If you’ve ever sent a campaign and watched your bounce rate spike—or worse, gotten flagged for spam—it’s probably because your CRM is packed with junk emails. Whether you inherited a messy database or just never got around to cleaning, bad emails are dead weight. They kill deliverability, waste money, and mess up your reporting.
This guide is for people who want real results, not just a check-the-box “cleaning.” I’ll walk you through exactly how to remove invalid and risky emails from your CRM using Kickbox, a tool that does the heavy lifting. You’ll also get the honest truth about what works, what’s overkill, and a few “don’t bother” tips to save you time.
Why Bother Cleaning Your CRM Emails?
Let’s be blunt: Dirty lists hurt your business. Here’s what happens if you ignore the problem:
- High bounce rates: ISPs start to see you as a spammer.
- Poor deliverability: Good emails land in spam, or don’t get delivered at all.
- Wasted spend: You’re paying to send to fake or dead addresses.
- Bad data: Reports and segmentations get skewed.
If you want your CRM to actually help you sell or communicate, cleaning your emails isn’t optional.
Step 1: Get Real About Your Data
Before you dive in, it’s worth understanding what you’re dealing with. Not all “bad” emails are the same.
- Invalid emails: These are typos, defunct domains, or addresses that never existed. These always bounce.
- Risky emails: Things like role accounts (info@, sales@), disposable emails, or catch-alls. They might accept mail, but rarely engage—and can still hurt your sender reputation.
- Valid, but unengaged: Real people who just aren’t interested. Not what Kickbox is for, but worth flagging for later.
Kickbox is best for knocking out the first two: invalid and risky emails.
Step 2: Export Your CRM Email List
You can’t clean what you can’t see. So, first thing: export your list.
- Pick the right list. Grab the contacts you actually send to (not just stale leads or archived contacts).
- Export as CSV. Every CRM worth its salt (Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho, etc.) lets you export contacts as a CSV file. Usually there’s an “Export” button in your Contacts view.
- Check columns. At minimum, you want “Email.” If you care about syncing cleaned results back, keep a unique ID or email column for matching later.
Pro tip: If your CRM is massive (hundreds of thousands of contacts), break the export into chunks. Kickbox and your CRM will both thank you.
Step 3: Set Up Your Kickbox Account
If you’re new to Kickbox, sign up for an account. They’ve been around for years and are pretty transparent about what they do.
- Pricing: Pay-as-you-go, no long-term contracts. You pay per verification. Don’t get sucked into monthly plans unless you’re cleaning lists all the time.
- Bulk Verification: This is what you want—not the API unless you’re automating.
Once you’re in, you’ll see a dashboard where you can upload your exported email file.
Step 4: Clean Your List with Kickbox
Here’s where the magic (well, the grunt work) happens.
- Upload your CSV. Drag and drop, or select your file.
- Map columns. Kickbox will ask which column is “Email.” Double check—if you get this wrong, your results will be a mess.
- Start verification. Depending on your list size, this might take a few minutes or a few hours. Go grab a coffee or knock out some emails while you wait.
What Kickbox checks for: - Syntax errors (missing @, obvious typos) - Domains that don’t exist - Mailboxes that don’t accept mail - Role-based, disposable, or catch-all addresses
Once it’s done, you get a report with every email tagged as: - Deliverable - Undeliverable - Risky - Unknown
Honest take: “Unknown” is a catch-all for mail servers that won’t play ball. Don’t stress about these—just treat them as risky.
Step 5: Download and Interpret Your Results
Kickbox gives you a CSV with a new column showing what’s what. Here’s how to make sense of it:
- Deliverable: These are safe to keep.
- Undeliverable: Delete or suppress these immediately.
- Risky: Up to you. If you’re conservative, suppress these. If you’re feeling bold (and have a huge list), you might keep some—but know the risks.
- Role accounts (info@, support@): Usually not worth keeping.
- Disposable: Junk them.
- Catch-all: Tread carefully; some are legit, many are traps.
- Unknown: Most recommend suppressing, but you could keep and monitor (just don’t send to all at once).
Pro tip: Always keep a backup of your original list. Mistakes happen.
Step 6: Remove or Suppress Bad Emails in Your CRM
This part depends on your CRM, but the idea’s the same everywhere.
- Match results to CRM contacts. Use the email address or unique ID.
- Decide on your approach:
- Delete: Removes the record entirely. Good for obvious fakes/bounces.
- Suppress/Tag: Add a “Do Not Email” tag or move to a suppression list. Useful if you want to keep the history, but stop emailing.
- Bulk update: Most CRMs let you import a CSV to update contacts in bulk. Check your CRM’s documentation for specifics.
- In Salesforce: Use Data Loader or Mass Update tools.
- In HubSpot: Import and map fields to update status.
- In Mailchimp/others: Upload to a suppression list.
What not to do: Don’t just “unsubscribe” these contacts. That’s for real people opting out, not dead addresses or spam traps.
Step 7: Repeat (But Don’t Go Overboard)
You don’t need to clean your list every week. For most, a quarterly or twice-a-year scrub is plenty—unless you’re adding tons of new emails every day.
- If you collect a lot of emails via web forms: Consider using Kickbox’s real-time API to validate emails as they come in. But don’t bother if most of your list comes from manual entry or imports—just do periodic bulk cleans.
- Watch your bounce rates and sender reputation: If they start to spike, it’s time for another cleaning.
What Works, What Doesn’t, and What to Ignore
What works: - Regular, honest-to-goodness list cleaning with a tool like Kickbox. - Suppressing risky or unknown addresses rather than taking chances. - Using real-time validation on high-volume sign-up forms.
What doesn’t: - Relying on “free” email cleaning tools—they’re usually limited, slow, or unreliable. - Manually eyeballing lists for fakes. You’ll never catch them all. - Sending “re-engagement” campaigns to obviously dead emails. You’ll just hurt your deliverability more.
What to ignore: - Overly complex scoring systems. At the end of the day, you want deliverable emails in your CRM, not just “80% safe” guesses. - Promises of “guaranteed inbox placement” from cleaning vendors. It’s snake oil.
Keep It Simple and Keep Iterating
Cleaning your CRM with Kickbox isn’t rocket science. Export, clean, import, and move on. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good—just get the deadweight out so your emails actually get delivered. Do it every quarter or so, and you’ll avoid most headaches.
If you want to get fancy later (automating via API, real-time validation), great. But start with the basics. Better data, fewer bounces, and a CRM that works for you—not against you.