Imagine you went to a networking event last night and met a potential business partner. You’re all set to send a pleasant follow-up note but realize you’ve forgotten the one thing you need to find their email address first.
While you can find most people on various social networks–from professional ones like LinkedIn to personal ones like Facebook–email still reigns supreme as the preferred method of getting in touch. Email’s more personal and professional at the same time, and your contact is all but guaranteed to have an email address, as there are 2.9 billion email addresses in the world.
Finding email addresses isn’t always easy, though. Most people protect their email addresses because we all hate spam. You can find almost anyone’s email address with a little investigative work. Here’s how.
Start with Quick Email Searches
Personal websites are another great place to check. If you can find a personal blog or landing page for that contact, you’ll likely find an email address on their Contact page.
Google can help out by finding other personal sites or the email address itself. Just search for their first and last name along with the word and email perhaps their company name. Google will find anywhere this combination appears.
If you can find your prospect’s social media account, check their profile for contact information. Users sometimes list this information on LinkedIn or Twitter. For example, use the search from operator to find an email address (e.g., email from:dannyaway).
Alternately, use 3rd party Twitter search app SnapBird. It can search through all the Tweets from your feed or followers. Just enter a keyword such as “email” and the user’s name, and it’ll do the rest.
You can also use a tool such as Lusha to find contact information for people on LinkedIn, including their corporate email address, personal email address, and phone number.
Then there are also several “people search” websites that can be helpful, including Spokeo, PeopleSmart, and Pipl. Some sites are free to use, while you’ll need a paid subscription to unlock most people’s search sites’ full features.
When all else fails, you can try guessing. Seriously. If you can find the naming convention the company uses, perhaps from another employee at that firm (in some cases, firstname.lastname@company.com), you can try that format with your prospect’s name and wait to see if the email bounces back.
Use Apps to Find any Email Address
If you’ve completed your web and social media search and still can’t find a trusted email address, it’s time to use a tool designed for this email search. Fortunately, there are lots of apps just for this.
Just enter your prospect’s name along with their company name, and you’ll receive either the app’s best guess or a list of viable options. Here are the best options:
Email Generator
Part of your initial email search may involve entering various name and company domain combinations into Google. This is not only time-consuming, but it can be frustrating considering the various combinations that can exist. That’s where Email Generator comes in. It generates over 50 popular email combinations for that name for you in seconds just from their name and company domain.
Email Generator also suggests Gmail and Outlook email versions. Install MailTrack.io from Email Generator to monitor when your recipient opens it.
Price: Free
Mail Tester
Once you’ve found a potential email address, use Mail Tester to see if the email address is valid. It can’t tell you if that’s the real email for the person you want, but it can confirm whether or not that email address exists on that domain name.
If the email address is valid, Mail Tester shows the server info it found. If it’s unable to confirm the accuracy of an email address, it will display a message stating that the company’s server doesn’t allow email verification.
Mail Tester can connect to a company’s server and deliver accurate data if it can. Sending an email to the address and seeing whether it bounces is the only way to be sure.
Price: Free
BuzzStream to Find any Email Address
BuzzStream is another fantastic app to use to boost your email search. It can find contact information (including social network profiles) for “influencers,” people who are active on social media and blogs. Once you’ve gotten in touch with an influencer, it will save those messages and let you share them with your team to follow up easily.
When you need to find email addresses, simply add the company URL, and the app will display both employee email addresses and the company’s Twitter handle. If the app can’t find the email address of a specific person, it will provide you with the about and contact pages of the company as a starting point. Or, use its free email research tool to get auto-generated Google Search links that’ll help you find their email address.
Price: Free 14-day trial; from $24/month for one user
Voila Norbert
Voila, Norbert is one of the simplest ways to find an email address. Just enter the first and last name of anyone you’re trying to find, along with the company’s domain name. It will then ping the domain and provide any addresses that match the name, along with user evaluations to determine validity.
It works surprisingly well for finding company addresses. Keep in mind that some companies strive to keep the email addresses of their employees private, though, so if Voila Norbert isn’t given access, it will let you know.
Price: Free for searching up to 50 email addresses; plans from $49/month
Voila, Norbert Zapier integrations coming soon!
Email Hunter
Email Hunter lets you find email addresses right from its homepage. Enter the corporate domain name and click search to get all publicly accessible email addresses.
It also shows the number of sources found online for each email address to add to the verification and validity of each one. That makes it an even better bet for finding email addresses that actually work.
Price: Free for searching up to 150 email addresses per month; plans from $49/month
See Email Hunter integrations on Zapier
Conspire
Conspire is a little different from the other apps on this list. Rather than solely providing emails, it operates on the “six degrees of separation” theory. Like the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,” where you try to figure out how a person would be connected to Kevin Bacon or some other celebrity, Conspire assumes you might know someone who knows someone who knows your prospective contact.
The software will give you the ideal way to meet new customers via your contacts. Mentioning shared acquaintances might help you connect with strangers.
Conspire uses data from your linked Gmail account to get a sense of your current network. Using the To, From, CC, Subject, and Date fields of your emails and your frequency of communication. And it ranks each relationship to determine its “strength.” This data determines how you and your contacts communicate.
Price: Free
Find any Email Address With a Browser Extension
Another handy way to find email addresses is with a browser extension—many of which work right inside your Gmail inbox. With just a few clicks, you can quickly look up an email address without opening a new app or webpage.
Rapportive (Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer)
Rapportive puts contact info discovery right inside Gmail. It can be used in conjunction with an app such as Email Generator. Simply enter a few email variations into the “Send To” field when composing an email in Gmail. Hover over each email address, and Rapportive will show as much profile information as possible.
Rapportive displays an email contact’s full name, profile picture, company name and location, and links to personal and professional websites and social media. That verifies your email. If it can’t find the address, it’ll show grey.
And, when you’re reading emails, Rapportive will show that same contact info in the right sidebar for a simple way to learn more about your contacts.
Price: Free
Clearbit (Chrome) to Find any Email Address
Similar to Rapportive, this Chrome extension integrates with Gmail. However, instead of checking variations of an email address, Clearbit quickly finds email addresses from its database, along with other company and personal data. Just enter a company’s name, select the correct one, then filter through the contacts it finds there.
Clearbit may provide additional email information to assist you in recalling how you met someone.
Price: Free for up to 50 searches per month
See Clearbit integrations on Zapier
Datanyze Insider (Chrome and Firefox)
Datanyze Insider can find any email address with just the first and last name of the contact. To use the extension, highlight the contact’s name as it appears online, right-click, pick “Datanyze Insider,” then click “Find email” to utilize the addon.
Datanyze Insider will then ping email addresses that are most likely to be legitimate based on name and business domain variants and show them. It also gives a confidence percentage.
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