You find yourself sitting behind your desk wondering where you would even start looking for someone’s email address. You might know their name and surname, but have no clue what their email address is. Whether it’s for a prospect list of potential sales leads, or to ask someone a simple question.
There are many reasons why you might be looking for someone’s email address. Fortunately, there are tons of different ways to find them.
Table of Contents
The Importance of Finding the Right Email Address
Effective Ways to Find Someone’s Email Address
- Email lookup tools
- LinkedIn & email hunter
- Email address guessing game
- Chrome extensions
- Social media profiles
- Twitter’s advanced search
- Reach out
- Company websites
- Subscribe to prospect’s newsletter
- WHOIS records
- Check your own email list
Take Away
The Importance of Finding the Right Email Address
Get the right person’s attention before sending an important email. Why? because it’s challenging to hold people’s interest. It’s important to know that only 8.5% of outreach emails result in a reply.
Having the right person read your email increases your chances of receiving the desired response. Therefore, taking the time to research someone’s email address and modify your message is wholly worthwhile.
Effective Ways to Find Someone’s Email Address
Here are some of the most effective methods and tools I’ve used — and continue to use — for locating someone’s email address. Let’s get started!
1. Email lookup tools
One of the easiest ways to find an email address is to use an email lookup service. All you need to do is enter a person’s name and/or a website, and the tool will search for the relevant address for you.
While they can be extremely useful, they do not guarantee a successful outcome when you use them. The free searches are limited, and the paid options can quickly add up, especially if you don’t find the addresses you’re looking for.
The good news is that there are an almost infinite number of email lookup tools, so you have plenty of options to see what works best for you.
Email lookup services all work in roughly the same way: you enter a name, try to narrow it down as much as possible, and the tool finds the best email.
However, there are a variety of pricing options and tool types available.
To get you started, here are a few of the most popular email lookup tools (along with how much they cost):
- Find That Email offers 50 free searches per month. Paid accounts start at $29 per month for 500 searches ($0.058 per search).
- Finder Expert provides 300 free searches per month. Paid accounts start at $39 per month for 5,000 searches ($0.008 per search).
- Snov.io offers 50 free searches per month. Paid accounts start at $29 for 1,000 individual searches or $500 for 500 bulk searches ($0.029/search).
- Norbert, you have a free trial of 50 free searches. Paid accounts start at $49 per month for 1,000 searches ($0.049 per search).
- Hunter’s Email Finder offers 50 free searches per month. Paid accounts start at $49 per month for 1,000 searches ($0.049 per search).
- FindThatLead offers 50 free searches per month. Paid accounts start at $49 per month for 5,000 searches ($0.0098 per search).
- eMail-Prospector Pro – Trial version with 50 free searches. Paid accounts start at $1,195 per year and have a limit of 4,000 searches ($0.299/search).
- FindEmails.com offers a free trial of 50 searches. Paid accounts start at $19 per month for 500 searches ($0.038 per search).
If your budget is limited, here are three quick ways to find emails for free:
- Clearbit Connect is a Gmail and Outlook add-on that searches for a person’s email address across multiple databases as well as their own (related: check out the best Gmail add-ons and extensions to improve your productivity).
- GetProspect is a Chrome extension that searches for someone’s email address based on their name and domain.
- RocketReach can find emails quickly, especially if your target is fairly high-profile. Simply create a free account and begin email hunting.
2. Guess the email address
When you think about it, almost all email addresses follow the same few patterns. They are frequently based on very simple formats.
You might be able to guess your prospect’s email address if you know their first name, surname, and domain.
If you already know someone else’s email address at the same company, you can probably figure out which structure they use.
If not, try the following common formulas:
- [name]@example.com
- [name].[surname]@example.com
- [name][surname]@example.com
- [initial].[surname]@example.com
3. Google search
Use Google for what it was designed for: searching.
You might get lucky if you type in your prospect’s name along with “email address.”
This may be difficult if the person you’re looking for has a common name. You might not get very far even if they have a unique name.
