An unsuccessful email address lookup can be really frustrating, especially when you want it badly. But wait- could it be that you’ve actually been looking for those email addresses badly? 

There are two possible reasons why you can’t find that contact info. First, you’re doing it the wrong way. Second, your targets may have done their homework and effectively made their contact info just a tad challenging to find for reasons best known to them. 

The good news, though, is that this contact info is often hidden in plain sight. Sure, it does require some digging most of the time. But armed with the right techniques and email finder tools, it’s possible to find the email address info of pretty much anyone. And by email address search, we mean everything from a target’s personal Gmail address to their company email addresses and Web property contact info, even if such information is not actively displayed. 

One of the things that we enjoy the most on Lusha.com is showing you our tactics on how to find someone’s email in just a few minutes. So, let’s track down the people you want! 

So want to learn how to find someone’s email address by name for free? Let’s get started! 

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1. Ask Google and Search Engines

The reason why most of us turn to Google first when looking for answers is that it knows almost everything. This includes people’s email addresses.

Google is constantly collecting data from web pages, social media platforms, public databases, and user-submitted information. If you’ve not tried it out yet for your email search queries, perhaps your prospects’ contact information is a mere 2 clicks away. 

The simplest way to find an email address by name using Google is to type your target’s name followed by email address and hit search. 

There’s no guarantee that you will instantly get the results you want with this method, as the results can be very broad. However, adding your prospect’s email address domain like @yahoo.com and any other personal information, for instance, their position and the company, may go a long way in narrowing down the results. 

If this method doesn’t work, advance your search using Google Search Operators. Advanced Google search operators are symbols, such as [ ] and “” that tell Google to narrow down the results to exact matches. 

Type these queries on your search bar and see what comes up; 

  • [Target’s full name] + email 
  • [Target’s full name] + “email address” 
  • [Target’s full name] + company + email 
  • [Target’s full name] + linkedIn 
  • [Target’s full name] + “contact” 

If you’re sure of the company they work for or they have worked for previously, that will help a lot too. Here’s how to dig an email from a website. On your search bar, type; 

  • Site:companywebsite.com + [Target’s full name] + email 
  • Site:companywebsite.com + [Target’s full name] + position + email 
  • Site:companywebsite.com + [Target’s full name] + contact 
  • Site:companywebsite.com + [Target’s full name] + email 
  • Site:companywebsite.com + [first name.second name] + companyname + “email” 

2. Scour Your Targets’ Social Networks 

Perhaps you’re not aware of this, but a whopping 4 billion people are active on social media sites today. That’s a titanic 51% of the global population connected by LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Tumblr, among other platforms. We can bet that your target is active in at least one if not all of them.

A unifying factor for almost all these sites is that they ask the users to submit an email address (mostly for verification) alongside other info when signing up. While most of these platforms give the user an option to keep their contact info private, some people don’t mind having it easily accessible to the public. Actually, the global evolution of social media platforms into social marketing sites means that most accounts and pages now have their owners’ contact info publicly available. 

Here’s how to find email addresses on social networks. 

LinkedIn

The reason why we chose to start with LinkedIn for this list is simple; it’s the most preeminent professional social network globally. For the most part, LinkedIn is skewed towards professional business networks and career development, although it has also recently evolved into a popular social media platform.

Thanks to its unrivaled business mindset and strong B2B targeting, and B2C networking, LinkedIn is easily one of the best places to connect with just the right audience. The fact that business contact information is much more readily available on LinkedIn than any other platform solidifies this further. 

It’s very common for most people to include their email address in the “contact info” section on their LinkedIn profile. So, this should be the first place to check. 

The easiest and fastest way to scrape email addresses from a list of LinkedIn profiles is by utilizing a LinkedIn email extractor. Lusha is one of the best and most reliable tools when it comes to getting contacts from LinkedIn profiles. Lusha’s powerful chrome extension enables individuals, sales teams, headhunters, and marketers to get email addresses (and phone numbers) in a few minutes, if not seconds. 

