Aastha Shaw / Updated: January 24, 2024

15+ Effective Ways To Find Email Addresses In 2024

Trying to reach out to prospects but struggling to get your hands on their email address? Quite common in the sales and marketing world.

Lead generation is a challenging task even for the most experienced professionals. One needs to approach the right techniques to be able to find quality leads. Generation of leads can be categorized into 2, manual and automated.

Manual Lead Generation involves searching and collecting contact details of prospects manually from different sites like social media, google, company website, etc. It takes an incredible amount of time and effort which makes it less popular in public.

On the other hand, automated lead generation involves the use of an automatic tool that is capable of searching and finding the contact details of prospects from anywhere on the web. It provides quick and more accurate results.

Which technique is better for you depends on multiple factors like the size of the company, requirements, and resources.

Here are some of the best and effective ways to find someone’s email address in 2024:

1. Find Email Address Using an Email Finder Tool
2. Using LinkedIn URL for Reverse Lookup
3. Take a Good Guess
4. Google It
5. Use Twitter Search
6. Subscribe to Your Prospects Emails List
7. Use LinkedIn To Find Your Prospect’s Email Address
8. Find Email Addresses Using Social Media
9. Use the Gmail Hack To Find Email Address of Anyone
10. Use Apollo.io Database To Find Email Addresses
11. WHOIS Lookup
12. Use DuckDuckGo To Find Your Prospect’s Email Address
13. Ask via a Contact Form
14. Take The Help of The Company Website
15. Get Introduced
16. Reach Out Directly

Automated Ways

1. Find Email Address Using an Email Finder Tool

There are multiple techniques available to search leads manually but big companies and lead generation businesses cannot afford to invest resources in them. Why? Their needs/ requirements are huge and can be fulfilled with tools that work on automation. Hence, one of the best and easiest ways to find someone’s email address is to use an email finder tool.

Clearout Email Finder is one of the best tools that can help you find an email address in seconds. It can help you find your prospect’s email address by name. All you would need is a tiny bit of their information like their name, website/company name, and the tool will do the rest of the work for you.

>> Find email address for free with Clearout’s Quick Email Finder

Benefits of Using an Email Finder Tool:

There are numerous situations in which you can use an email finder tool to acquire access to information, and there are numerous ways in which it can assist.

Whereas manual process takes around 56 hours to generate 50 leads, the same number of leads can be generated by an email finder tool in less than 2 hours.
Easy and simple to use.
Allows finding a large number of emails at once.
Provides accurate and detailed reports so that you can be confident with your choices.
Provides quality leads perfect for reaching out to potential customers.
Helps to increase sales productivity.
Helps in gaining a higher return on investment.
Improves accountability of the marketing team.
Email Finder API enables developers or website administrators to integrate email finder into their existing systems, automating the lead generation process and saving valuable resources.
Targets customers across multiple platforms.

For limited requirements you can always go for the manual ways which do not involve any costs.

Manual Ways

2. Using LinkedIn URL for Reverse Lookup

One of the easiest and free ways to find an individual's email is using their LinkedIn profile URL. All you need to do is enter their LinkedIn profile URL on Clearout’s Free Reverse Lookup Tool and in seconds you will have their email and other insights on your screen.

15+ Effective Ways To Find Email Addresses In 2024

You can even download the results. Here’s a complete step-by-step process on how you can do it:

Step 1: Sign in to your LinkedIn account. Go to the LinkedIn profile of the account you wish to find the email for. Copy the LinkedIn URL of the profile.

Step 2: Paste the URL in Clearout's LinkedIn Reverse Lookup Tool above and voila!

Step 3: To download the findings, create your account with Clearout and download the result file in CSV or export it to Google Sheets.

3. Take a Good Guess

When you think about it, almost every email address follows the same set of rules. They are frequently based on very simple formats.

You might be able to determine your prospect's email address if you know their first name, surname, and domain. You can usually figure out which structure someone else at the same organization uses if you have their email address.

