Not sure if your email list is helping or hurting your results? You’re not alone. Plenty of marketers and ops folks use validation tools but get stuck at the “now what?” stage. If you’re using Debounce to clean your email lists, knowing how to actually export, dissect, and act on those validation reports is the real difference between guesswork and real improvement. This guide is for people who want to get their hands dirty, make decisions based on facts, and stop wasting time on emails that go nowhere.
Let’s get into the nuts and bolts: how to pull your Debounce results and what to do with them—minus the fluff.
Step 1: Exporting Your Debounce Validation Report
First things first: let’s get your data out of Debounce. You can’t do much until you’ve got the raw report in your hands.
How to export
- Log in to your Debounce account.
- Go to the “Validations” dashboard.
Find the recent file or list you validated. Each job will have a status, date, and a few action buttons. - Look for the “Download” or “Export” button.
Usually, there’s a CSV or XLSX export option next to your completed job. - Choose your export format.
CSV is almost always your safest bet—easy to open in Excel, Google Sheets, or even import into other tools. - Double-check your download.
Open it up to make sure it’s not empty or garbled. Sometimes bulk downloads can glitch, so don’t skip this.
Pro tip:
If you get stuck or can’t find your file, check for any browser pop-up blockers or try a different browser. Debounce’s download system isn’t perfect.
Step 2: Understanding What’s in the Report
Don’t just look at your report as a pile of email addresses. Debounce spits out a bunch of columns, and not all of them are equally useful.
Key columns to focus on
- Email Address – The obvious one.
- Status – Usually “Valid,” “Invalid,” “Disposable,” “Catch-all,” “Unknown,” etc.
- Reason/Details – Sometimes there’s an extra column that tells you why an email failed.
- Suggestion (if present) – Sometimes Debounce will suggest a corrected address if it spots a typo.
Ignore columns like “Job ID,” “File Source,” or timestamps unless you’re running lots of jobs and need to keep things straight.
What the statuses really mean
- Valid: Safe to send. But remember—“Valid” doesn’t mean that person is engaged, just that the mailbox exists.
- Invalid: Don’t send. You’ll bounce, hurt your sender reputation, and waste money.
- Disposable: Temporary emails (like mailinator, temp-mail). Think twice before emailing—these rarely convert.
- Catch-All: The domain accepts all emails, so Debounce can’t verify if the exact address is deliverable. Dicey territory.
- Unknown: Something went wrong (maybe the server timed out). Treat with caution.
Honest take:
Don’t get too hung up on “Catch-All” and “Unknown.” If you’re risk-averse, suppress them. If you’re desperate to maximize reach, maybe send—but keep an eye on bounce rates.
Step 3: Sorting and Filtering for Action
Time to do some basic triage. You don’t need fancy BI tools—Excel or Google Sheets work fine here.
Quick filtering workflow
- Open your CSV/XLSX file.
- Apply filters to the “Status” column.
- Break down your list:
- Valid: Keep these.
- Invalid: Suppress or delete.
- Disposable: Up to you, but most people suppress.
- Catch-All/Unknown: Decide your risk tolerance.
Pro tip:
If your list is huge, split it into tabs or new files: one for “Valid,” one for everything else. This makes uploading to your email platform less error-prone.
What to ignore
Unless you need an audit trail, don’t bother archiving the “Invalid” and “Disposable” emails. Don’t overthink it—just get them out of your active list.
Step 4: Digging for Actionable Insights
Here’s where you can go beyond “just clean the list.” A good validation report can tell you a lot about your data quality—if you know what to look for.
Things worth checking
- High invalid rate?
If more than 10-15% of your list is invalid, your collection process is broken. Maybe you’re getting fake signups or scraping too much. - Lots of disposables?
You might need better signup protections—think CAPTCHAs, or blocking known disposable domains at sign-up. - Catch-all/Unknowns spike?
If a lot of your emails fall here, it may be industry-specific (some companies use catch-alls), or Debounce just hit a rough patch. If this number is climbing over time, double-check your sources. - Typo suggestions pop up?
People fat-finger emails all the time. If you see lots of “gamil.com” or “yaho.com” corrections, consider adding front-end validation to your forms.
Making sense of the numbers
Create a quick summary table:
| Status | Count | % of List | |-------------|--------|-----------| | Valid | 8,500 | 85% | | Invalid | 1,000 | 10% | | Disposable | 300 | 3% | | Catch-All | 150 | 1.5% | | Unknown | 50 | 0.5% |
No need to get fancy—just paste this into your analysis doc or share with your team.
Honest take:
If your “Valid” percentage is below 80%, you’ve got work to do. Above 90%? You’re in good shape, but don’t get complacent. Data decays fast.
Step 5: Acting on the Results
Don’t let your clean list gather dust. Here’s what to do next:
Update your ESP or CRM
- Upload only the “Valid” emails.
Most email service providers (Mailchimp, SendGrid, etc.) let you import a cleaned file. Don’t mix in the suppressed emails. - Suppress or blacklist the “Invalid” and “Disposable” addresses.
If your platform supports suppression lists, use them. Otherwise, just delete or archive. - Flag “Catch-All” and “Unknown” if you’re keeping them.
Maybe tag them for a one-off campaign or reduced frequency.
Consider automation
If you’re running lots of lists, look into Debounce’s API or integrations. But honestly, for most small-to-medium senders, manual exports every month or quarter work fine. Don’t overengineer unless you need to.
Step 6: Iterating and Improving
Cleaning your list once is not a strategy. Emails go stale, people change jobs, and spammers get smarter.
- Set a calendar reminder to clean lists regularly.
Quarterly is a good default. - Tweak your signup process.
Block obvious junk, add real-time email validation, and watch your disposable/invalid rates drop. - Track bounce rates after every send.
If they’re creeping up, clean again.
What not to do:
Don’t chase “100% valid” at all costs—it’s expensive, and some bounces are just part of the game. Focus on keeping your lists healthy, not perfect.
Wrapping Up
Exporting and analyzing Debounce validation reports isn’t rocket science, but it’s easy to overthink. Pull your data, filter ruthlessly, act on what you find, and keep the process simple. The real value isn’t the report itself—it’s making your next send smarter than your last. Clean, send, repeat. That’s how you actually get better results—no magic, just a little bit of discipline.