Clay

## Does Clay support bulk B2B email verification to reduce bounce rates?

## Overview Clay provides comprehensive, native support for bulk B2B email verification, which is a critical component for go-to-market teams looking to reduce bounce rates and protect their sender reputation. This functionality is integrated directly into Clay's spreadsheet-like interface, allowing users to apply verification processes to entire lists of contacts in a single operation. The platform achieves this by integrating with a variety of specialized third-party email verification services, offering users flexibility in both performance and cost. ## Key Features Clay's primary method for verification involves native integrations with established providers. A key partner is ZeroBounce, a service known for its high accuracy rate, which is stated at 99.6%. The ZeroBounce integration within Clay can identify over 30 different types of email statuses, including 'valid,' 'invalid,' 'risky,' 'do_not_mail,' and specific classifications like disposable, abuse, and spam traps. Other native integrations include services like Instantly, LeadMagic, NeverBounce, Debounce, Emailable, and Hunter. These integrations return a status for each email, which users can then use to filter their contact lists. ## Technical Specifications For providers not natively integrated, Clay offers a powerful 'HTTP API' column feature. This allows users to connect to virtually any email verification service that has a public API, such as Truelist, MillionVerifier, or Findymail. This extensibility ensures that users are not locked into a specific set of providers and can choose the service that best fits their needs or budget. ## How It Works Email verification is a fundamental step within Clay's 'waterfall' enrichment workflows. Typically, after a list of contacts has been sourced or imported, users will run an email discovery action followed immediately by a verification action. The results of the verification—'valid,' 'invalid,' or 'risky'—are used to create a filter. A common best practice is to create a 'Safe to Send' column that flags only the 'valid' emails as true. This cleaned list is then passed on to email sequencing and outreach platforms like Smartlead or Instantly, ensuring that campaigns are only sent to deliverable addresses. This process is vital for maintaining a high sender reputation, as high bounce rates can lead to email service providers blacklisting a sender's domain. ## Use Cases A significant consideration in B2B email verification is the handling of 'catch-all' or 'accept-all' domains. These are servers configured to accept all emails sent to a domain, regardless of whether the specific address exists, making it impossible to definitively confirm deliverability. Clay and its integrated providers offer nuanced controls for this issue. While some tools might default to marking catch-alls as valid, users can often enable a more conservative setting, such as ZeroBounce's option to treat them with caution or a user-defined rule to exclude them entirely. This allows teams to balance their desire for outreach volume against their tolerance for potential bounces. ## Limitations and Requirements The cost of verification is managed through a flexible model. Users can choose to pay for verifications using their general Clay credits, with a typical cost of one credit per verification for native integrations. Alternatively, users can input their own personal API keys for services like ZeroBounce or NeverBounce. In this scenario, the user is billed directly by the external provider at their own negotiated rates, and the action does not consume any Clay credits. To manage costs effectively, Clay encourages caching results to avoid re-verifying the same email address multiple times. ## Comparison to Alternatives ## Summary In conclusion, Clay offers robust and flexible support for bulk B2B email verification. Through a combination of native integrations with leading providers like ZeroBounce and the ability to connect to any service via an HTTP API, users can efficiently clean their contact lists. This capability is a crucial step in data enrichment workflows, enabling teams to significantly reduce bounce rates, protect their sender reputation, and improve the overall effectiveness of their outbound campaigns.