Should I drop or keep role-based addresses before sending?

Valid Email Checker flags addresses like info@example.com, support@example.com, sales@example.com, and admin@example.com with the role status. These are not invalid — the mailboxes exist and accept mail — but they route to a team inbox rather than a single human. Whether to send to them depends on what your campaign is actually trying to do.

Drop role addresses when...

• You're running a cold sales outreach campaign. Nobody opens info@ with the intent to buy from cold mail. The whole address category is a noise generator on those campaigns, and it inflates bounce/complaint signals because team-inbox owners mark unsolicited mail as spam fast.
• You're sending B2C marketing. Consumer marketing flows assume one person, one inbox, one identity. A role address in a B2C list is usually wrong (a typo, an autofill error, or an old signup that never should have been on the list).
• You're trying to grow your sender reputation. Role addresses tend to generate complaint rates 3 to 5 times higher than individual addresses. Keeping them on a growing sender domain is a deliverability handicap you don't need.

Keep role addresses when...

• The mail is transactional. Order confirmations, password resets, invoices to a billing@ address — these go where they need to go. Status doesn't change the routing logic.
• You're replying to inbound mail that came from a role address. The conversation context makes the send legitimate, and reply-rate sender reputation is different from cold-send reputation.
• You're emailing about an existing customer relationship where role addresses are the documented contact. Account notifications, customer success check-ins, support escalations all fit here.
• Your audience is small businesses where info@thecompany.com really is the owner's primary inbox. Skip the rule and use list-level judgment.

A practical default rule

For most marketing teams, the default should be: drop role addresses from any campaign you would describe as marketing. Keep them in the database (do not delete the row), but exclude them from outbound marketing segments by default. Allow them in transactional flows and in customer-success flows that are explicitly looking for a team-inbox audience.

How to filter them on download

In the bulk results CSV, filter status != "role" to get the marketable cohort. Or do the opposite filter to extract role addresses into their own list for transactional use. Both directions are one column-filter in Excel or Google Sheets, or one WHERE clause if you imported the CSV into a database.

For the full mechanics on how role addresses are detected and what the status maps from on the provider side, read what does the Role result status mean. For the broader segmentation strategy, see how to segment your list using VEC results.