Some of the most common email address formats used are:
“[email protected]”
“[email protected]”
“[email protected]”

However, coming up with all the valid formats manually can be a hectic task. For this purpose, you can use tools like email permutator or email address guesser that can automatically generate a list of all the possible email addresses by using the provided details like first name, surname, and domain name.

Once you obtain the list with all the valid format guesses don’t forget to run it through an email validator to see which of the email addresses exist and are receiving emails.

4. Google It

If you fail to obtain someone’s email address by guessing, this tactic might work for you.

Google has a wealth of information and you will come across hundreds of results by doing a simple search.

Looking for what you need in that ocean of information might be hard and take up a lot of time. However, there are a few tactics and keywords which will help you get more Use Advanced Google Search when you think you have a couple of correct email addresses. What you need to do is to use some advanced operators such as putting relevant results:

your search query in “ ” so that Google would show only the exact results. Put your guess in a format like “[email protected]” and see if the results appear.

Performing a target keyword search can also be helpful. You need to type in the name of the person you are looking for and queries like contact, email, or other personal details like website name, company name, post, city, etc.

Your query might look like:

[full name] + contact + email
[full name} + [website name] + email
[full name] + email + post
[full name] + phone number + email

You can also search for email addresses on the company website and find a lot of useful information. You just need to follow this format to search:
site:website + name + email

No matter which trick you use, always remember to run the obtained email addresses through an email validator tool.

5. Use Twitter Search

People include their email address and contact details in their bio section or tweets but to hide them from bots many people use a dot instead of “.” and at instead of “@”.

Now you need to go to the advanced search option of Twitter and look for the words "at" and "dot" in your target person's tweets. To narrow down the results, you can also put words like "email," "contact," or "reach" in your search.

You can perform the same search or simply email (to: accountname) in the Twitter search box as well to find your target’s email address:

6. Subscribe to Your Prospects Emails List

A lot of companies, bloggers, etc use their personal email addresses to send out emails. If the person you are targeting has a newsletter or something similar then you can simply subscribe to their mailing list.

Once you opt-in for receiving their emails you can find an opt-in confirmation or a welcome email in your inbox. You will be able to find their email addresses in that email.

Sometimes the newsletter might come from an official email address, but if you reply to them there are high chances of the sender replying back from their personal email address. Hence, don’t hesitate in replying to these emails, they can also act as a great way of building and maintaining a good relationship.

7. Use LinkedIn To Find Your Prospect’s Email Address

Finding email addresses using LinkedIn can be easier. It allows you to export your connections. This means if you’re connected with your prospect on LinkedIn then you may be able to get your hands on their email address. Here are the steps to export LinkedIn connections: Here are the steps to export LinkedIn connections:

Step 1 – Click on the dropdown menu Me at the top of your LinkedIn homepage, then go to Settings & Privacy.

Step 2 – Goto to the Privacy tab, scroll down to find the option- Getting a copy of your data and click on it:

Step 3 – Check the connections box and hit the Request archive.

In a few minutes, you’ll receive an email with all your connections’ email addresses in a handy spreadsheet.

However, you should use this method responsibly to save yourself from losing your LinkedIn account.

Read: How to Use LinkedIn to Grow Your Email List

8. Find Email Addresses Using Social Media

Though it has already been mentioned about looking for your target’s email addresses on Twitter and LinkedIn, you can also find a lot of information from Facebook and Instagram as well.

When people set up their Facebook page, they usually provide a lot of their personal details including their contact details like phone numbers, and email addresses. You just need to check out your prospect’s about page and there you can find their email address if they have added it.

Similarly on Instagram also, people tend to add their contact details, Website URL, official or business account handles in their bio section which might allow you to get access to their email address.

Hence if you know the social media accounts of your prospects you might end up finding their email addresses. The best part about looking for contact details and email addresses from social media platforms is that the details provided are recent and frequently used instead of some generic, old, and no longer valid details.

9. Use the Gmail Hack To Find Email Address

There's a Gmail trick that can assist you in finding email addresses.

If you have a Gmail account, you can often use this handy way to find out if an address is correct.

By pressing the ‘Compose' button on the left-hand side of your screen, you can start a new message box.

Fill in the email address you guessed for the person you're looking for in the 'To' field.

