then you want to find someone’s email address.
maybe you want to contact an influencer, search for a list of potential sales leads, or maybe you just want to ask someone a quick question.
There are many reasons why you might be looking for a particular email address. Fortunately, there are also many different (clever) ways to find them.
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why it’s important to find the right email address
If you’re sending an important email, you need to send it to the right person. why? because it is very difficult to get people’s attention. Please note that only 8.5% of outreach emails receive a response.
Getting the right person to read your email improves your chances of getting the response you want. so spending the time to find someone’s email address and modify their message is 100% worth it.
This is especially true if you’re trying to communicate with someone you don’t know or have never talked to before.
Now, let’s search for emails…
how to find someone’s email address
These are some of the strongest tactics and tools I’ve used in the past (and still use) to find a person’s email address. Let’s get started!
1. use an email lookup tool
One of the easiest ways to find an email address is to use an email lookup service. all you need to do is enter the name of a person and/or a website, and the tool will search for the relevant address for you.
While they can be incredibly useful, you’re not guaranteed to get a successful result every time you use it. The free searches are limiting and the paid options can end up being quite expensive, especially if you don’t get the addresses you’re looking for.
The good news is that there is an almost endless list of email search tools on the web, so you’re spoiled for choice to see what works for you.
all email search services work pretty much the same way: you enter a name, try to refine it as much as possible, and the tool finds the best email.
Having said that, there are a few different pricing options and tool types available.
Here are some of the most popular email lookup tools to get you started (along with their cost):
- find that email: 50 free searches per month. paid accounts start at $29/month for 500 searches ($0.058/search).
- search engine expert: 300 free searches/month. paid accounts start at $39 per month for 5000 searches ($0.008/search).
- snov.io – 50 free searches/month. paid accounts start at $29 for 1,000 individual searches or 500 bulk searches ($0.029/search).
- voila norbert – free trial of 50 free searches. Paid accounts start at $49/mo for 1000 searches ($0.049/search).
- hunter email search: 50 free searches/mo. paid accounts start at $49/month for 1,000 searches ($0.049/search).
- findthatlead – 50 free searches/month. paid accounts start at $49/month for 5000 searches ($0.0098/search).
- email-prospector pro: free trial of 50 free searches. Paid accounts start at $1,195 per year, limited to 4,000 searches ($0.299/search).
- findemails.com: Free trial of 50 free searches. paid accounts start at $19/month for 500 searches ($0.038/search).
how to find someone’s email address for free?
If your budget is tight, here are three quick ways to find emails for free:
- clearbit connect is a gmail and outlook plugin that looks up a person’s email from a variety of sources, as well as its own database (related: see the best gmail plugins and extensions to improve your productivity ).
- getprospect is a chrome extension that allows you to find someone’s email address by their name and domain.
- rocketreach can quickly find emails for you, especially if your target is quite high profile. just sign up for a free account and start searching for emails.
2. use “@domainname.com” in 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” on duckduckgo will return results for any email address attached to the domain that is publicly available.
You can include your prospect’s name in the search if you want 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.
3. use twitter
Sometimes people include their email addresses in their tweets or twitter bios, but try to hide them from bots by using “dot” and “at” instead of “”. and “@”.
Go to twitter advanced search and search for your prospect’s tweets with “at” and “dot”.
You will be able to choose exact phrases to search for, words to ignore, hashtags, specific accounts and time frames. play around with the inputs here. try including words like “email”, “scope” 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 getting attention and a response, be concise and include a compelling reason for them to respond:
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.
how to check anyone’s old tweets?
Actually, there is one last tactic you can try with twitter to check the latest tweets from users. By using the all my tweets app, you can generate a list of up to 3,200 previous tweets from anyone for free.
here’s how to use it:
go to all my tweets and log in with your twitter account.
Then enter the Twitter handle of the website or person you’d like to connect with to get their tweets.
Once you have these listed out, just hit Ctrl/Cmd+F and search for stuff like @domainname, “contact”, “email”, “you can reach me at”, and other variations that might show an email address.
4. subscribe to your prospect email list
Most websites will have an email list.
If your prospect’s website or blog features a newsletter, subscribe to their mailing list as many newsletters are sent from a personal email address. This can be a quick and easy way to obtain the email address you’re looking for.
Even if sent from a generic [email protected] address, try replying to one of the newsletters to share an opinion or ask an insightful question and you just might get a response.
