Have you ever needed to reach out to someone you don’t have an email address for? Maybe you’re trying to follow up on a job opportunity, or perhaps you need to connect with an industry expert. Whatever the case may be, trying to find someone’s email address can often feel overwhelming.
But the good news is that you don’t have to figure it all out by yourself. 😎
👉 In this guide, we’ll discuss eight techniques to help make your email address hunt much easier. We’ll detail how each one works, and by the end of this post, you should be confident enough to try and find anyone’s email contact.
Without further ado, let’s begin.
Creative ways to find someone’s email address
Method 1: Sign up for their email list
This is the first technique on our list because it can be one of the easiest yet most effective ways to find someone’s email address.
Did you know that marketers rely heavily on email?
How much?
Well, studies show that 81% of SMBs focus more on email to acquire new customers, while 80% use it to retain existing customers [1].
What do these numbers mean to you?
They mean that if the prospect you’re trying to reach out to has a blog or website, they probably also have a newsletter. And often, these newsletters are sent from their business email addresses.
So, all you have to do is visit their website and look for a sign-up form.
Once you enter your email, you’ll start receiving their newsletters and updates.
Some people decide to send their newsletters from generic addresses (e.g., info@). If your prospect does this, you can still reply to the email, ask a question or two, strike up a conversation, and start building a relationship with the person who runs the info email. This may be the person you’re looking for, or it may be someone who can send you the right email address after a conversation.
Method 2: Use DuckDuckGo
Many people use DuckDuckGo rather than Google to help keep their personal data private. It includes web tracking protection, smart encryption, and private search.
In addition to the above, did you know that you can also use it to find someone’s email address?
To begin your email address hunt using the platform, simply head to the DuckDuckGo homepage and type in the person’s name along with any other information you have about them. This can include information such as their company name or job title. Then, hit the search button and wait a few seconds for the results.
DuckDuckGo will then display a list of results, including any email addresses it finds for that particular person.
If you’re not finding anything, you can try using search techniques like enclosing the person’s name in quotation marks or simply adding the “@” symbol before their company name.
Of course, Google and Bing are much more popular search engines. So, you may just ask yourself – why can’t you just use this technique on the bigger platforms? The problem is that using the “@” trick is generally not effective on these search engines, mainly because they tend to associate this with social media tags.
Method 3: Try who.is
The above couple of methods are generally very effective. However, some people’s email addresses are more challenging to find than others.
This is where the who.is lookup can help.
What does who.is, a company about domain registrations, have to do with email addresses?
In a nutshell, ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) requires that anyone who registers a domain name provides personal information, such as name, contact numbers, and email addresses. The who.is database stores all this information, so you can think of it as a database with all information concerning owners of websites and domain names.
So, if the person you’re trying to reach out to has a website or domain name, who.is might have their contact information.
To get started on your quest to find someone’s email address, simply head to the website (www.who.is). Then, enter the prospect’s domain name in the search bar, and wait for the results, which may include the owner’s email address.
If you’re lucky, your search for an email address will end here.
However, who.is does offer the option to hide people’s personal information. This means that it doesn’t always work. If that’s the case, you can try the next effective method.
Method 4: Try an email lookup tool
Email lookup tools make the process of finding someone’s email address super easy.
Generally speaking, all you need to do is enter the person’s name, company name, and any other relevant information. In just a few clicks, you can have the email address you’re searching for.
For this example, we’re using one of the most popular email finders in the market, hunter.io.
To get started, simply navigate to the homepage, enter the person’s company name, and click “Find email addresses”.
This will reveal all the email addresses from the company that the tool can find. The great thing about hunter.io is that it offers 25 free email addresses per month. So, if you’re just searching for a couple of emails and your budget is a little tight, this may be the perfect option.
👉 There are many of these tools on the market. They include:
Many of these tools can also be very costly. So, take your time in comparing them before deciding on one.
Method 5: Use LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a professional social media platform with over 800 million users from around 200 countries. Company CEOs, Directors, Marketers…they’re all on LinkedIn [2].
So, of course, this had to make its way on our list.
If your prospect is a part of your connections, that’s great news. You can simply import your connections.
To do this, after signing into your account, click “Me” in the top right. From the drop-down menu, select “Settings & Privacy”.
You can then select “Data Privacy” from the menu on the left and click on “Get a copy of your data” under the “How LinkedIn uses your data” tab.
From here, simply select “Connections > Request archive“.
It will then take about ten minutes to receive a spreadsheet filled with your connections and their email addresses.
If the person you’re trying to contact isn’t a connection, you can first request to connect. Didn’t get a response? You can also just navigate to the individual’s profile page and do some snooping. With some luck, they might have included a contact email in their “About” section.
Method 6: Just head to Google
As the biggest search engine, Google can be your best friend in these situations. But because it’s so common, people can often overlook it.
To search for someone’s email address through Google, there are a couple of techniques you can use:
1. Type in their name and “email address”
This is if you’re truly lucky. Sometimes all you need to do is simply enter someone’s name followed by ”email address”.
Most of the time you’re not going to get this lucky though. In this case, you can use the second method, which involves search operators.
2. Use Google search operators
Google search operators are basically commands that can help make searching for anything much quicker.
To use search operators for finding someone’s email address, you can use the specific command and click search.
For example:
- [name] + email
- [name] + email address
- [name] + contact information
- [name] + contact
- [name] + LinkedIn
When it comes to using search operators, the more information you have about your prospect, the better. So, if you know their first and last name, the company, and any other information, be sure to include it.
For example:
- site:websitename.com + [name] + contact
- site:websitename.com + [name] + email
👉 To learn more about Google search operators, you can click here.
Method 7: Use Twitter
Most people use Twitter to express their views on different topics. But, did you know that you can use it to find your prospect’s email address?
You might have already seen this in action — they might spell out “at” instead of using the symbol (@) or they might spell out “dot” instead of using a period (.).
This is a technique that helps to hide their email address from bots.
For this method, you’ll need to first navigate to your Twitter account.
Then, simply enter your prospect’s name into the search bar and click “enter”.
From the results page, click on “Advanced search” which is located on the right side, under “search filters”.
This will allow you to search for tweets from your prospect that include “at” or “dot”.
If this doesn’t work, you can also request your prospect’s email address through a direct message (DM). While this method might feel a little intimidating, remember that if your prospect is a CEO, founder of something, etc. This is probably not the first time that someone’s asked for their email address online before. If you choose this route, remember to keep things concise and professional at all times.
Method 8: Make an educated guess
The methods above are pretty solid techniques to help you find someone’s email address. However, we do recognize the fact that some people do a very good job of hiding their email. Or, there may be times when someone (e.g., a marketing director) is new at a company and the email finders, Google, Twitter, and all the above methods haven’t picked up their email.
In this case, the next best thing is to simply make an educated guess.
So, most companies have a general format for email addresses.
They might have [email protected] or [email protected]. So, look at the general format for how other people’s addresses are in the company. You can then take an educated guess of what their email address could be.
Ready to find someone’s email address? 🤔
And there you have it! By following the above eight techniques, you should be able to find someone’s email address with ease.
As highlighted earlier, some people’s email addresses are more challenging to find than others. So, you can try using one or more of the methods mentioned, depending on the situation.
Emails have become an essential communication tool for both our work and personal lives. Using them effectively can help to open up opportunities that would otherwise be challenging to pursue.
So, all the best in your pursuits, and here’s to finding email addresses successfully! 🤩
Hopefully you’ll find success with at least one of the eight methods we covered, but if you still have any questions on how to find someone’s email address, please drop a comment below.