error occurs whenever one of our nodes has been block or grey listed or if our Validations system has trouble talking to our SMTP lookup system (Scope). 

• smtp_timeout: The time it took to talk to a given server exceeded our SLA, so we terminated the connection. 

• smtp_connection_error: This is usually our error and occurs when something goes wrong mid-connection. 

Usage-based Pricing

To find out how much it will cost to validate an email list, please check our Bulk Validations pricing guide.

How to give or remove access to a shared account

If you plan to grant or remove access to this feature to a shared account, you can do so from the account sharing page.

Simply click on “Manage → Edit”.

Then check or uncheck the Bulk Validation box and update the access.

For more information about account sharing, check out our guide. 

Things to Keep in Mind

For successful implementation with your particular use case, make sure to remember the following:

• A maximum of five jobs can be processed per account at any given time.
• The processing rate of lists can vary depending on list size and system load.
• Validations stores the results for a bulk validation job for 7 days.
• Validation counts are calculated per account, including all subaccounts. This means that the validation total applies to the entire account, regardless of where it is accessed from.
• You are responsible for filtering the results depending on your level of risk tolerance. The risk score provided is there to aid in your filtering decisions. For example, some users may tolerate sending to deliverable, yet high-risk recipients while other users may only tolerate sending to deliverable, low-risk recipients.

Highlights & Features

In summary, Bulk Validations helps protect your sending domain and IP reputation by proactively maintaining an excellent quality of recipients. Easily validate a large number of recipients in minutes and stop validating recipients one at a time. Bulk Validations provides the following:

• CSV/JSON Formatted Results - Downloadable CSV and JSON formats are available for bulk validated email addresses.
• Fast, Accurate Results – As an ESP, Mailjet leverages billions of emails sent through the platform to provide unrivaled accuracy with GDPR-compliant data fed to the validation service in real-time.
• Unrivaled Performance - Process millions of records in hours--not days or weeks.
• Email Risk Scores – Mailjet provides a risk assessment along with a detailed explanation to provide clarity around the risk level of an email address.
• Disposable Mailbox Detection – Our validation service identifies disposable mailboxes commonly used for fraudulent purposes. We’ll tell you whether the address is on a known disposable mailbox provider, and you can choose how to proceed based on your own risk tolerance level.
• Role-Based Address Detection – Easily identify and weed out role-based addresses which can drive down engagement metrics.
• Typo Detection – The validation service will spellcheck and provide recommendations on detected typo errors to ensure you are capturing validated emails.
• Alias Identification - Alias addresses will be identified and their root addresses will be returned if any identifiable alias characters are submitted by the user.