A Practical Guide to Finding Anyone’s Email Address
In this article, we will explain how to find email addresses manually and by using specialized tools.
For what Purposes Do You Need an Email Address?
Usually, for SEO promotion, you need email addresses in two cases: for outreach and guest posting. Let’s briefly consider the advantages of both of these methods.
Outreach is a way to obtain external links through agreements with bloggers, online media, and other resources. For more information, see the article: Blogger Outreach.
Guest posting is creating relevant and useful content on another site to get a return URL to the site.
In 2020, search engines have become more selective about the quality of the link mass. You can read more about this in the articles: Google BERT Update and Google Algorithms That Affect SEO. Additionally, the presence of anchors was not one of the main ranking factors in 2019, as was mentioned in an article by Rand Fishkin. The priority for the target audience is high-quality and interesting content posted on trusted sources.
To agree on the publication, you will need to contact the editor of the blog or media resource, or the webmaster of the site via email. This is one of the easiest ways to get feedback and discuss further details with a positive response.
Searching for email addresses is complicated by the fact that you can not always immediately find the correct contacts and have to use third-party services. We will talk about them later. Or the contacts section contains a lot of emails of company employees and it is not always clear who to contact. Also, there are might be an error in the address, or it may no longer exist; some email accounts are blacklisted by email systems.
Despite the difficulties of finding contacts and the likelihood of a refusal to publish, in 2020, outreach and guest posting will be of the utmost priority and the safest ways to get the link mass and targeted traffic to a site.
How to Manually Find Email Addresses
In a Moz article, David Farkas says that first, you should try finding email addresses manually without using any third-party programs.b
Moz
Additionally, many email search services can only find an email that is associated with a domain name. So, if the employee you need has a separate email address, let’s say a @gmail.com, then the program will not find it.
Look at the “About Us” and “Contacts” on the Site
Start searching for emails in the “Contacts” section. It contains basic information on how to contact webmasters and other employees.
If emails were not specified in the previous section, open the “About us” page. Sometimes there is information about how to contact the editor or marketing director that is responsible for publishing content on the site.
Ask for an employee’s email address using the contact form on the site or write to one of the employees.
You can use the feedback form to find the contacts for the correct person. The corporate inbox is checked by technical support or company managers, depending on the specifics of the resource. But there is a possibility that your message will be ignored, or it may take a long time to respond to it.
If someone else’s address is specified on the site in addition to corporate email, you can write to this person asking for help. In this case, the probability of a positive response is slightly higher.
View Whois Data
If the employee whose email address you need is the owner of the target resource, try viewing the Whois data. The information might be private, or a separate email address was used for domain registration, which is rarely viewed.
We recommend the ICANN Whois service for verification.
Look Up Icann
Simply insert the domain of interest in the search bar and click “Lookup.” If the information is not closed, you will see the email address of the owner at the bottom.
The top-level domains .io, .eu, and so on, have special Whois databases. They are searched for using certain queries- .io whois.
If the previous method did not help, try searching for other domains owned by the company you are interested in. Sometimes the data will be open there. To do this, use the tool ViewDNS.info.
View DNS Info
Enter the domain or IP address of the web resource in the search bar and the program will display a list of sites located on the same server.
Use Search Engines
To search for email, use the Startpage search service.
Start Page
The program finds a hidden email address or contact section. Just enter the site address in the search bar and see the results. If the search did not yield any results, you can try to find a specific person’s inbox by entering their first and last name in the search engine. The request will look something like this, email Rand Fishkin@com.
Or try to find non-domain email addresses. For example, email Moz @gmail.com, @yahoo.com, and so on.
If the email is shared, the search engine will find it.
Use Social Media
LinkedIn is one of the most popular social networks if you need to find someone’s work contact. According to a Statista study, in 2016 it had 467 million users, but now, this figure is much higher.
To find a specific person’s email address, go to advanced search, and enter the name of the company where they work in the search bar. A list of all employees will open, and you can select a specific user whose account you want to view. If the company is large, it is better to use additional keywords to narrow the search, such as the name of a position or department.
It is also convenient to perform an email address search on Twitter. The easiest way is to message the right person asking them to send their email. In most cases, people do not hide their work contacts.
You can also use the advanced search. This way you will reduce the waiting time for the user’s response and will be able to find “encrypted” email addresses. Many people replace or add extra characters in their contacts, such as punctuation marks, eliminating the possibility of email spam.
Add the “contact” and “email” keys to the search query to narrow the search results. For examples:
Kinsta
The “All My Tweets” service allows you to generate up to 3,200 tweets from any user for free.
All My Tweets
Enter the username of the person whose tweet history you want to view in the search bar.
