One of the most accessible ways of pitching a proposal is by contacting someone via their email address. For instance, you can contact people to send them your resume or propose a business idea. It’s often the case, however, that some individuals are not easy to reach out to, as their email is nowhere to be found. Nevertheless, don’t get discouraged, as knowing a person’s name or phone number is often enough to find their email address. Here are a few ways to do so.
1. Check the company’s social media and website
If the person you’re trying to contact works for a company, you may be able to find their contact information on the company’s website. This information is often located in the About Us page, perhaps more so in the case of smaller companies that don’t have many employees.
Even if the email of interest is not found on the company’s website, you may still be able to locate other details that can then lead you to your objective, such as other contact information.
Nowadays, it’s very common for companies to have an established presence on LinkedIn as well as on other social media platforms. On LinkedIn, for example, you may be able to find a long list of the company’s employees, including the one you’re looking for. If this isn’t the case, consider taking a look at a company’s followers on other platforms, as the individual whose email you’re searching for may be one of these followers.
2 Use a people search engine
Looking for contact information on people search engines is a very underrated method. These platforms resemble old-school phone number books, except that they provide you with more than just a phone number.
Enter a person’s full name, phone number, or address on Nuwber and click Search. The platform will then pull results from the broadest range of data sources, and you will find the person in question’s email address.
3. Take a look at your email list
Those who have a newsletter might discover that some prospects are already subscribed to it. In other words, a search through your email list could reveal some useful information about the individual in question, and you have the option to use email marketing software to streamline this process. More specifically, email platforms can be used for search and segmentation features, which allows you to classify subscribers by parameters that include location, engagement level, and industry, to name a few.
4. Subscribe to the contact’s newsletter
If you’re trying to contact a company that is being operated by a single individual, subscribing to their newsletter can be an easy way to find their email addresses. Note that although newsletters will often be sent from a business email, there’s still a good chance that the replies go directly to a person’s email. Even if that isn’t the case, there’s no meaningful difference between the two types of contact modalities when the business is run by a single person.
5. Find out if the person of interest has a personal website
A strategy similar to the previously mentioned one is to contact someone directly through their media platform. This strategy works particularly well when you’re trying to pitch a collaboration proposal with a blogger, as many are interested in collaborations which can help them boost their viewers or sales. For this reason, bloggers will commonly make some of their contact details publicly available.
It’s worth mentioning that bloggers get a lot of spam emails, and popular ones also get many genuine proposals. To stand out, do your best to avoid your message looking like spam and create a Subject title that you suspect has a good chance of getting their attention.
6. Use Google or other search engines
Finding someone’s email address on Google can be easy when their info is readily available. In some cases, however, a search fails not because the information is not there but because it’s harder for the engines to find it. In such situations, you have a better chance of success if you use more sophisticated search strategies. A good search query used for this purpose is Name+ email/contact / [Name] + company + email/contact. Alternative search queries you can explore include site: domain + name + contact/email or [email protected].
Many might find these formulas somewhat intimidating; nevertheless, they’re not particularly complex. The plus sign (+), for example, functions as a directive, informing the search engine to show results consisting of the name and the term mail. The slash (/) is an “or” operator, informing the search engine to give results that contain either term. The squares ([]) don’t do anything but help you differentiate between search terms.
By combining a site with a domain, such as in “Site: domain”, you can filter results from certain websites. For instance “site: domain + name contact/email” will allow you to find email addresses linked to a particular company or website. Last but not least, when you put a keyword between quotation marks, you’re informing Google to search exactly for the keyword between them.
7. Turn to an email permutator
If you’ve tried everything from this list and still haven’t found that email address, it’s time to start guessing. People don’t always have much imagination when creating emails. They will usually use their first and last names. As such, you could start guessing by combining names in as many ways as possible.
To make things easier, use a tool referred to as an email permutator. It works by requiring some terms as input and providing as output a list of all possible combinations. For example, you can use a person’s name and birth date as input and then test the different outputs provided.
Since some of the output provided by permutators will be emails that don’t exist, and some of it will be emails of other people, avoid sending the same email to all the outputted emails, as you will damage the reputation of your domain, and your emails may end up in the spam folder. You can filter fake addresses with an email verifier service and only send an email to all the remaining contacts if the list is very small. Otherwise, try to determine which address is the correct one and, if not possible, avoid sending any messages.
Bottom line: Start simple and combine strategies
If you’re lucky enough, you might be able to locate someone’s email address with just a few clicks. To avoid wasting unnecessary time, start with the simplest strategies, such as using a people search website and doing a quick Google search.
Sometimes you will have to combine multiple strategies to find an email address. For example, you can use a permutator, turn to a validator to determine which variants are correct, and then go on a people search website to check if an email address belongs to the person that interests you. The more you know about how to combine strategies effectively, the less likely you are to spend hours searching for someone’s email address.
