How to Become an Email Search Detective: Best Tools for Finding Email Addresses in 10 Minutes
Sherlock might be the world’s greatest detective, but with these tips and tools, you can be the greatest sleuth at finding email addresses
Have you ever given up on a perfect lead simply because you couldn’t find their email address? Or have you wondered why an AI email writer wasn’t able to engage a lead, only for you to learn all your emails went to the wrong email address?
Both situations are frustrating, and both are avoidable if you know how to use email finder tools.
There are some common methods for email search to help ensure your emails reach the right person and avoid landing in spam.
But first, here’s a quick recap on why getting a person’s or a company’s email address is extremely important.
When is an email address search necessary?
Email is ubiquitous. As such, there are many situations when you might need the email address of a specific person or company.
When you want to contact a potential lead
Even though social media seems to have taken over the world, email remains one of the most effective and reliable ways to reach your audience. In fact, email open rates are 15-25% while social media struggles at a 2-4% open rate.
Why?
The simple answer is that everyone has an email address, and people usually pay more attention to their inboxes than cold DMs from random strangers.
That’s why email is usually the go-to solution if you want to start up an outbound campaign. And since sales outreach platforms like HubSpot and AiSDR need a lead’s email address for best results, email search is your answer if you don’t yet have enough addresses.
When you need to increase website and social media traffic
Google ranking results are essential to getting inbound leads. The higher you place in Google search, the more people will visit your website and learn about your company.
And even though Google uses dozens of algorithms to rank web pages, current traffic is probably the most crucial factor.
Sound like a vicious circle?
It is.
To get more visitors, you need a higher ranking, but to have a higher ranking, you need more visitors. One tactic for solving this conundrum is email marketing.
You can encourage your current leads and customers to visit your website and read your content by sending teasers and links to the new content over email. This way, you can boost website traffic as well as your search ranking.
When you want to collaborate
You might need to search email addresses to contact someone you want to collaborate with.
Emailing a short, nicely outlined proposal to journalists, influencers, or industry experts is one of the most professional ways to offer collaboration. And remember, since the email open rate is higher than other channels like social media, your chances of getting a quick response are also better.
When you need to double-check an email address
People often make typos or use a throwaway email to hide their real contact information. This means you might send tons of emails to an incorrect or nonexistent email without getting a response, even if your offer sounds like the perfect solution for this lead.
In the worst-case scenario, your emails can land in spam and your domains get burned.
If you suspect this is happening with some of your leads, it might be a good idea to do a quick email address look-up to verify you have the correct contact info.
This is oftentimes why email search is the first step for sales development representatives (SDRs) and marketers. If successful, it opens an incredibly effective communication channel to start marketing, nurturing, and sales campaigns that push leads down their customer journey.
But what’s the best way to find an email address? Which email finder tools should you use, and what steps should you follow?
Methods for successful email look-up (for free)
There are a few common, easily available tools you can start with. The only thing it will cost you is some of your time.
Use Google search
Yep, the first step is good old googling.
Since many people share their information online, you might be able to quickly find them via Google. This is especially true if they want to be connected.
These simple tips will make your search easier:
- Put a person’s name in quotes to narrow down search results, such as “Sam Smith” @ or “Sam Smith” contacts
- Add as much information as you know. You can type a location or job position and the company’s name to narrow search results even more. For example, “Sam Smith” + “Nashville, Tennessee” or “Sam Smith” + “Microsoft”
- Try to guess an address using the standard format “[email protected]” and similar variants
These hacks will save you considerable time when looking for a person’s corporate or personal email addresses.
Use LinkedIn
Getting the email address of any of your LinkedIn contacts is as simple as pulling up their profile and clicking on their contact info.
Even better, you can get all your first-degree connections at the same time by exporting their data in a CVS file. Simply follow these steps:
- Choose the Data Privacy tab in your account settings
- Click “Get a copy of your data” (second option from the top)
- Check the box “Connection” and request an archive
And voila! Now you’ve saved the contact data of your connections in one file.
Here are some other approaches you can use if you’re not connected to a person or a company:
- Combine LinkedIn and Google searches to check if a person was mentioned on different websites, including the company’s website.
- Use the LinkedIn Sales Navigator tool to scout hidden information from LinkedIn profiles you aren’t connected with.
Both options have their limitations, but an automated tool usually wins compared to manual searches.
Find an address by domain
Another way to find someone’s email is to use Who.is or a similar service. The algorithm is pretty straightforward:
- Visit the website of the company you want to contact and copy their domain name.
- Copy and paste this name into the Who.is search bar.
- Check the available list of contacts connected to this domain.
The drawback is that some companies limit access to their domain information, so this method might not always work for you.
To get around this issue, you can scale your email search by using a lead database or any software that has a Lead Discovery feature.
