Verify your BigCommerce customer emails before you send

1. 1
   In BigCommerce

   Export your customers from BigCommerce

   1. Go to Customers then Export.
   2. Under Template, select Bulk Edit.
   3. Under File format, select CSV.
   4. Click Continue, then click Export my customers to a csv/xml file.
   5. When the file is ready, click the Download link.

   Tip

   PricklyMails only needs the addresses: keep this export as it is, and copy its email address column into a new file for the batch. To verify some customers only, check them in Customers then All customers, then click Export selected customers.

   SourceBigCommerce's official help center

   • Importing and Exporting Customers (opens in a new tab)support.bigcommerce.com
2. 2
   In PricklyMails

   Verify the file in PricklyMails

   1. In the dashboard, open Batches and click New batch.
   2. Drop the file you exported from BigCommerce: a .csv or .txt with one address per line, no header row and no quotes. A header row would count as an address in the estimate, though it is never billed, and a quoted address would not be verified: the report lists both as malformed. You can also paste the list.
   3. The dashboard counts the addresses and shows the estimated cost in tokens before anything is sent, then you click Submit batch. A batch holds at least 20 addresses, and your plan sets the largest list it can hold.
   4. The list is verified in the background. Once the batch is done, open it and click Download report: you get a CSV with a row for each address of your file, giving its verdict, its reason, its score and its recommendation, with the dashboard's labels.

   Note

   Download the report from the browser that sent the list: that browser is what keeps the addresses, for the 16 most recent batches at most. Our servers, in Germany, only keep a one-way fingerprint of each one.

   What the report says

   Every address gets a recommendation: the action to take. The report writes it with the dashboard's label; the API returns a short form of it.

   Send

   The address is valid, or hosted by a large provider that accepts every address without confirming any. Send as usual.

   Review

   A domain that accepts any address (catch-all), a generic address such as contact@, a full mailbox, or a server that never answered, or refused to. Take a look before you send.

   Remove

   The address does not exist, its domain cannot receive mail, or it is disposable, mistyped or malformed. Take it out.

   Note

   A malformed address is never verified: the batch counts it under "Malformed addresses", and the report still lists it, with the verdict "Invalid", the reason "Malformed address" and the recommendation "Remove", so you take it out of BigCommerce with the others. A duplicate, counted under "Duplicates removed", appears only once.

   Behind each recommendation sit a verdict (Valid, Risky, Invalid or Not verifiable), a reason and a score from 0 to 100, each in its own column of the report. When a server never answers, the address comes back "Not verifiable" and the checks that got no answer are refunded.

3. 3
   In BigCommerce

   Bring the result back into BigCommerce

   Open the report in a spreadsheet and filter the Recommendation column.

   Remove

   They stop getting the Abandoned Cart Saver and product review emails your store sends, and each customer keeps its account and orders.

   BigCommerce updates existing customers from a CSV file, matched on their email address: re-import their rows from your export, with marketing emails turned off.

   1. In a copy of your Bulk Edit export, keep only the rows of the addresses to remove.
   2. In those rows, set the Receive Marketing Emails field to N.
   3. Save the file as a CSV.
   4. In BigCommerce, go to Customers then Import.
   5. Check File was exported using the 'Bulk Edit' template.
   6. Next to Import file, upload your CSV file, then click Next.
   7. Click Next on the field matching step, which the box you checked has filled in, then click Start Import.

   Review

   They deserve a look before your next campaign. Find each one by its address in the Filter by keyword field of Customers then All customers, open it, and decide whether Receive ACS/review emails stays on Yes.

   Send

   They keep their settings: nothing to do.

   Warning

   Before the import, keep an unedited Bulk Edit export of all your customers, as BigCommerce recommends: it lets you put things back the way they were should the import go wrong.

   Tip

   Only a few addresses? Click each customer's name in Customers then All customers, set Receive ACS/review emails to No, then save the customer.

   SourceBigCommerce's official help center

   • Importing and Exporting Customers (opens in a new tab)support.bigcommerce.com
   • Managing Customer Accounts (opens in a new tab)support.bigcommerce.com

Verify each address before it reaches BigCommerce

Does your app, headless storefront or sync script create customers in BigCommerce through its API, with the Create Customers (opens in a new tab) call? Ask PricklyMails first. If the recommendation is remove, don't create the customer with accepts_product_review_abandoned_cart_emails set to true.

curl -s https://api.pricklymails.com/api/verify \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer pm_live_9f3a..." \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "email": "ana.silva@gmail.con" }' \
  | jq '{job_uuid, suggestion}'

{
  "job_uuid": "8f1c2a9e-4b7d-4e2a-9c61-3d5f0b7a2e18",
  "suggestion": "ana.silva@gmail.com"
}

curl -s https://api.pricklymails.com/api/verify/$JOB_UUID \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer pm_live_9f3a..." \
  | jq '.verifications[0] | {status, reason, score, recommendation}'

{
  "status": "invalid",
  "reason": "no_mx_records",
  "score": 0,
  "recommendation": "remove"
}

Frequently asked questions