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Issue with Email Validation in Clay Table Waterfall Setup
Hey in this clay table, I have a waterfall set up, why is it not validating the emails? see screenshot in thread
Hey in this clay table, I have a waterfall set up, why is it not validating the emails? see screenshot in thread
https://app.clay.com/workspaces/243114/workbooks/wb_i3tPufqVwH8V/tables/t_0swxnvg7hkbtyc9ZUbs/views/gv_0svjbseyHszEZkeW2VN In view "no email results found"
Example, clarissa, email was found, but there validation doesn't run that contact
Email validation is built into our waterfalls by default using ZeroBounce. The validation columns are hidden by default to keep your table tidy, but they exist behind the scenes. To see the validation process, unhide the validation columns through the Columns Panel. If the waterfall continues running after finding an email, it usually means the email failed validation, so the next provider runs until a valid email is found. Check your waterfall settings - by default, catch-all emails are marked as valid. If you want stricter validation, enable "only mark safe to send" to exclude catch-all emails.
If you're seeing "no email results found," the waterfall is working but no valid emails were found by any providers. To troubleshoot, unhide the validation columns through the Columns Panel to see detailed validation steps and understand why emails might be failing validation. Check if your waterfall has sufficient input data - you need Company Domain and ideally Personal Social Profile URLs, or fallback combinations like Full Name + Company Name. Also verify your catch-all email settings - by default they're marked as valid, but you can enable "only mark safe to send" for stricter validation.
If an email was found but validation didn't run, unhide the validation columns through the Columns Panel to see the detailed validation steps. The validation columns are hidden by default but exist behind the scenes. This will show you exactly what happened during ZeroBounce validation and why the email might not have been processed through validation for that specific contact.
another example , it found an email, but validating it, it says "run condition not met" so the final field with email is left blank 😕
Hi Ali - happy to clear this up here. In this case, the email was found ([shawna.williams@panorama.org](mailto:shawna.williams@panorama.org)), but the only validation info came from DropContact, and it marked the email as unverified. Since no other providers gave a result and the formula only passes if an unverified email matches the one found, it ends up failing the check. That’s why the final email field stays blank. To fix it, you'd either need another provider to return that same email as unverified, or tweak the logic to handle single-source unverified matches.
Got it, so to confirm:
In email waterfalls, the email provider does their own validation check?
So then it doesn't use the Validation check i've set up in the waterfall?
and because it's unverified, it just automatically triggers the next email provider to search for an email (and skips my validation step)
Is the above correct?
Happy to clarify things here!
Do email providers like Apollo or Hunter do their own validation?
- No. They just find email addresses, they don’t do any validation themselves.
Is the validation step you set up (like ZeroBounce) actually being used?
- Yes. Every email that gets found by a provider goes through your validation provider before the system decides if it’s usable. That part is working exactly as expected.
If the email is unverified, does the waterfall keep going?
- Yes, but not because validation was skipped. It moves to the next provider because the email that was found didn’t pass validation.
In your specific case, DropContact found [shawna.williams@panorama.org](mailto:shawna.williams@panorama.org), but it was marked as unverified. The run condition is trying to prevent the system from re-validating the same email twice (to save on validation costs), but because that same email showed up again, your logic is stopping the next step - even though it’s unverified.
The validation is running, but the conditional logic is treating the unverified email like it’s already been “handled” and skipping further steps.
Got it thanks
It looks like it's running as it should for now, and the validation check is removing any bad emails 
Which is the goal
Great! Let me know if you're facing any other issues here