Top email search tools
While all of these methods help find individual email addresses, they become impractical if you plan on reaching out to dozens of leads daily.
Can you imagine how long a search like this would take? Eons and eons (okay, maybe several hours at most, but it’s still a long time!).
To speed up their work, SDRs and marketers typically turn to paid and free email search tools to find contact info at scale in just a few clicks.
Tools for scaling email search
These tools have similar functionality but different feature sets and pricing.
Name2Email
Name2Email is a Gmail look-up tool by Reply that’s easy to use:
- Install the Name2Email extension.
- Create a new Gmail address.
- Type a person’s first and last name and the company’s domain starting with @.
- Use the email address that Name2Email finds for you.
We recommend adding one more step – email verification – since Name2Email doesn’t guarantee the address is correct, which can be a major drawback. After all, a significant rate of hard bounces will quickly burn a domain and get your account blocked.
However, most users don’t seem to complain about incorrect email addresses, which suggests this free email address finder is quite useful.
Pricing: Free
Clearbit Connect
Clearbit Connect is one of the best free email look-up tools as it integrates with Gmail and has a browser extension that allows you to find email addresses without leaving the “Compose email” screen.
You simply type in the employee’s name and their company’s domain, and the tool searches for the right address.
You can also find details on a prospect or company, including its estimated revenue, number of employees, location, and other info, which can be helpful for lead qualification.
The main drawback is that you have only ten free credits to use per month, and you have to use Clearbit Capture tools if you need more.
Clearbit pricing: 10 credits for free. Pricing for Clearbit Capture is available on request.
Snov.io
Snov.io isn’t a free email look-up tool, verification tool, or extension, but it offers a fair deal for its price. First off, it has a free trial with 50 credits that you can use to search or verify emails.
Snov.io allows you to search emails by domain, person’s name, company, and even LinkedIn URL. You can also find leads in bulk by typing the necessary industry, location, or skills and filtering search results.
Snov.io pricing: from $30 to $3,999 per month (a free trial is available)
FindEmails.com
This email look-up and verification tool can significantly speed up your search. Its browser extension is perhaps its most useful feature since you can simply visit a company’s website and the extension will show you connected email addresses.
You can also use the FindEmails.com website to search for addresses by company name. Or you can type a job title like “SMM manager in Nike,” and the tool will show the addresses of all people who hold this position.
FindEmails pricing: from $29 to $99 per month
Built With
Built With is not an email search tool either. However, it can be very helpful when searching for leads as it gives you useful information about any website: the tech it uses, its traffic ranking, certain financial data, and contacts.
Using Built With, you can search for all websites that have landing pages with specific keywords. From there, you can study their pain points by looking into their tech stack or traffic ranking. And finally, you can get contact info and create personalized emails based on your findings.
Built With pricing: from $295 to $995 per month
AiSDR
To be more specific, AiSDR isn’t just an email finder tool but an AI email writer and automation software for most SDR and marketing-related tasks, from lead search and qualification to creating and personalizing nurturing campaigns.
Its email finder feature, lead discovery, is a built-in database containing real-time, verified contact data, which you can easily explore using 10+ filters. Filters are invaluable, as the database includes over 700 million professionals and 35 million companies around the world. To find leads that fit your ideal customer profile, you can filter the contacts by:
- Name
- Company
- Keyword
- Industry
- Location (city, area, or country)
- Company size
- Company revenue
- Company funding
- Experience
- Job title
- Department
- Management level
With filters applied, you will get a whole list of verified contacts to qualify with AiSDR and send prospecting emails.
AiSDR pricing: $750 per 1,000 emails with unlimited leads
Take the first step toward successful sales
Correct email addresses are key to running successful marketing and lead nurturing campaigns. That being said, finding the correct email isn’t always easy, especially when your primary tool is Google and you need to search for a dozen emails daily.
Fortunately, SDRs and marketers have AI-based search instruments like AiSDR in their arsenal. With AiSDR, not only can you find the email addresses you need, you can also use email addresses to find other contact data like LinkedIn urls and phone numbers.
FAQs
How can I find an email address fast?
To find an email address, you can:
- Google a person’s name + job position or location + the word “email” or “contact”
- Check the contact information in their LinkedIn profile
- Use an email look-up tool with free access
But the fastest way is to use a sales outreach platform like AiSDR with a lead discovery database. A vast database with granular filters helps you quickly narrow down search results and find leads’ contacts.
Which free tools can I use to find email addresses?
There are many free email finder tools for different purposes and with different limitations. Among them:
- Name2Email
- Clearbit Connect
- Who.is
- Hunter
- Saleshandy Connect
Most paid tools offer a free trial or package that can be helpful if you need to find only a few addresses.
