Keep your Emma audience clean and off your Active-contact bill
Emma screens malformed addresses at import and parks hard bounces in Error status so it never mails them again — but it can't judge a well-formed address it has never sent to, and on Emma's Active-contact pricing those never-mailed invalids sit in your billable audience until a campaign finally bounces them. Qualisend closes that gap: export your audience, verify every address, and archive the dead ones before your next send. Here's the workflow that works today, plus the API and no-code options.
One-click Emma sync is paused while we rebuild the platform
We've deliberately paused our one-click native connectors while we re-engineer the sync layer they run on — hardening how we authenticate, respect each platform's rate limits, and write results back — so that when the native Emma integration returns, it stays dependable at any list size rather than fragile at scale. None of this touches how Qualisend verifies an address.
Everything you need works today: the CSV export → verify → reimport loop below, and the API for verifying at signup, are both fully supported and running in production — that's how teams keep Emma clean right now.
What Emma cleans for you
Emma sorts every contact into one of three member statuses — Active, Error, and Opt-out — and only Active contacts are mailable. When an address hard-bounces it's moved to Error and never mailed again unless you manually move it back to Active; an address that soft-bounces on four consecutive mailings is escalated to Error and marked "Delivery"; and a badly formatted address is dropped into the Error tab at import. When a recipient opts out they're permanently removed from your active audience at the account level — a status only the recipient can reverse by resubscribing, and one Emma retains even if you later archive the contact. For addresses Emma has actually mailed, that's reliable automatic hygiene.
What it can't catch
The catch is that every one of those mechanisms is reactive — it needs a send and a bounce to fire. Emma's import check only screens for formatting, so a syntactically perfect but dead address (jane@gmial.com, a long-abandoned mailbox, a throwaway domain) passes straight into Active status looking healthy. Never-mailed invalids from imports and signup forms, disposable addresses, role addresses, and decayed mailboxes all sit in Active until your first campaign hits them — which is exactly when a mailbox provider forms its first impression of your domain. An imported list is the sharpest case: it arrives with its bounce history stripped, so addresses that were already failing on the old platform look brand new to Emma, and each one lands as a fully billable Active contact.
Why a clean Emma list matters
On Emma the stakes are double, because Emma bills a flat rate up to your plan's contact limit — plus a per-contact overage above it — and it sizes that bill on the highest number of Active contacts you hold at any point in the month. Error and Opt-out contacts are never counted, but a never-mailed invalid sits in Active, fully billable, until a campaign finally bounces it into Error one or more sends later. The timing detail that matters: Emma's monthly high-water mark counts every contact that was active during the month, even ones you archive before it ends — so the real billing saving comes from verifying a file before you import it (or verifying at signup), which keeps invalids off your Active count in the first place, while archiving the ones you already hold caps the bleed for the months ahead. And that eventual bounce is exactly the signal Gmail and Yahoo's 2024 sender rules read as a strike against your domain. Cleaning before a send protects both your contact count and the inbox placement of the campaigns that actually convert.
The workflow that works today
Direct connectors are paused while we rebuild the platform, so the dependable path is the CSV loop: export from Emma, verify in Qualisend, reimport the clean file.
Export your audience from Emma
In the Audience tab, open Contacts, a Group, or a Segment and export the contacts you want to clean — you can export by status (Active, Error, Opt-out, or all), though archived contacts can't be exported. Emma runs the export and shows a download link in a popup; you can also find it later under Settings (the gear icon) → Exports. The file downloads as a CSV.
Verify the file in Qualisend
Upload the CSV to Qualisend bulk cleaning — up to 1,000,000 addresses per job, duplicates charged once — or paste a sample into the free checker first. The free plan's 100 one-time credits, which never expire, cover an initial spot-check before you commit.
Read the results
Every address returns deliverable, risky, undeliverable, or unknown with a reason code, a 0–100 score, and sub-flags (catch-all, disposable, role, full mailbox), plus the MX provider and probe detail as evidence. Download the cleaned CSV.
Archive the undeliverables in Emma
Emma has no import-a-suppression-file feature for a merely-invalid address, so the clean native move is to archive them: match your undeliverables in the audience and archive those contacts. In Emma's current interface archiving is effectively the delete action for your audience — it removes them from your Active count and billing and stops all sends, while parking them restorable in Archived Items rather than purging their response history. One caveat: archiving isn't a durable suppression — only an opt-out survives a re-import — so keep the cleaned CSV as your record, because a later import or API Add call can pull an archived address back into your active audience.
Or automate it at signup
Prefer to keep junk out from the start? Verify at the point of capture with the Qualisend REST API (scoped keys, rate limits, webhooks), or wire a no-code flow through Zapier, Make, or n8n so new Emma signups are checked before they ever land in your Active audience — so typos and disposable addresses never reach a send, or your bill.
What Qualisend flags on every address
- Never-mailed invalid addresses that would hard-bounce on your next campaign and drop the contact to Error
- Disposable / throwaway domains built to expire, which Emma's import check won't flag
- Role addresses (info@, support@) that skew the engagement metrics your Emma segments rely on
- Catch-all domains, flagged so you can move them to a dedicated group and throttle
- A 0–100 confidence score and machine-readable reason code for every address
A native, one-click Emma connector is part of the platform we're rebuilding — it's returning, not deprecated. Until it ships, the CSV loop above and the API are the fully supported path, and they work with any Emma plan.
What to do with each result
Every address comes back with a verdict and sub-flags. Here's the action that keeps your Emma list clean without throwing away contacts you can still reach.
deliverableKeep as an Active contact.deliverable + role flagKeep for transactional and account mail; exclude from engagement-judged automations.risky + catch-all flagMove to a dedicated group and throttle — the domain accepts everything at the door, so the mailbox behind it can't be confirmed.risky + disposable flagArchive — the inbox was built to expire.unknownKeep active and re-verify next clean — usually greylisting or rate-limiting, not a verdict on the mailbox.undeliverableArchive to take it out of Active status now; don't wait for a campaign to bounce it into Error for you.Related reading
Verify at signup so junk never enters your Active audience.
Spot-check a sample of your Emma list before you commit to a full clean.
The full step-by-step: export, verify, and retire the dead addresses.
How fast a dirty list compounds into a deliverability problem.
What a wave of hard bounces does to your standing with mailbox providers.
The 2024 bounce and complaint thresholds your Emma sends are judged against.
Emma verification FAQ
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