To use Lusha, download the Lusha plugin from the Chrome Store and integrate it into your browser by hitting the “Add to Chrome” button. After this, just visit any LinkedIn profile, and Lusha will reveal any contact information available on that page. 

Here are more tips on how to find someone’s email address using LinkedIn in 10 minutes or less. 

Facebook

Facebook requires its users to provide an email address when signing up for an account. This technically makes it a great place to get your prospect’s email address, assuming that their contact info is visible to the public.

To find an email address by name on Facebook, head to your target’s profile, click “About” followed by “Contact and Basic Info.” If they have set their contact info viewable to the public, you should see their email address, mobile phone number, website, and social media links here. If their email address is not visible to everyone, look for any other info that might help in other email address lookup methods. 

While you’re still at it, how about asking for the email directly through Facebook Messenger? If you’re adding value to their life, the chances are that they will offer it up. But, of course, you want to be precise and show utmost respect to increase your chances of getting what you want.  

Twitter 

Like Facebook, the first place to look for your target’s email address on Twitter will be on their bio. People who prefer to be contacted via email will publicly list it here. Hooray! That will mark the end of your email hunt. 

The only problem is that most people don’t do this partly owing to the limited space available. There are other possible avenues worth trying, though.

First, if your prospects have included their website links or other social media links, click on them and see whether they lead you to the answers you’re looking for. If you can’t find their contact info on the included website link, run a quick WhoIs search on the domain name as explained in step 4.  

Second, Advance your Twitter search. If nothing has come up so far, your last shot at finding a person’s email on Twitter is to use Twitter Advanced Search. This function allows you to refine your search to exactly what you want from a selected Twitter account. Advanced Search option is readily available on Twitter Web App. If you’re using a smartphone, you’ll need to search for twitter.com/search-advanced directly. On the Advanced Search Page, type in the Words you’re searching for (in this case: email) and then scroll up to specify the Twitter Account you want to scour for the address. 

Instagram 

You’ll want to trade your desktop or laptop for your smartphone for this one. For one reason or another, the desktop web version of Instagram does not display the entire user’s profile. So, to get your prospect’s email address on Instagram, search for their username on your phone’s IG app. Next, head to their bio by clicking their username. If you’re lucky, you’ll find their email address nicely displayed here for you. If you can’t find the email address itself or an email tab, the chances are that they have chosen not to include it in their bio. 

3. Use an Email Address Lookup Tool 

Email address search services are another excellent alternative. These are instruments that scour the internet for your lead’s contact info based on the information you give them, such as full name and email or company domain name. 

These tools are way faster than most of the conventional methods here. That said, they can be incredibly useful when trying to make a list of email addresses within a short time. 

The best email address finders are not free. But most of them have freemium plans and free trials, so it’s easy to determine the tool’s effectiveness before paying for it.

The major downside of paid email address tools is that they can get costly, particularly when the results aren’t satisfactory. That being said, you may want to stick with tried-and-tested services. 

Here are some of the top-rated email address lookup tools to try today:

  1. Lusha

    Lusha’s email finder is the ultimate email lead generation platform today for B2B salespeople who want to reach key business decision-makers quickly. You can use it as a Chrome extension that works over LinkedIn, Salesforce, and Gmail. By integrating it into your browser, Lusha automatically scans profile pages to retrieve the necessary contact information (email address and phone number). Its speed and high level of accuracy are among its major strengths and will come in handy in slashing your prospecting time and converting your leads into clients. Plus, a free account on Lusha gets you access to Engage, an email sequencing tool, so you can prospect and connect from the same platform.

  2. Snov.io

    Snov.io is available as a chrome extension and a web app. It scrapes the websites you visit for your prospects’ full profile and can be used to look for a single or a list of email addresses.

  3. Prospect.io

    This multi-channel sales automation tool looks for names and emails and has an integrated email verifier to lower bounce rates. The email campaign tool offers a platform where the sales team can identify opportunities, automate data capture and entry, and track performance.

  4. Hunter.io

    A popular email hunter with individual digital markets and sales and marketing departments, Hunter.io is a simple tool that gets the email addresses associated with the web pages that you visit. Although it does not search social media, including LinkedIn, this email outreach plugin is great for scouring the internet.