Kinsta
Then press Ctrl / Cmd + F and filter queries such as @domainname, “contacts”, “email”, and other variants that might include an email address.
To speed up locating email addresses, you can use two Twitter tools, Followerwonk & Voila Norbert.
Followerwonk is a service developed by Moz that contains many useful features for both marketers and SEO specialists.
Follower Wonk
The program allows you to find the right employee’s Twitter account. Just enter their job title in the search bar, such as “editor” and the company name. After the service shows the profile, copy and paste its login into Voila Norbert.
Voilanorbert
The tool checks the mail host to find the corporate email. The program has the advantage of checking the mailbox for authenticity, so the information received almost eliminates the likelihood of an error.
List of Paid and Free Email Services
You can use special tools to reduce the search time, these can be paid or free.
Paid Services for Email Addresses
Email Hunter is one of the extensions for Chrome and, according to many experts, it is convenient to use. It has a free version that includes up to 50 free requests per month.
Hunter
The algorithm is simple: open the desired site, click on the extension, and see the results. For example:
Hunter
The program checks addresses. If the contact is correct and not blacklisted by email services, you will see a green shield icon next to it. The program has an option that allows you to view the source from which the data was taken.
Find That Email is another popular tool. It also has two versions, free up to 50 searches per month and paid.
Find That Email
To find an email address, fill out the search form: the person’s first and last name, and the name of the company where they work.
Find That Email
Finder Expert offers users 300 free requests per month. Unlike with the previous versions, it does not have a convenient registration form due to the lack of authorization through a Google account and social networks.
Finder Expert
To use this tool, install the Chrome extension. Then go to your website or personal social media account, click on the extension icon in your browser and check the search results. For convenience, you can create lists in your Finder Expert account.
Snov.io offers a paid subscription starting at $39 per month, depending on the service package. You can log in using your Google account or fill out the registration form.
Snov
Unlike Email Hunter, the service works with the social network LinkedIn. For ease of use, install the Chrome extension.
Free Email Search Services
Clearbit Connect is a service created specifically for Gmail and Outlook. The tool searches for users’ email accounts from various sources, such as search results, contacts listed on the site, social networks, and also uses its databases.
Connect Clearbit
To use the search, download, and install the extension, this takes just a couple of minutes.
GetProspect is another convenient extension for the Chrome browser.
Get Prospect
The program finds email addresses through the person’s name and domain if you need a corporate email.
RocketReach has its own regularly updated databases and uses other third-party sources for searching email addresses. It allows you to search for contact information in a LinkedIn profile.
Rocket Reach
You can log in using social media or fill out the registration form. Enter a person’s data or site address in the search bar, and the tool generates results.
But all automatic search tools have a significant disadvantage, they do not guarantee that you will find a working contact, even if you use paid services. Additionally, programs such as Email Hunter can generate dozens of addresses, and you will have to test each of them. This is not convenient, also, when setting up automatic email distribution, some systems may consider emails to be spam. We recommend not abusing the use of programs, but to try the other alternative methods described in our article.
Subscribe to Our Newsletter
Many websites and blogs offer a subscription to their newsletter. You leave your contact information, and emails from the company or blogger will automatically be sent to your email address. The address line will contain the corporate email address. You can use this data to contact representatives of the company and offer them cooperation or ask them to share the contacts of the right person.
You cannot always count on a response, as this inbox might not be checked. But, as a rule, if you want to contact the author of a blog, you are likely to get feedback.
How to Check Your Email Account
Before creating a contact list for e-mailing, we recommend that you check the correctness of the addresses. Numerous blacklisted contacts can result in sanctions from the mail system. We offer you two popular email verification services:
- MailTester is a simple and convenient tool.
Although the developers claim that the results will be 100%, the effectiveness of the service depends on the settings of the site server. Sometimes they block the program, and then you will get negative verification results and all the data will be in yellow.
Mail Tester
If the email address is correct, then the information will appear on a green background, as is shown here:
If not, then in red.
- NeverBounce is a service that allows you to quickly check an email address. You can enter individual contacts or upload entire lists, which makes checking quicker and more convenient.
Never Bounce
One of the disadvantages is that the registration is not convenient, you need to fill out a form, and then verify your account through your email. There is no authorization via social media.
It is difficult to find a corporate or personal email if the company or person does not make it publicly available. Always begin by building a contact list using manual methods, that is, look at the relevant sections on the site, send a message using the contact form, or look for data on social networks. Or, you can simply ask colleagues or specific employees for their contact information. In most cases, if your offer is relevant, you will receive them.
Many of the automated tools described in this article speed up the search, but there is a high probability of getting a negative result. Therefore, always check the contacts before creating an email newsletter.
