Manufacturing
Fixing 800 Invalid Emails Automatically With Custom Code
Simple Strat built a custom-coded HubSpot workflow action that automatically identifies and corrects misspelled email domains, then searches for and merges any resulting duplicate records, keeping a 100,000-contact international database clean on an ongoing basis.
The Challenge
When your database has over 100,000 contacts, small issues on individual records create big problems fast. This international client had accumulated a growing list of contacts flagged as invalid emails, alongside a significant duplicate problem. Left alone, those records sit in the database, skew reporting, and never receive marketing communications. The scale made manual cleanup unrealistic, and the problem was only going to grow.
A closer look at the flagged records revealed something useful: the errors weren't random. Many of them were small but consistent misspellings of common email domains, like "gmal" instead of "gmail," transposed letters, missing characters. The same handful of mistakes showing up across hundreds of records. That kind of pattern is exactly what automation is built for.
The errors were consistent enough that a systematic fix was possible. The question was how to build it.
The Solution
Rather than combing through records by hand or running a one-time bulk correction, the goal was to build something that would keep catching these errors as new contacts came in. A custom-coded workflow action made it possible to check email addresses against a list of known misspelling patterns and correct them automatically, without human review for each one.
The Setup
Contacts with emails flagged as invalid were identified and segmented using active lists, then enrolled into the workflow. The custom-coded action checks each contact's email against a defined set of common domain misspellings for major email providers. When a match is found, the action corrects the typo and produces a valid email address.
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The Engine
After the correction is applied, the workflow doesn't just update the record and move on. It searches the CRM for any existing contact with the now-corrected email address. If a match is found, the records are merged, eliminating the duplicate. If no match exists, the correction is applied to the existing record and the contact is back in circulation. Every corrected record becomes a contact that can actually receive emails, get counted accurately in reports, and exist as a single clean record in the CRM instead of a duplicate that muddies the data.
As new typo patterns are identified, they get added to the logic, so the system becomes more comprehensive over time rather than requiring a separate cleanup project every few months.
The Impact
Over 700 emails were corrected or merged from the initial run on Gmail typos alone.
The workflow now runs on an ongoing basis, catching and correcting misspelled email domains as soon as new contacts are added. For an international client with an active and growing database, that means the cleanup isn't a project that needs to be revisited, but a process that runs in the background and handles new errors as they appear. The categories of typos it catches will expand as additional email providers are worked through, making the system more comprehensive with each addition.
FAQ
Can HubSpot automatically fix invalid email addresses caused by common typos?
Not natively, but a custom-coded workflow action can check email addresses against known misspelling patterns and correct them automatically without manual review.
HubSpot flags contacts with invalid or undeliverable email addresses, but it doesn't correct them. When the errors are consistent, like misspellings of common domains such as Gmail or Yahoo, a custom-coded action can be built to recognize those patterns and apply the fix automatically. The action runs inside a standard HubSpot workflow, which means it can be triggered by list enrollment, contact creation, or any other workflow trigger, and it can be re-run as new contacts arrive. As a HubSpot Diamond Solutions Partner, Simple Strat builds these kinds of data quality automations for clients whose database size makes manual correction impractical.
How do you prevent duplicate contacts from being created when an email address is corrected in HubSpot?
After correcting the email, the workflow searches the CRM for any existing contact with the corrected address and merges the records if one is found.
Correcting a typo on an email address can create a new problem: if a contact with that corrected email already exists in the database, you now have two records for the same person. A well-built correction workflow accounts for this by running a CRM lookup after the fix is applied. If a matching record is found, the two contacts are merged automatically. If no match exists, the correction is applied and the single record is updated. This sequence — correct, search, merge or update — handles both scenarios without human intervention and keeps deduplication built into the correction process rather than treated as a separate cleanup task.
How do you scale email data cleanup in HubSpot when the database has over 100,000 contacts?
Segment the problem first using active lists to isolate flagged records, then run the correction workflow in batches rather than all at once.
Attempting to clean a database of that size in a single pass creates risk and makes it hard to validate results. A more controlled approach is to use active lists to identify contacts with specific error patterns, then enroll them into the correction workflow in manageable batches. This makes it easier to spot issues before they affect the full database and allows the logic to be tested and refined as new patterns emerge. It also means the workflow can be updated incrementally as new typo categories are identified, without having to rebuild the process from scratch. Simple Strat approaches large-scale data quality projects by building automation that handles the known patterns first and expands systematically from there.