Here are six effective methods we use whenever we need to find someone’s contact information:
Make your best guess (and test it)
Subscribe to your target’s mailing list
Reach out for an email address on Twitter
1. Use email lookup services
The simplest method to locate an email address may be through email discovery tools.
Simply give them the name and website of the person, and they’ll use their powers to discover an email.
There are hundreds of these tools available, with some being superior to others.
I use well-known email lookup services to check up 100 email addresses that I already know each year to keep this post current.
Meet this year’s contestants:
Hunter: 50 free searches per month. Paid accounts start at $49/month for 500 searches ($0.098 per result).
Find That Email: 50 free searches per month. Paid accounts start at $29/month for 500 successful searches ($0.058 per result).
Voila Norbert: 50 free searches as a trial. Paid accounts start at: $49/month for 1,000 results ($0.049 per result).
FindThatLead: 50 free searches per month. Paid accounts start at $49/month for 5000 searches ($0.010 per result).
Snov.io: 50 free searches per month. Paid accounts start at $39 for 1,000 single searches ($0.039 per result).
Anymail Finder: 90 verified emails as a trial. Paid accounts start at $49/month for 1000 searches ($0.049 per result).
Getmail.io: 10 free searches per month. Paid accounts start at $49/month for 300 searches ($0.16 per result).
Name2Email: Chrome extension. Unlimited searches per month. Free access.
Clearbit Connect: Chrome extension. 100 searches per month. Free access.
The results are in!
With a 92% success rate, Name2Email is in first place for the second consecutive year.
They offer a free Chrome plugin that has no search volume restrictions.
There is only one drawback: mass email address searches are not possible.
With a success percentage of 67–77%, Voila Norbert, Getmail.io, and Find That Email came in second place this time.
SIDENOTE.
I’m currently testing email lookup services for the fourth time. Check out the results from last year if you’re interested.
WANT TO BE INCLUDED IN THIS STUDY?
Find my email address and send me a message if you run a similar tool and would like to see it in the test the next time. I will be happy to add it.
Email discovery services are a good way to find emails, especially in large quantities, but they are not ideal.
Every tenth search, even the winner offered no results.
Continue reading if you want to discover a few more efficient approaches to locating an email address.
2. Make your best guess (and test it)
Many formulas are used to create most email addresses.
You may easily predict someone’s email address if you know their first, last, and domain names.
My contact list has email addresses with the name@domain.com format in about 70% of the cases.
The following are the most typical email address formats:
However, meticulously selecting each potential alternative takes time.
So here’s a quick way:
A list of potential email addresses is automatically generated by the Email Permutator Tool from Polished. Simply fill out the forms, and it will do the rest.
An effective substitute is the email Permutator spreadsheet created by Rob Ousbey of Distilled.
You may quickly obtain a list of potential email addresses using these tools.
You then need to review the recommendations.
Go to Gmail, select “Compose,” and then put every possible combination of email addresses into the “To” field. One by one, place the cursor over each email address to watch.
If the email address is connected to a Google profile, a pop-up will let you know.
Directly in Google Spreadsheets, you may perform the same check.
PRO TIP
In the event that this is ineffective, you can perform one more search using Google or another search engine to see if your best estimate was referenced anyplace online.
3. Use Twitter’s advanced search
In tweets, people frequently divulge their email addresses. However, they swap out the “.” and “@” symbols for the words “dot” and “at” to hide them from bots.
Have you guessed what you’re going to do next?
Search for the terms “at” and “dot” in tweets from your target individual using Twitter’s Advanced Search feature. To focus your search results, you may also add terms like “email,” “contact,” or “reach” to your query.
Let’s see if Sam can make this work. Oh, our Ahrefs grandmaster of video material.
GOTCHA!
Some people even forget to encrypt their email addresses when they tweet them.
4. Subscribe to your target’s mailing list
If the person you’re targeting publishes a newsletter on their blog, you can use an opt-in form on their website to join their mailing list.
The majority of newsletter emails will be sent from their personal account.
Additionally, this is a fantastic chance to begin developing relationships.
Just send a simple query or request for an opinion in response to one of the newsletter emails.
One of the first email outreach messages I ever wrote was as follows:
After subscribing to Brian Dean’s newsletter, I responded to the first email I received.
PRO TIP
Email addresses for newsletters like news@domainname.com and similar ones are occasionally used.
However, if you respond to these, the person may do so using their own email account.
5. Reach out for an email address on Twitter
I’ve come across a lot of contact sites where people advise that the best way to get in touch with them is through Twitter.
However, most of the time, the message you wish to convey is more than 280 characters.
So don’t be afraid to contact that individual by email after finding them on Twitter.
Tim Soulo, our head of marketing, does that very frequently.
Most people will eagerly respond to such a message, I assure you.
Make sure your Twitter profile is authentic and properly identifies you.
6. Ask for a personal connection via a generic email address or contact form
The majority of large businesses either have a contact form on their website or provide a general email address (such as info@domainname.com) for questions. The majority of those inboxes are dealt with by support teams or by VAs.
Send them a short message asking them to put you in touch with the person you want to speak to.
IMPORTANT
This works best if your email signature includes a concise biography of you.
Make sure your virtual assistant (VA) acknowledges you as their boss in their signature if they are gathering email addresses for you.
What else can you try?
If you tried every method and still failed to find an email address, here are a few tips you can use as your last resort:
Check your own contact list. Your prospect might have contacted you before.
Export your LinkedIn connections. I found that only 7% of my own list chose not to hide their email address on LinkedIn but that’s still something.
Check their social profiles and “About” pages.
How to find email addresses at scale for blogger outreach
Any link-building or marketing strategy must involve contacting the authors of the articles being promoted. To help you with your outreach, let me demonstrate how to identify prospects AND their email addresses in mass.
Consider that you’re hawking a smartphone app for weight loss.
Visit our Content Explorer and conduct a search for the subject you are looking for.
If the author of the piece is identified, Content Explorer will display their name.
The author’s name can also be seen in the export file.
The domain is the only item that is lacking. But using this formula in Google Sheets, you can simply get that from the URL of the article:
You can submit the list to your preferred email lookup engine, such as Hunter, now that you have the domain names and the writers’ names.
PRO TIP
You can use Hunter for Sheets add-on to find emails in bulk quickly.
What did I miss?
Here at Ahrefs, that is how we discover email addresses.
I’m pleading with you one more! Use these techniques with caution. Don’t make the folks you are trying to reach out to dislike me because I wrote this post.
And ping me on Twitter or send me an email if you know of any more effective techniques to discover someone’s email address. I wish I knew them!