You can help narrow the search by using Google search operators. These are extremely simple to use. Simply type the operator into Google and search:
- [name] + email (or) email address
- [name] + contact (or) contact information (or) contact me
- [name] + “home town”
- [name] + “company they work for”
- [name] + LinkedIn
- [name] + ZoomInfo
- [name] + email
- [name] + contact
4. Chrome extensions
You can try the following if you know more about your prospect, such as where they work:
- site:companywebsite.com + [name] + email
- site:companywebsite.com + [name] + contact
- site:companywebsite.com + firstname.lastname [at] companyname.com
- site:companywebsite.com + firstnamelastname [at] companyname.com
- site:companywebsite.com + firstname [at] companyname.com
- site:companywebsite.com + firstname_lastname [at] companyname.com
5. Social media profiles
If you can find someone’s social media profiles, chances are you can find their email address there as well.
Here are some pointers on how to use Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook to do it.
When looking for bloggers or general company email addresses, Facebook can be a great place to start.
Easily access the “About” section by visiting your target’s page.
This section typically contains the contact information for bloggers and small businesses. However, you will frequently encounter info@, hello@, and contact@ email addresses, which are ineffective for personalized outreach.
LinkedIn is an excellent resource for locating anyone’s email address. And, while sending an invitation to connect is one simple way to obtain someone’s email address, this isn’t always an option.
For LinkedIn, you may need to connect with the prospect to see their email address and other personal information.
Once you’re connected, open the prospect’s LinkedIn profile, click Contact Info, and the chances are that you’ll find what you’re looking for there.
6. Twitter’s advanced search
Twitter’s advanced search engine allows you to look for specific information in selected Twitter accounts. Since sometimes people tweet their email addresses, you can search past tweets to see if your prospect has ever done it.
Below are some easy steps you can follow to get started with Twitter’s advanced search:
- Add a keyword to the advanced search bar
- Identify the Twitter username
- And that’s all! You found a prospect’s email address in seconds
7. Reach out
Try contacting someone on social media, asking for a more specific email address, emailing info@ or hello@ addresses, or even chatting with customer service if none of the methods listed above worked to find someone’s email address.
8. Company websites
How much hidden information is available on company websites will surprise you. Email addresses fall into this category. Therefore, you must conduct a Google search with the root query “site:example.com” and a few modifiers.
9. Subscribe to prospect’s newsletter
Consider joining their mailing list if your prospect has a newsletter on their website or blog because many newsletters come from personal email accounts. This might be a quick and simple way to find the email address you need.
Try replying to one of the newsletters, even if it comes from a generic info@ address, to express your thoughts or pose a thought-provoking query. You might get a response.
This can help you establish a relationship with the potential customer and increases your chances of later obtaining their personal email addresses.
10. WHOIS records
You may be able to locate a website owner’s email address in the WHOIS information for their domain if you’re looking for that person (possibly an independent contractor, business owner, or writer).
You can find out who owns a domain by using WHOIS data, which is used during domain registration and is made available to the public. By law, everyone who owns a website must disclose their contact information. Simply visit who.is and perform a domain search for the email you’re looking for.
There are additional WHOIS lookup resources available, including:
- NameCheap
- DomainTools
- Nominet
- DMCA0s free WHOIS tool
Which tool you employ is really not that important. You might be fortunate enough to find the email that was used to register this domain. This might not always work, though, as WHOIS provides a way for you to hide your public information from their public data.
11. Check your own email list
Depending on your visibility in your industry, some of your prospects may have already subscribed to your newsletter. You might easily find what you’re looking for with a quick search of your email list. You can search your contact list for people with the majority of email marketing programs.
Take Away
So that’s how you look up someone’s email addresses. Keep in mind that great power also comes with great responsibility.
Use these email searching techniques accordingly.
Avoid spamming people! Never sell someone else’s email address. Do not scare off the people you are trying to reach. Only you are missing a fantastic chance to interact and create (business) connections.