Guide To Finding Any Email Address
June 5, 2015 | Technology
You know who you want to contact — now if only you could find an email address.
Some might resign themselves to mindless Googling. Or try the old Rapportive guess-and-check “trick” that’s been circulating the Internet for years.
Please don’t do that.
Not when you could be wrapping up your email address search in under 30 seconds flat.
We did some digging to build a complete list of the best free tools and tactics to quickly find email addresses by name, using publicly available information. If your favorite didn’t make the list, feel free to share it in the comments.
1. Datanyze Insider – Super Fast Email Address Lookup For Chrome or Firefox
Datanyze’s browser plugin lets you look up anyone’s email address by highlighting their name wherever it appears online. The Insider Email Finder then pings likely email addresses, finds which one is active, and displays a link to the correct address.
2. SellHack – Search Up To 10 Emails For Free Per Month
Similar to Datanyze Insider, Sell Hack is a handy browser extension that checks publicly available data sources to find someone’s email address. The free plan will let you search up to 10 emails per month on Chrome, Firefox, or Safari.
3. Email Hunter – How To Find Email Addresses By Company Domain
Punch any company domain into Email Hunter and the site promptly displays a list of all the publicly available email addresses associated with it. You can search up to 250 domains for free each month, and plans start at $49/month if you’re interested in searching more.
4. Voila Norbert - Quickly Find And Verify Someone’s Email
Search by first name, last name, and company domain. Norbert pings the mail host to confirm the correct email address.
While simple to use — you don’t need to install a plugin — Norbert does not check for catchall addresses, and it limits the number of queries users can conduct (SMTP servers could block the service if pinged too frequently). In our own unscientific test, Norbert was able to correctly identify three out of five email addresses.
5. Email For Corporations - Find The Right Business Email Format
This free database contains the email address formats of more than 1000 companies. Search by company name, industry, or geographical location to find the pattern your prospect’s company uses across their corporate email addresses — i.e. firstname@yesware.com, or firstname.lastname@yesware.com.
Small caveat: The site hasn’t added new companies to its listings since 2011, so consider this a tool for prospecting into established companies only. We had better luck finding email patterns for startups and other new businesses using EmailBreaker (below).
6. EmailBreaker - Find Company Email Format In A Split Second
This app is like a newer, slicker, souped-up version of Email for Corporations. Again, use your best judgement. EmailBreaker was able to correctly identify email patterns from most of the domains we tested, but offered mismatched results on some.
7. CEO Email Addresses - Send Emails To The C-Suite
It’s exactly what it sounds like. Use this site to find email addresses of CEOs in companies around the globe.
8. Conspire - Ask For An Introduction, Backed By Data
One of the coolest email tools we’ve come across recently is Conspire, an app that analyzes your contact list to identify mutual acquaintances who can introduce you to the person you want to reach.
Simply sign up with your existing email account and search for the person or company you’re interested in emailing. Conspire will churn out a relationship graph showing who has the strongest ties to that person across your extended network, based on factors like frequency, speed, and the length of time they have corresponded.
It even offers prewritten email templates to make your request that much easier. (Although we’d be remiss if we didn’t recommend copying and pasting the text into a Yesware template so you can track what happens after sending.)
9. LinkedIn Connections - Export Email Addresses To Google Contacts
Just because you’re connected with prospects on LinkedIn doesn’t mean you have their email addresses in your Google Contacts List.
The good news is that hidden away in LinkedIn’s advanced settings is the ability to export your connections, giving you up-to-date email address in your inbox.
You can also use Zapier to sync new LinkedIn Connections to your Gmail Contacts as they come in.
10. Google ‘Em – How To Use Search Operators To Find Emails
Sometimes it really is that easy. Try these basic queries first:
- [name] + email (or) email address
- [name] + contact (or) contact information (or) contact me
If that doesn’t work, it’s time to get creative with Google search operators. Try running a search of their company website, like so:
- site:companywebsite.com + [name] + email
- site:companywebsite.com + [name] + contact
11. Advanced Twitter Search – The (at) (dot) Approach To Finding Any Email
People get asked for their email on Twitter all the time. You can use Twitter’s advanced search to find the last time your contact responded to such a request:
- Search for the terms (at) (dot) in “All these words” under the ‘Words” section
- Enter their Twitter handle in “From these accounts” under the “People” section
Pro tip: Don’t waste your time searching for the word “email.” You’ll just end up combing through a long list of tweets on the topic of email, and not their actual email address.
