Prospect records map onto Salesforce leads and contacts, so the export is marketing's view of records the sales team actively works. Half the columns are owned by the connector rather than by you.
Getting the addresses out of Pardot
Prospects, apply a filter, then Export. The export runs and is downloadable when it completes.
At the form handler, before a prospect and a CRM record are created together. Deleting afterwards leaves one of the two behind and the sync recreates the other.
What Pardot does with the file you bring back
The import rules decide what a re-import actually changes, which is worth knowing before you upload.
The short version
- Imports match on email address and update the existing prospect.
- Undeliverable status persists through an import.
- Custom fields import alongside and sync to Salesforce if mapped.
- The Salesforce connector governs which system owns which field, and that mapping decides what an import actually changes.
The mistake to avoid
Some addresses come back unresolved, and that is a fact about the receiving server rather than a gap in the check. We label those and never bill for them. What that means, and why roughly 28% of business addresses land there, is set out on our page about catch-all domains.
1,400 webinar leads and a mailable limit
Suppose your Account Engagement edition includes 10,000 mailable prospects, you're holding 8,700, and a partner webinar has just produced 1,400 registrants that sales wants loaded today. Import them all and you're at 10,100, and Salesforce bills for prospects above the contracted limit in additional blocks.
Mailable is the word doing the work in that contract. Salesforce's documentation says prospects who can't be emailed, and prospects sitting in the recycle bin, don't count toward the limit. So a dead address only costs you while Pardot still believes it's good.
Run the 1,400 through a check first, and say 260 are invalid and 70 unknown. Import the 1,070 that passed and you're at 9,770, under the limit with room for next month's form fills. If sales wants the 260 on record anyway, import them with Do Not Email set to true. They'll exist for reporting without being mailable. The 10,000 pack is $25 and the 70 unknowns aren't billed.
One hard bounce or five soft ones
Pardot's rule is that a prospect becomes undeliverable after one hard bounce or five soft bounces, and from then on they're unmailable. Five soft bounces is a long runway, because a full mailbox at a company that went under can absorb five campaigns over five months, counting as mailable the whole time.
Two fields look alike and behave differently. Opted Out is set by the prospect when they unsubscribe. Do Not Email is set by your team, by an automation rule, or by the bounce logic. Before importing, check whether your import settings allow the file to overwrite Opted Out, because a CSV with that column blank can undo real unsubscribes if overwriting is permitted.
The recycle bin has its own habit. A deleted prospect isn't gone, and if that person fills in a form later, Pardot restores them with their history. That's usually what you want. Just know it's how a cleaned-out record reappears in your mailable count without anyone importing it.
Questions people ask
Should marketing delete prospects sales is working?
No. Mark them with a verification verdict and exclude them from sends. The record belongs to the sales process as much as to the marketing one.
Where should verification results be stored?
In a custom prospect field mapped through the connector, so the same fact is visible in Pardot and in Salesforce reporting.
How does the connector affect a cleaning project?
It decides which system wins on each field. Plan the field ownership before importing anything, or the sync will undo your work on its next run.