For any sales professional, there’s no better feeling than looking into your pipeline and seeing a red-hot lead coming straight towards you. All you need to do is to reach out, and a big deal could be yours.
But wait a minute — do you even know how to get in touch with this decision maker? If the answer is no, you might need to run a quick email lookup.
There are many different ways to find someone’s email address, from dedicated email lookup tools to DIY hacks. In this article, we’re going to work through them all and point out the best options for your sales team.
What Is Email Lookup?
While many professionals are happy to list their email address on social media or their website, some prefer to keep it under wraps.
Email lookup is the process of uncovering these harder-to-find email addresses, commonly with the help of specialized search engines and data providers.
The usual purpose of email lookup is finding contact details for a potential customer. Once a sales rep has the address, they can then send an introductory email.
Email lookup is also used to verify the accuracy of B2B contact data. For instance, you might want to double check that a particular email is still in use before sending messages into the void.
A more niche use for email lookup is when reps want to connect with someone on a particular platform, such as social media. In many cases, you can easily send a connection invitation when you know someone’s email address.
9 Email Lookup Methods That Genuinely Work
If any of the scenarios above strikes a chord, you’re probably interested to learn about email lookup techniques.
So, what are we waiting for? Here’s a rundown of the best tools and tricks for finding the right email address for pretty much anyone:
1) Use a Dedicated Email Lookup Tool
Let’s start with the easy route. If you’re willing to part with a few dollars each month, by far the most efficient way to find someone’s email address is by using a dedicated email lookup tool.
Dozens of these services are available, each offering something a little different.
With Datanyze, you can look up someone’s email while you browse contact info on LinkedIn or any company website. This means you can find accurate contact information without breaking out of your sales workflow.
Our Chrome extension can also provide direct dial phone numbers and other useful information, covering 120 million professionals.
Other popular email search tools include:
- Hunter.io
- Find That Email
- BeenVerified
Pricing varies for these services. If you’re on a tight budget, some email finder apps offer a limited number of free searches. With Datanyze, you get 90 days to test drive the service before you need to commit.
2) Visit Their Company Website
Assuming you’re in B2B sales, another easy way to find email addresses is through company websites.
While the contact details for a specific person might not be listed on the front page, you can often find this information with a little bit of digging. For instance, About Us or Meet the Team pages often include bios and contact details for the leaders within any organization.
You might even be able to find a key email address hidden at the bottom of press releases or a blog post. If your chosen site has a built-in search bar, make good use of it.
Remember: You can use Datanyze on company sites, as well.
3) Try Your Favorite Search Engine
A company website might not be the only place that someone has listed their contact details. Using a regular search engine, you may be able to track down other instances of a person’s email address online.
You can start with Google. Use these templates when you search to pinpoint what you’re looking for:
- [full name] email
- [full name] email address
- [full name] contact
- [full name] contact information
- [full name] contact me
If you want to search a specific website for a particular email address, you can use something like this:
- site:thewebsite.com [full name] email address
For personal email addresses, you can also try the name of the person you’re trying to reach along with “@gmail.com” and “@yahoo.com.”
4) Check Their Social Media Accounts
Sometimes, email addresses are hiding in plain sight. For instance, many people in certain industries will post their contact information on their social media profiles.
If you’re conducting an email address search, be sure to check the bios of your chosen target on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
If you don’t find an email here, don’t despair. On occasion, people who hold senior roles within a business will reply to people on Twitter and supply their email address as a method of contact.
To find such instances, you can use Twitter’s own advanced search. In the box for All of these words, type in some terms like “email,” “reach,” “contact,“ and “send.” Then, put in the username of your target person in the From these accounts box.
5) Take a Peak at WHOIS Records
So far, we have tried methods that are relatively straightforward.
Unfortunately, email address lookup isn’t always so plain sailing. If you don’t want to pay for a dedicated tool, and you’ve had no joy out of web search and social media, the next step is to dig a little deeper.
A good place to start is with a WHOIS search. This public information database keeps records on the owner of every website domain. That usually includes the owner’s name, and their email address.
Of course, searching WHOIS will only reveal the email of the person who set up a particular site. And at big corporations, that is probably going to be some staffer in the IT department. But in startups and smaller enterprises, you might strike lucky with this approach.
Just be aware that some people use aliases or masking services to protect their personal data and to guard against phishing emails.
6) Subscribe to Their Newsletter
Another surprising tactic that can work on smaller businesses is subscribing to the company newsletter, or one created by the founder.
In many cases, people who run small newsletters will include a contact email address at the bottom of each edition as a way for people to get in touch. Alternatively, you may find it hanging out in the footer.
It might seem unorthodox, but this technique can be really effective when it comes to revealing the email addresses of highly active founders.
7) Double-Check Your Own Email List
Speaking of email lists — have you checked your own? If your company publishes content related to your industry, it’s possible that some leads in the same niche will be subscribers.
Be sure to run a quick people search on your list, and see if any matches come up. You could also search for the domain name of the company your target works at. You never know, you might just turn up the right email account.
8) Experiment With URLs
As we mentioned earlier, you can often find email addresses on the About or Meet the Team page of company websites. The same goes for Contact pages.
The problem is, some sites don’t actually have these pages. Or at least, they don’t display them publicly.
For sales reps who have exhausted options, it’s sometimes worth messing about with URLs in the hope of finding unlisted versions of these pages.
To try this idea, grab the company domain and work through these options:
- company.com/contact
- company.com/contact-us
- company.com/about
- company.com/about-us
- company.com/team
- company.com/our-team
- company.com/meet-the-team
This is very much a long shot. But if you don’t see any other way to find an unknown email address, you can give it a try!
9) Just Ask Directly
Here’s a radical idea: have you considered just asking for the right email address?
You could pop the question to the email owner for their current address via social media sites. Alternatively, you could use a company contact form, or email someone else in the company with your request.
What’s the worst that could happen? Just make sure that your credentials are clear, so they don’t think it’s a scam!
What Is the Quickest Way to Find Someone’s Email Address?
If you utilize the various methods mentioned above, there is a good chance you should be able to find the email address for pretty much anyone.
However, some of these tactics take time. A lot of time. If you are trying to boost the productivity of your sales team, it might be better to stick with the most efficient options.
Supercharge Your Prospecting With Datanyze
You won’t find a much faster way to find email addresses than with Datanyze.
With a click, our platform can serve up accurate contact information, personal details, and company data for anyone on LinkedIn. It’s fast, affordable, and your coworkers won’t need a tutorial before they can get started.
Want to give it a try? Sign up today for a free 90-day test drive and discover just how easy prospect research can be.
