How to find the correct email address

There are numerous ways to search for and find an email address. Besides double-checking it on websites or social media, several free and commercial tools are available.

Much of corporate communication depends on email contact. The same applies to acquisition, i.e., when potential customers need to be found quickly to help expand the reach of your network or shop. But sometimes you may find that you’re missing complete contact details. This is one instance when it’s worth searching for the correct email address so that you can address the correct recipient.

Using the correct contact details is even more important for an outreach campaign. Since the designated contact won’t expect to be contacted, an incorrect address means they’ll be none the wiser. This could damage your campaign and waste resources. Fortunately, there are some simple solutions to help find an email address.

The first option to find an email address is the easiest and the most obvious. Often the address you are looking for appears on a company’s or your contact’s personal website. Simply search for it on the contact page, the “about-us page” or the “about-me page”. On blogs, the corresponding authors or influencers tend to link their email and can thus be reached directly.

This option to find an email address may seem a bit trivial, but often leads to success. As long as you know the name of your contact and the name of the company, you could try to guess it.

Large companies usually have a fixed system to assign email addresses. Often these follow the forename.surname@company.com pattern. You could check the email addresses listed on the firm’s website to deduce the address you are looking for. However, ensure that your email does not contain any confidential information.

Most websites provide a general contact email for users to get in touch with. This would usually be in the “Contact” tab or in the imprint. Although the person you are trying to reach may not be the one to answer your query, you could ask for the correct email address. This way you can be sure that your email reaches the intended addressee.

Alternatively, many websites provide the option of subscribing to a mailing list. When you reply to a newsletter, you have a direct personal contact within the company, making it easier to find the email address you are looking for. Unfortunately, this does not work with all newsletters. Some prevent replies.

If you prefer to find an email yourself, search engines could be of help. However, don’t rely on Google to offer assistance in this case. A search query containing “@” on Google is considered a social tag. Other search engines are more helpful. If you enter “@examplecompany.com” in Bing or DuckDuckGo and place this query in quotation marks, you’ll find all company addresses that are publicly accessible. For more precise results, add the name of the contact you are looking for to the search query.

One helpful option to look for a specific email address is social media. Twitter or Instagram often display contact details in the bio of users, often omitting “.” (dot) and “@” to ward off bots. On Facebook, you may find the relevant contact details in the “About” section. However, this only works if the person has stored their data and has not set the profile to private.

Use LinkedIn to export your contacts and find an email address provided you are connected to the person you are looking for. The function can be found in “Data Privacy” and “Get a copy of your data”. Activate the “Connections” box and then click on “Request archive”. After a few minutes you will receive the stored addresses of all your contacts by mail. However, avoid using this option too often. Of course, your contacts also have the possibility to find your email address this way.

You can also find an email address via WHOIS or a similar lookup tool, provided that it has been deposited by a website operator. The contact data is used when registering a domain. However, this method only works if your contact has a website and makes the corresponding data publicly available.

Even if you don’t know the website of the recipient or you cannot find any contact information on social media, there are a few useful tools that will work. Numerous programs are available to help find email addresses. These tend to use a search mask to request the information. However, the hit rate of such tools varies greatly. In addition, many programs charge a fee and are only worthwhile if you frequently need to find contact details for professional reasons. Besides free add-ons like Clearbit Connect (for Gmail and Outlook) or GetProspect (for Chrome), tools like Voila Norbert or Snov.io allow 50 free queries. Additional queries require you to setup an account for a monthly fee.

There are plenty of options for you to find a specific email address. However, each option requires effort. In a professional context, it is therefore important that you too choose a sensible email address and store it in such a way that customers or potential business partners won’t need long to search for it. Nothing will stand in the way of successful contact then.