There are many ways to reach out to your potential client and initiate a connection.  Aside from setting up a meeting in person, sending emails often makes it to the top of the list. Obtaining email addresses, however, is not always a walk in the park. This is especially common in sales-driven jobs or those in communications.

If you are having a hard time trying to find specific email addresses, here are some strategies you can try:

1. Browse through Bio pages.

Bio pages often include a picture and contact details of writers or journalists. Often, all you have to do is click on the envelope icon under each author’s profile and you get to connect to them via email correspondence.

 

2. Check out social media.

These days, almost anyone with an internet connection has a social media network account. Since most platforms require an email address to sign up and a lot of people also use their social media accounts for business purposes, you might get the email address you need from the person’s profile page.

For example, in the About Tab (Overview section) of a Facebook account, you can find a person’s provided email address and contact details. Similarly, you may also find contact details if you know a person’s twitter handle and other profile data.  

In addition to this, some users often reveal their email addresses in their posts or tweets. Which is why some are scanning Twitter feeds through Google search. By typing “the person’s twitter handle + email” in the search field, you might uncover the email address that you are looking for. You can use the same technique for Facebook posts.

When all else fails, you can try and send a message to the person or tweet them to ask for their email address.

 

3. Click on the ‘Contact Us’ page.

Most companies include a page dedicated for their contact information. Try checking out their ‘Contact Us’ and you will see their business address, contact number, and email address.

 

4. Connect through LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is a hit with most professionals these days. It is a great way to connect with like-minded individuals from the same field and to widen your professional network. Some people include their email addresses on their LinkedIn profiles. If not, you may try connecting and interacting with the person first and then politely ask for their email address.

You can also export your LinkedIn contacts by doing the following steps:

• From your LinkedIn home page, go to the “Me” tab.
• Choose Account-Settings and Privacy. From the Privacy tab, scroll down to “How LinkedIn uses your data”.
• Go to the “Download your data” portion and click the checkbox for ‘Connections”.
• After which, click the “Request Archive” button.
• You will be prompted to enter your password and notified to wait a few minutes for the download link to be available.
• After a few minutes, you will receive an email from LinkedIn with a link to download the archive.
• Click on the link and download a zip folder that contains your contacts’ email addresses saved on a spreadsheet file.

 

5. Try SellHack.

SellHack is a popular browser extension used by marketers and businesses that want to increase sales through email marketing and lead generation. You can opt for a free account and get up to 10 email addresses per month. Or you can try their paid plans and choose from 150 to 1,500 email credits to access.

 

6.Hunt contacts with Hunter.io.

Try using this online resource to browse pages for email addresses of your potential clients. You can type in a domain name in the Hunter.io search field and it lists down email addresses associated with that domain name. It even gives you the link to the web pages where they found the email address.

 

7. Google it.

One of the biggest search engines, Google, can also be your means to find people’s email addresses. Try a search that includes the contact’s name enclosed in quotation marks, and add some additional information like their location or company name.

 

8. Subscribe to their updates.

If the person you are trying to reach has a blog or website that regularly sends out newsletters and page updates, consider subscribing to the mailing list. That way, you can potentially connect with them through the address they use in their email updates.

 

9. Dive into their domain.

Part of registering for a new domain is entering an email address. Check out the person’s (or his company’s) record on WHOIS and locate the registered email address for the domain.

 

10. Generate possible email address combinations.

Most of the time, email addresses use a certain format, some common examples are:

• fi*******@co*********.com
• fi***********@co*********.com
• fi**********************@co*********.com
• fi*********************@co*********.com

Consider adding dots, underscores, and hyphens in the email combinations as well. You can do trial and error with this method until you find a verified address or you can use automated email generators available online.

 

11. Consider Buzzstream.

Buzzstream works either as a browser extension or as a separate application. It helps find influencers and email addresses.

12. Add LinkedIn Sales Navigator as your Chrome extension.

People have found a clever hack to use this browser extension formerly known as Rapportive. After downloading and installing it, open your Gmail account in your browser and type an email address in the “To” field. You can add other combinations that you have manually created, or you can use an email permutation tool. With the LinkedIn Sales Navigator added to Chrome, you can hover at the email address you typed and verify if it is associated with a LinkedIn account.  If the account exists, the connected LinkedIn profile preview will be shown on the right-hand side of your screen.

13. Engage Email for corporations.

An online resource that houses a database of company email formats, Email for corporations is a free tool that can help narrow down your search. You can search email patterns (e.g. fi************@co*********.com) by company name, industry, and geographic location. With over 1,000 established companies in its record, you can bridge connections towards newer contacts.

14. Use your connections.

Our web of connections can always overlap. Someone you know might be connected to the person you are trying to reach out to. If so, then you can politely ask for an introduction or obtain your target person’s email address from your contact.

The methods listed above are not the only ways to find an email address but these are the ones that will require the least amount of time. If you have another method, please leave it in the comments below.

Author’s Bio 

Kym Wallis, the founding director of Higher Ranking has over 15 years of advertising sales, digital strategy, and business development experience. He is currently working as Digital Adviser for iChoose.