ZapBounce and Close
Close sends email through each rep's connected mailbox rather than a shared marketing IP. That makes the consequence of a bad address personal: the bounce lands on that rep's own sending reputation.
A rep whose Gmail or Microsoft 365 account starts generating bounces at volume can find their ordinary one-to-one mail filtered, which is a worse outcome than a marketing campaign underperforming.
The bounce lands on a person's own mailbox reputation
When a sequence sends through a rep's connected account, the receiving servers judge that account. A run of hard bounces from one mailbox looks exactly like a compromised account sending to a harvested list.
Google and Microsoft both respond to that pattern by throttling or filtering, and the rep notices when a reply to a customer lands in spam rather than when a sequence underperforms.
Close's sequences enroll leads in bulk, so an unverified import can put hundreds of dead addresses through one mailbox in an afternoon.
How the data moves
Verify before enrollment, per rep
The unit of risk is the mailbox, so the check belongs before a lead enters a sequence attached to that mailbox.
Store the verdict as a custom field on the Lead
Close custom fields are searchable, so a saved search filtered on the verdict becomes the enrollment source.
Build the enrollment list from a saved search
Rather than enrolling a raw import. The search reads the verdict field and the import never touches a sequence directly.
Re-verify anything sitting in a queue
A lead imported six weeks ago and enrolled today is not the lead you verified. Re-check before enrollment where the gap is long.
Setting it up
- Create a custom field on Leads for the verdict and one for the check date.
- Pull leads through the Close API, or export the relevant smart view as CSV.
- Verify the addresses and write the verdicts back to the custom field.
- Create a smart view filtered on the verdict being valid and the check date being recent.
- Enroll sequences from that smart view rather than from an import.
- Route unresolvable addresses to a calling sequence instead of an email one.
Close: common questions
Why does this matter more in Close than in a marketing tool?
Because the sending identity is a rep's own mailbox. The damage reaches their one-to-one conversations rather than a campaign metric.
Should each rep verify their own leads?
Verify centrally and expose the verdict as a field. Per-rep processes drift, and the mailbox at risk belongs to the person least likely to check.
How recent does a verdict need to be?
Within a month for outbound prospecting data. Contact data decays fastest exactly where sequences are aimed.
Check a Close export today
100 free checks a month, no card. Unknown results and duplicates are never billed.