How to Verify Leads

It hurts to spend money on fake email addresses, invalid phone numbers, and bots, doesn’t it? This might make you feel better but you’re not alone, research from cybersecurity company CHEQ shows that more than 40% of all traffic online is invalid! That’s where lead verification comes in.
 

Platforms like MakeForms now make it incredibly easy to build verification into your lead gen forms with lead verification tools like sms OTP verification, email OTP verification, and more!

What is Lead Verification and Why is it So Important?

Lead verification is the process of ensuring that the information submitted via your lead gen form belongs to a REAL person. Ensuring your leads are clean helps your business in so many ways:

1. It Stops Fake Leads from Wasting Resources
Fake or invalid leads clog your CRM and skew marketing performance data.

2. Saves Time and Money
You can filter out junk leads instantly, ensuring your budget is spent only on real, reachable people.

3. Ensures Legal Compliance
In regulated industries like healthcare, insurance, and finance, verifying that users have given proper consent before outreach is essential. It protects you from lawsuits and aligns with laws like the TCPA and FCC guidelines.

4. Boosts Brand Credibility
When users receive accurate, relevant communication (and not spam), they’re more likely to trust and engage with your brand.

How to Verify Leads on Lead Gen Forms

There are two main approaches:

1. Reactive Lead Verification: Checking data after it’s submitted.

Some examples are:

• Email Validation After Submission: After a user fills out your lead form, you run their email address through a verification API (like ZeroBounce or NeverBounce) to check if it’s real and deliverable.
• Phone Number Lookup: Once the lead is submitted, you use a third-party service to check if the phone number is active, reachable, and belongs to a real carrier (not a VoIP or disposable number).
• Litigant Scrub: Your system cross-references the lead against a known list of TCPA litigants after submission to prevent contacting legally risky leads.
• Manual Review: Your sales team receives the lead and flags suspicious ones (like generic names, inconsistent info, etc.) before reaching out.

2. Proactive Lead Verification: Validating inputs as users are filling out the form. This is the type of lead verification we 100% recommend.

Some examples are:

• OTP Verification (SMS, Email, WhatsApp): A user must enter a one-time password (OTP) sent to their mobile or email. The form can’t be submitted unless the OTP is verified - this ensures the contact info is real and controlled by the user. We go into more details on mobile otp verification and email verification below.
• CAPTCHA: A reCAPTCHA field ensures a human, not a bot, is filling out the form. It stops automated spam in real time. Want to go deeper into this? Here’s a full guide on how to prevent spam in your lead gen forms using smart filters, domain blocks, and validation rules.
• Real-time Field Validation: As the user types their email or phone number, the form checks for formatting errors or invalid inputs (e.g., “test@test” would show an error immediately).
• Geo/IP Filtering: The form instantly blocks or disables submissions from unsupported regions based on the visitor’s IP address.
• Duplicate Check During Entry: As soon as a phone number or email is entered, the system checks your database for previous submissions and prompts a warning if it's already been used.

How to Verify Leads – Step-by-Step

Let’s walk through how to set up a lead verification system using OTP phone verification as an example.

Tools You’ll Need:

• Twilio (or any SMS service provider) for sending and receiving OTPs
• MakeForms for building the frontend lead gen form, which also has the backend server service to verify OTPs 

Implementation:

1. Capture Mobile Number on your form
2. Send OTP via Twilio’s API
3. User Inputs OTP on your frontend
4. Backend Verifies OTP before allowing form submission
5. Store Verified Data in your CRM

How to Set Up Lead Verification Using MakeForms - Step by Step

MakeForms lets you add robust lead verification features without any technical hassle:

1. Use the drag-and-drop UI to build your form.
2. Add fields for mobile or email
3. Enable verification via SMS, Email, or WhatsApp.
4. Sync verified leads to your CRM!

You’ll believe it once you see it! 

This is how easy email verification looks like on MakeForms:

Enable Verification:	Send OTPs to their email ID:	Find a verified tick on your backend:

Bonus feature to filter out domains on MakeForms: 

You can even disallow personal email ids, if you’re only looking for professional id submissions

This is how easy OTP phone verification looks like on MakeForms

Enable Verification

Your users will receive a mobile OTP when they input their number:

The phone number is verified in real-time

Bonus Features to filter out invalid phone numbers on MakeForms:

You can limit phone numbers to certain geographic locations by selecting pincodes by country.

Our software automatically detects invalid phone numbers and highlights the form field in red, prompting users to correct their input before submitting.

To get the most out of MakeForms, you can also explore these lead gen form features that improve user experience and conversion. And if you want to take it a step further, you can qualify those verified leads efficiently with this lead qualification process - a step-by-step checklist built for 2025-ready marketing teams.

Benefits of Verifying Your Leads

Now that you’ve seen MakeForms otp phone verification and email verification in action, get ready to enjoy the benefits of verified leads: 

• Better ROI: You’re only spending effort on leads with real potential!
• Compliance-Friendly: Stay within the boundaries of global data regulations.
• Cleaner CRM: No more bloated databases full of bots and duplicates.
• Improved Conversions: Verified leads = higher engagement = better results.
• Risk Reduction: Avoid legal headaches with documented consent and validated data.

Want to see how other industries do it? Check out our lead forms examples for industries including real estate lead generation, healthcare, and more. 

Lead Verification Made Easy with MakeForms!

If you’re tired of chasing ghost leads or wasting budget on unqualified submissions, it's time to start verifying. From email otp verification to whatsapp otp verification, the right tools and strategy can help your marketing and sales teams work smarter. 

With platforms like MakeForms, adding verification is no longer a complex development task. It’s pretty much plug and play! That means less junk in your pipeline, better lead qualification, and ultimately, higher ROI.

Want to get started right away? Explore how to create a lead capture form here.