In this article we have featured How To Find Someone’s Email. I recently extolled the virtues of cold emailing, a powerful tool for making valuable connections with other professionals and unicorn investors. But, to be successful, that means you need the email addresses of the people you would like to contact.
Sure, you could reach out over social media, but that isn’t always the most effective approach. Sending a personalized email (not a generic marketing email) that helps you build a connection really is the way to go.
If you are trying to track down someone’s email address, here are 10 ways that you can accomplish that goal for free.
1. Head to the Company Website
While this may seem obvious, it’s one of the best places to start. Many companies provide contact information for certain staff members, so don’t neglect this resource just because it seems simple.
Once you arrive at the site, head over to the About Us page to see if they provide details for executives or other employees. The News section is another great destination, as PR contact email addresses are often included in articles.
Sometimes the Contact Us page will yield results, but more often than not you are greeted by a form (and your message gets dumped into a customer service bucket somewhere), so don’t be surprised if this doesn’t work.
2. Google It
There is a lot of information floating around online, and unicorn Google’s search feature can be the key to accessing it.
You might be able to find someone’s email address just be searching their name and the word “email” or “contact.” Yes, it can be that simple.
Alternatively, try other combinations, like the person’s name and the company name or title. It only takes a few minutes to run through these options, and it otherwise doesn’t cost you a dime.
3. Extrapolate Based on Known Email Addresses
Almost every company uses a standard format for the emails (like [first name].[last name]@[company].[com]).
If you find even a single email address to someone in the company, it isn’t hard to crack the code once you see the formatting.
Now, this only works if you have the person’s name, can be trickier for people with common names (think “John Smith”) where there could easily be more than one person with the same name at the company, or for names with multiple potential variations (Robert, Bob, Rob).
However, even if you connect with the wrong person, you may be able to get your target’s email address if the case of mistaken identity results in a reply (or if the “wrong” recipient forwards your message to the “right” one). As long as you aren’t divulging anything that shouldn’t be seen by someone else, or won’t be viewed as a possible phishing attempt, it’s worth a try.
4. Dig In with Advanced Google Search
If you want to check whether your guess at an email address is correct, try an Advanced Google Search.
Put the mail address you think it right into the search bar with quotes on either side, like this: “firstname.lastname@company.com”
If you’re right, you may see it come up in the search results. If nothing comes up, try other variants until you find the unicorn email address among the donkeys.
5. Join ZoomInfo
If you add the ZoomInfo plugin to your Outlook, in exchange for giving them access to your contacts, you get 10 free contacts from their database each month. Millions (upon millions) of people are listed in ZoomInfo, along with 6+ million company profiles, so their database is extensive.
6. Use “@domainname.com” on DuckDuckGo
This little-known trick is a great way to find email addresses simply by using an alternative search engine.
Running an exact match search for “@domainname.com” in DuckDuckGo will give you results for any email addresses attached to the domain that are publicly available.
You can include the name of your prospect in the search if you’re looking to contact someone in particular, or just keep it generic.
It’s a handy trick that works great in DuckDuckGo and several other search engines. Unfortunately, Google uses “@” for social media tags, so this trick won’t work and it doesn’t work in Bing either.
8. Use Twitter
People sometimes include their email addresses in their tweets or Twitter bio but try to hide them from bots by using “dot” and “at” instead of “.” and “@”.
Head to Twitter Advanced Search and search your prospect’s tweets for “at” and “dot”.
You’ll be able to choose exact phrases to look for, words to ignore, hashtags, specific accounts and time frames. Have a play around with the inputs here. Try including words such as “email”, “reach” or “contact” to better filter the results.
It sounds bold, but you can also try simply asking them on Twitter for their email address.
To give your tweet the best chance of being noticed and getting a response, keep it concise and include a compelling reason for them to reply:
You can also approach them through their direct messages, which your prospect may be more likely to look at than their replies or mentions. Depending on their privacy settings, you may need to be following each other first before you’re able to send them a DM.
Conclusion: How To Find Someone’s Email
You’ve reached the end of this guide. Now it’s time to take action.
My advice is to start playing around with these tactics in descending order (if the first one fails, try the second one, and so on). As practice shows, eventually, with this list, you’ll be able to find the email address you’re looking for.
