Taking the time to verify the owner of an email address before hitting send increases the chances that your message will reach its intended recipients. it also protects you from falling for email phishing scams or wasting time replying to an illegitimate source. In this article, we explore how to trace an email address back to its owner along with the underlying benefits of each method.
1. google search
The first and easiest way to check the owners of email addresses is to use google. Whether you received a message from someone who didn’t leave a name or email signature, or you want to confirm an address from an email list you purchased, the Google search engine is a good starting point. When you search for the address, you can see if it matches information from a directory, a web page, or an online profile like LinkedIn.
Alternatively, other search engine platforms like bing offer the same functionality despite not being as popular as google. there’s also duckduckgo, which lets you search the web without being tracked, store your personal information, or track you with online ads.
2. social networks
Using social media profiles can be a valuable place to check the owners of email addresses, assuming they have made that information public. Before launching lead generation campaigns, conduct lead research to confirm email addresses are accurate or to find prospects to target.
for business to consumer (b2c) businesses, use facebook and enter the email address in the search bar where a profile will appear if there is a match. If you’re a business-to-business (B2B) organization, LinkedIn is a great site to use. While you can’t match email addresses, you can search and view profiles, many of which post your professional email address on their page, even if you’re not connected to them.
3. automatic crm enrichment tools
Many CRM systems have data enrichment features or artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities that automatically keep contact information up to date. These tools work by monitoring public information, such as a company’s website contact page and social media profiles, where data, including email address, is constantly updated.
The main benefit of this method of verifying email address owners is the automation capabilities. instead of manually searching google or facebook, let the crm function do it for you. freshsales is a crm system that combines its auto enrichment tool with its ai feature, called freddy ai. In a contact profile, users can enter an email address and enrich the rest of the profile with all the other data and web links associated with that address.
4. search for browser extensions
If you are a google chrome user, you will love this particular method on how to trace an email address back to its owner. Browser extensions like fullcontact collect robust information from your gmail accounts. Whether you’re receiving an email from a new contact or just doing an email search, this chrome extension pulls other information from the web, like your title, company, phone number, and social media links.
an alternative chrome extension option is also the companion tool available in copper crm. Similar to fullcontact, it can perform email address lookups or collect data as messages are received from new addresses. The main difference here is that copper is also a complete crm system that can manage leads, contacts, tasks, opportunities, and projects on a single platform.
5. track ip address
tracing an ip address using an email header is a sophisticated and useful option if you are trying to confirm an email address for security reasons. The process will vary slightly depending on whether you’re using outlook, gmail, or yahoo systems, but it ultimately involves the same steps.
When you receive a message, go to the message options to see the email header, which will be in different places depending on your email provider. once there, you can see the ip address where the email came from. you can then look up the address using an ip address lookup tool like whatismyip.com to get additional data.
There are some limitations to using this method. For example, if the sender used a virtual private network (VPN), the address information may not be accurate. This is because VPNs, by design, hide your IP address to give you an extra level of internet security protection.
6. use paid services
Each of the methods we’ve provided up to this point are free options. To collect information from all sources at once and get additional information about someone, you can invest in a paid service like Spokeo. this platform allows users to search for contacts by name, email address, phone number, or social media profiles.
This service then pulls data from white pages, public records, websites, and social media profiles to get results on anything associated with that person. In addition to receiving contact information, Speako provides each person’s address history, employment history, and family connections, but it costs between $15 and $20 per month. Because it’s a paid service, we recommend it for sales teams that use email marketing or email pitches a lot in their sales activities.
7. contact the company associated with the email domain
The final option to confirm an address is to simply ask. If you’ve received an email from a new sender, want to check one from a list, or just want to make sure an address is accurate before making a submission, you can always call the organization and ask. Almost all email address domain names are associated with the organization they come from.
If you get a message from an address that won’t leave their name and you’ve exhausted all other options, google the business name in the address to get a phone number. call the number and ask them to confirm that the address is for their company and find out who the contact is. Ideally, this method should be used as a last resort if the other options fail, as it takes longer than the other options.
why check owners of email addresses?
If you don’t verify the owners of email addresses, you’ll run into problems of not being able to verify the sender of a message or confirm an address you’re sending messages to. there are also additional security, sales productivity, and data integrity reasons. Sales management must ensure that tools and processes are in place to help their team with email verification.
These are the main benefits of verifying the owners of email addresses:
- Helps prevent cybersecurity breaches: Many cybersecurity incidents originate from an email message searching for credentials or trying to get someone to download a malicious file. verifying a sender address helps determine if the message is legitimate and if the sender is who they say they are.
- Ensures accurate addresses for sales and marketing initiatives: email crafting Personalized messages often require a lot of time and research to get high response rates. however, all that time is wasted if the email address is not accurate.
- keeps sales data clean: email addresses are some of the most You can have on a prospect or customer as it is used for lead generation, lead nurturing campaigns, and promotion of special offers. this makes it critical to keep your data up to date and accurate at all times.
end result
The ability to verify email address owners is powerful for staying secure, more efficient sales activities, and data integrity. The methods presented range from no-cost options to paid options, manual and automated processes, and independent versus integration with other software, such as a CRM. Depending on your tools, budget, and technical knowledge, these seven approaches to email verification will meet your specific business needs.