Clean Email

The Clean Email workflow action takes an email address from a record property, normalizes it, and validates its format -- all in a single step. Use it to keep your CRM data clean and prevent deliverability issues caused by malformed addresses.

How It Works

Add the Clean Email action to any contact, company, deal, or ticket workflow in HubSpot. When a record reaches this step, the app reads the email from the property you selected, cleans it up, checks its format, and returns the results so your workflow can decide what to do next.

Action Inputs

When adding the Clean Email action to your workflow, you configure the following field:

What the Action Does

The cleaning process applies these steps in order:

1. Removes whitespace - strips spaces from the beginning, end, and anywhere inside the address
2. Converts to lowercase - normalizes the entire address to lowercase for consistency
3. Strips invisible characters - removes control characters and non-printable characters that can hide in copy-pasted text
4. Validates the format - checks that the result is a properly structured email address (has an @ symbol, a valid domain with an extension, no consecutive dots, and only permitted characters)

Action Outputs

After the Clean Email action runs, the following output values are available for use in subsequent workflow steps:

Tip: To learn how to use these output values in later workflow actions (e.g., copy to a property, use in branching logic), see Using workflow action outputs in the HubSpot Knowledge Base.

Branching Your Workflow

The most common pattern is to add a branch after the Clean Email action based on the Is Valid result:

• Valid - the email has a correct format. Proceed with your automation (send emails, enroll in sequences, update properties).
• Invalid - the email has a formatting problem that cleaning could not fix. You might create a task for manual review, send an internal notification, or set a property to flag the record.

Usage Examples

Form Submission Cleanup

When contacts submit forms, email addresses sometimes contain extra spaces or inconsistent casing.

1. Trigger your workflow when a contact submits a form
2. Add the Clean Email action and select the contact's Email property
3. Branch on Is Valid
4. For valid emails: continue with your welcome sequence
5. For invalid emails: create a task for your team to review the submission

Import Data Quality

After importing a list of contacts, run them through Email Cleaner to catch formatting problems before they cause bounced emails.

1. Trigger your workflow when a contact is created (filter by import source if needed)
2. Add the Clean Email action targeting the Email property
3. Branch on Is Valid
4. For valid emails: proceed with your onboarding automation
5. For invalid emails: add the contact to a static list for manual cleanup

Pre-Send Validation

Before enrolling contacts in an email sequence or marketing campaign, verify that their email address is properly formatted.

1. Add the Clean Email action before your email send step
2. Branch on Is Valid
3. Only send to contacts with valid emails
4. For invalid emails: set a contact property (e.g., "Email Status" = "Needs Review") and skip the send

Tips

• Use it early in your workflows. Place the Clean Email action near the beginning of a workflow so all downstream steps benefit from the cleaned data.
• Combine with property updates. After cleaning, you can use a "Copy property value" or "Set property value" action to write the cleaned email back to the contact record, replacing the original messy value.
• Works with any email property. You are not limited to the default Email field -- you can clean custom email properties, secondary email fields, or email addresses stored on companies, deals, and tickets.
• Validation catches structure, not existence. The action checks whether the email is formatted correctly. It does not verify whether the mailbox actually exists or can receive mail.