When you hover your mouse over an address, a picture and contact information will usually show.

Well, this trick is worth trying if you have a specific person to reach out to.

10. Apollo.io Database To Find Email Addresses

Apollo.io database stores a lot of information that can come in handy for your sales team. Most importantly it also provides the email address of the person you are looking for. It will help you get the details of all decision-makers and employees working in any organization.

Thousands of people rely on Apollo to get their hands on the email addresses of their prospects, and to run email campaigns. The only problem here is sometimes the emails are outdated, mostly because people switch jobs due to which their old email addresses will become invalid.

Thus, it is important to verify the email addresses you find from Apollo to make sure that there are not going to be a higher email bounce rate,

Read: Use Clearout and Apollo.io integration to verify your emails directly before sending out an email campaign

11. WHOIS Lookup

WHOIS is a query and answer protocol that is commonly used to query databases that record basic information about a registered domain, such as the domain owner's contact information, domain availability status, and corporate information.

There are many WHOIS databases like WHO.IS, GoDaddy, Namecheap, etc where you can seek email addresses. If you are lucky enough you might find the email address used to register on the domain.

Although there are a few drawbacks to this method:

The email may come from the domain's administrator/technical lead, rather than your recipient.

It might not always work since the WHOIS service provides an option to hide data from the public.

This brings me to my third point. Your target may see the WHOIS email as 'private,' and will be irritated if you contact him using it.

If you are trying to look for someone who owns a website or a blog then it might be easy to do so by using WHOIS. This method might not be suitable for higher and larger organisations.

If you are lucky enough you might find the email address used to register on the domain. However, it might not always work since the WHOIS service provides an option to hide data from the public.

12. Use DuckDuckGo To Find Your Prospect’s Email Address

Known by few, used by all (those who know), this alternative search engine is an excellent way to obtain email addresses.

When you search for "@domainname.com" in DuckDuckGo, you'll get results for any publicly available email accounts associated with the domain.

If you're wanting to reach a specific person, you can include their name in the search, or keep it general.

Note: This method will work in certain other search engines, such as Yahoo!, but not in Google or Bing because they employ "@" in their social media tags.

13. Ask via a Contact Form

Apart from LiveChat, Chatbots, and Newsletters, most websites feature a contact form or an info@ email address.

While these are most often staffed by admin personnel, you might use them to inquire about how to contact your ideal prospect.

14. Take The Help of The Company Website

Every company has at least one email address on its website for a point of connection with anyone. You can find it under the “Contact Us” or “About Us” page.

Small companies’ websites will generally lead you to your target but in the case of bigger organizations, you may find a generic email. Here you would have to send an exploratory email.

It could go something like this:

"Hello,

My name is Marshall, and I'm a Nexenova Solutions employee. I'd like to understand more about how you handle your widget production machines, and I'm hoping you could help me out by putting me in touch with the right person to inquire about it.

Thanks, Marshall"

Keeping your email nonspecific makes you look non-salesy, piques your audience's attention, and earns a response.

15. Get Introduced

It won't hurt to acquire an introduction from one of your shared connections if you find yourself with mutual connections with your prospect.

In this case, you can see that I'd like to communicate with Clothide Jamet, one of Waalaxy's Sales Managers. I only recently obtained her LinkedIn profile, and I discovered that we share 67 connections.

If I have someone who knows her and can help me reach out and make a formal introduction to her, that would be great. It could be a concise message if you're requesting a colleague for aid.

16. Reach Out Directly

If the above methods did not help you get your desired results in locating someone's email address, consider contacting them via social media and requesting a more specific email address.

You can try to locate your prospects on Twitter, Facebook, etc, and request their email address directly. You can immediately explain why you'd like to contact them or how you discovered their social media presence.

If they find your reason valid or in any way beneficial to them they might end up replying and sharing their email with you.

To Wrap Up

With this list, you will eventually get your hold on the addresses you are looking for. Remember not to spam people whose email addresses you end up finding, otherwise, you will just ruin your hard work in obtaining their email address and also the chance to build a great relationship with a prospect.

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