  5. Skrapp.io

    Skrapp collects and crafts potential prospects’ email addresses making it easy for B2B companies to make lists of email addresses within seconds. Available as a light chrome extension, Skrapp works with websites, Sales Navigator, and LinkedIn pages.

  6. Find that lead

    With your prospects’ first name, last name, and domain name, Find That Lead will get you all the email addresses linked to that domain in seconds. This business-to-business email finder tool also has a confidence percentage feature that evaluates the accuracy of the emails you find.

  7. VoilaNorbert

    This intelligent lead generation tool is a reputable marketing toolset that incorporates an email finder and verification tool. It searches for corporate email addresses using the details you enter- first name, second name, and domain. For every result, VoilaNobert pings the mail host to verify its validity.

4. Use an Email Permutator 

An email permutator is a tool that rearranges letters to help you create different combinations of an email address. For example, if your email address is johnsmith@gmail.com, the permutator might generate the following variations: 

  • smithjohn@gmail.com
  • johngsmith@gmail.com
  • johnsmith@gmail.com
  • jsmith@gmail.com
  • johns@gmail.com 

and so on. 

By using an email permutator, you can increase your chances of finding the right contact. On average, a permutator tool delivers 30-40 email combinations that you can then enter into your email verification tool and find the right one. On the other hand, a regulated email contact finder will deliver 3-5 email addresses that are ranked from most to least accurate. 

This software, in our opinion, is great to have on hand when your contact finder can’t deliver an address. 

5. Do a Domain Whois search

Whois is a domain lookup tool that reveals who owns a particular domain or website. It also provides the possible ways of contacting them. When registering a domain, the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) requires you to provide up-to-date personal, business, or organization contact information, including email address, phone number, and address.

This contact information is housed in a public database and can be accessed by anyone to identify domain owners. Do you see where we are heading with this? Well, this definitely becomes another place to lookup email address and other contact details of your potential leads. 

There are two major drawbacks to this method, though. First, there’s no guarantee that the email address provided will lead you to your target. You may be successful, especially if you’re dealing with individual marketers and bloggers. But most large organizations prefer providing their administrator’s or technical department’s contact information. 

The other thing is that most website and domain owners are willing to pay an extra fee to have their private contact info kept private. This again means that your efforts may not always bear fruits. 

6. Join their Mailing List

If your prospects have a ‘Join My Mailing List’ button on their website or blog, have you considered this as a possible way of getting their address? This method is easy and could lead you to your target’s personal email address within minutes. Here’s how to find an email address using an opt-in form on your target’s website. 

Start by subscribing to their emailing list by clicking the ‘Join My Mailing List’ or ‘Newsletter’ button and providing the required details (email address and first and second name). In most cases, you’ll receive an email prompting you to confirm your subscription. Open this email, and just hit ‘reply.’ Your target’s email address will be right in front of you, ripe for the picking. 

7. Use Your Target’s Web Contact Form 

The contact form on your prospect’s website is yet another area that shouldn’t go unexplored. This page offers you a quick way of making inquiries or asking the company questions. These contact pages are often managed by virtual assistants. But there’s no harm in asking the VA to connect you to your target. When it comes to hunting for email addresses through web contact forms, remember less is more. A professional email signature showing who you are will also help you stand out from the crowd. 

8. Use Personal Connection

Sometimes getting your prospects’ email address could be as simple as reaching out for personal connection from your targets’ colleagues. If they are on your email contact list, you could go ahead and shoot them a formal but friendly message asking them how you can contact your prospect via email. This is not the most formal way, though, so we suggest having it as a last resort. 

Conclusion 

Sure, email address lookup is becoming harder and harder as people yearn for more privacy. But now that we’ve revealed how we find someone’s email address by name, we believe things just got easier for you too. Especially if you lose Lusha, where you can build your email list and send cadences from a single platform, even with a free account. 

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    This information should not be mistaken for legal advice. Please ensure that you are prospecting and selling in compliance with all applicable laws.

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