This can help you build a relationship with the potential customer and gives you a better chance of getting their personal email addresses in the future.
5. ask via a generic email address or contact form
Most websites have a contact form on their website or provide a generic email address [email protected] for general inquiries.
While these are likely manned by admin staff, you can try using them to ask how to get in touch with your ideal prospect.
6. check out contact & about us pages
Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best. many websites include personal email addresses on the contact, about us, or meet the team pages.
However, these pages can often be difficult to find in site navigation. If you can’t see what you’re looking for, check the footer or try these common url formats:
- example.com/contacto
- example.com/contact-us
- example.com/contact-me
- example.com/ about
- example.com/about-me
- example.com/about-us
- example.com/team
- example. com/our-team
- example.com/meet-the-team
7. take a look at the author’s pages
Another simple starting point is the author page on your potential client’s blog or website, which is linked from their name in any article they’ve written.
There can often be a lot of information on this page, especially if you have used default wordpress themes and settings.
8. do a whois lookup
If you’re trying to find an email address for someone with a website (perhaps a freelance business owner, entrepreneur, or writer), you can sometimes find their contact information in their website’s whois information. .
whois data is used when registering a domain and is publicly available, giving you information about who owns the domain. everyone who has a website is required by law to share their contact details. just go to who.is and find the domain of the email you are looking for:
By the way, there are other WHOIS lookup tools available like, such as:
- namecheap
- domaintools
- nominet
- dmca0s free whois tool
It doesn’t really matter which tool you use. if you are lucky you can see the email used to register this domain. however, whois provides an option to hide your public information from your public data, so this may not always work.
9. use google (and search operators)
apologies: it’s obvious, but can still be overlooked. use google for its intended use: search.
Type your prospect’s name along with the “email address” and you might be in luck.
However, if the person you are looking for has a common name, this can be difficult. even if they have a unique name, you might not get very far.
can help narrow down the search with some google search operators. these are very easy to use. just enter the operator in google and search:
- [name] + email (or) email address
- [name] + contact (or) contact information (or) contact me
- [ name] + “hometown”
- [name] + “company you work for”
- [name] + linkedin
- [name] + zoominfo
- [name] + email
- [name] + contact
If you know a little more information about your prospect (such as where they work), you can try these:
- site:companywebsite.com + [name] + email
- site:companywebsite.com + [name] + contact
- site:companywebsite.com + name . lastname [at] companyname.com
- site:companywebsite.com + firstnamelastname [at] companyname.com
- site:companywebsite.com + firstname [at] companyname.com
- site:companywebsite.com + first_name [in] companyname.com
10. use facebook
When setting up a facebook page, people often enter as much information as they can and then forget about it.
just go to the about page in the profile and you will be able to see the email address if they have added it:
This makes Facebook a great place to search for email addresses for your prospects and will likely give you their most frequently used email address instead of something more generic.
11. check your own email list
Depending on your own visibility within your industry, some of your prospects may have already signed up for your newsletter.
A quick search of their email list could easily reveal exactly what you’re looking for.
Most email marketing programs will allow you to search for contacts in your list. this is how it looks in mailchimp, for example:
12. Export your LinkedIn Connections
did you know that linkedin allows you to export your connections?
then if you are connected with your prospect, you may be able to get their email address.
how to export linkedin connections?
Step 1: Click me at the top of the linkedin home page, then select settings & privacy in the drop-down menu.
Step 2 – Click to the Privacy tab and scroll down to the Getting a copy of your data (under the How LinkedIn uses your data section):
Step 3 – Tick the connections box and hit Request archive.
In about 10 minutes or so, you’ll get an email with all your connections’ email addresses in a handy spreadsheet.
This method should be used responsibly to avoid losing your linkedin account.
13. take an educated guess
If you think about it, almost all email addresses follow the same patterns. they are often based on fairly simple formats.
then if you know your prospect’s first name, last name, and domain, you might be able to guess their email address.
If you already have someone else’s email address at the same company, you can probably figure out what structure they use.
if not, try these common formulas:
- [firstname]@example.com
- [firstname].[lastname]@example.com
- [firstname][lastname]@example.com
- [initial].[last]@example.com
summary
There we have it, how to find someone’s email addresses. just remember: with great power comes great responsibility.
so use these email search methods wisely. don’t spam people! don’t sell people’s email addresses. and don’t bother the people you’re communicating with… you’re the only one missing out on a great opportunity to connect and build (business) connections.