What is a placeholder email address and why will nothing send to it?

What counts as a placeholder

• A stand-in name before the @, on any domain: user, yourname, firstname.lastname, email, test, demo, johndoe or john.doe. So john.doe@gmail.com is a placeholder too.
• A stand-in domain after the @, such as domain.com, yourdomain.com, example.com, sitename.com, yourcompany.com or company.com.
• A general address at email.com or mail.com, such as info@email.com, hello@mail.com or contact@mail.com.
• Test endings and file names: addresses ending in .example, .test or .invalid, and image or font names that happen to contain an @, such as logo@2x.png.

Domains like domain.com have real mail servers, so a check that only looks for a mail server would pass them. That is why the shape is checked as well, and why a placeholder always fails the mail-server check: no green ✓ in the Queue, and (unverified) in the lead panel.

What Legiit Leads does with them

• Searches and list imports skip placeholders when they collect addresses from a website.
• 🎯 Hunt Owner never makes one the sending address.
• ✎ Edit Details refuses one with a message that names it, such as user@domain.com is a placeholder, not a real inbox. Enter the address you want the emails to go to.
• Outreach Autopilot never sends to one. With Autopilot on, an approved email shows Approved, but Autopilot skipped it., and the lead's Outreach Activity says, for example, Autopilot did not send the day 0 email: user@domain.com is a placeholder, not a real inbox. Edit the lead's email to send.

The ✎ Edit Details form always includes the lead's current address. While that address is a placeholder, no ✎ Edit Details change saves, not even a new phone number, until the Email field holds a real address or is empty.

How to replace it

1. Open the lead. From the Queue, click Open In Pipeline.
2. Click 🎯 Hunt Owner in the Decision-Maker section. If it finds the owner's own address, that becomes the sending address and placeholders are dropped from the lead.
3. If the hunt finds no address, click ✎ Edit Details, type the real address in Email and click Save Details. It becomes the sending address and is checked against its mail server.
4. No real address to hand? Clear the Email field and click Save Details. The next address on the lead, if there is one, becomes the sending address. If there is none, the lead is hidden from the Queue unless you click Show Them Anyway.