Failproof method to find any prospect's email address

Written by: Sapphire Li, BA

Communications specialist, 8+ years writing and copywriting for companies
Why isn't your email the first result of a Google search?
1

How to find the right person to contact with Google

Before you find someone's email address, it's important to make sure you're contacting the right person. For example, if you want to reach out to a potential client, it helps to get in touch with the business's founder, co-founder or the manager who oversees the department related to your services.

Search for the role of the person you're looking for and their company name.

Example:

This also works for smaller businesses where it makes sense to reach out directly to the founder or co-founder:

If you can't find the most relevant person to contact, you can send this message to anyone from the company whose email address you can find:

Can you connect me with the right person?

Hey {First name},

I'm looking to connect with someone about your messaging platform.

Can you let me know who I should speak with?

Thanks,
Full name
Title
Company Name

2

Look up your contact's email format and smart guess their email

Congrats, you found the right person to contact! Now how do you find their email address?

Search for the email format that your contact's company uses

Use a service like Hunter. Enter your contact's company into their search and they'll show you the email format the company uses.

Hunter helps you find the email format companies use

Based on the company's email format, you can smart guess your contact's email address.

For example, if your contact's name is Sam Vy and their company email format is
firstinitial[email protected], then their email address would most likely be [email protected].

If you can't find the company's email format anywhere, their company email addresses are likely in one of these widely used formats:

3

Verify their email address

Copy and paste your smart guessed email address into one of these free email verifiers and it'll let you know whether the email address works or not.

VerifyEmailAddress.org
Hunter Email Verifier

Verify email address

That's it, now you can reach out to almost anyone in the world (apparently Beyoncé changes her email every week so she may be harder to get a hold of).

Of course, finding someone's email address is an important step but only the first step. Here are a few proven templates to reach out.

If you offer a B2B product:  interesting ways to show prospects what your product can do for them, without sounding like a sales pitch
If you offer B2B services:  how to get replies and stand out by sharing a few actionable ideas upfront

4

Bonus tip: ask a Linkedin contact for a warm intro

Here's another way to get someone's contact info and improve your chances of getting a reply.

Look up the person you're looking to connect with and see if any of your Linkedin contacts are connected with them. If any of them are, you can message or email the Linkedin contact who's the most familiar with you to ask if they can introduce you to them. It's also ok if they barely know you. Here's a template you can adapt.

Hey {First name},

I saw you're connected with Reneta Singer, Marketing Director at Compfy. I'm looking to connect to help her with her ads, any chance you can pass along a message? I'd really appreciate it.

Hey Renata,

It's Vianna from Eminent. I'm in touch with a FB ads specialist who saw your ads and has a few ideas about its copy and targeting - would you like to connect?

I'm connected to a lot of folks in the SaaS space so if you need an intro to anyone, I'm happy to return the favor.

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