How to Find a Potential Client's Email? 8 Effective Methods

An email address is like a digital work address, making it incredibly valuable.

If email is one of your main communication channels with clients, this post is for you. Mastering the art of finding correct email addresses for cold mailing is fundamental in building client acquisition processes through outbound marketing.

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In this article, you'll learn:

• What are the sources for acquiring email addresses?
• How to find company and employee email addresses?
• What to watch out for when searching for email addresses?
• Which tools help in finding email addresses?
• How much does it cost to acquire email addresses using various tools and techniques?

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How to acquire email addresses?

Email addresses can be categorized as general or personal. For example:

• general email address: contact@vanderbuild.co - these are managed by departments or teams within companies and may not always be the best for client acquisition due to lack of direct communication. However, in some industries, like hospitality, addresses like office@, manager@, or director@ can be personal. We encountered this during a campaign for a marketing agency targeting the hotel industry - case study here.
• personal email address: mateusz.sekta@vanderbuild.co - these are direct contacts to individuals within a company and are most valuable for conversion from campaigns to clients. These addresses are linked to decision-makers, so it's crucial to find the right people and then their email addresses. The entire cold mailing process, from concept to execution, is described here.

In terms of sources and methods for acquiring email addresses, consider the following:

• directly from the company's website,
• business card databases,
• social media,
• national databases.
• email verifiers,
• email search tools,
• companies with their own databases,
• companies that perform data searches on demand.

What if you can't find an email address from any of the above sources?

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The method used by all automatic email search tools is PERMUTATION, which involves trying and verifying all possible email address combinations to find the correct one.

Email addresses usually follow standard formats based on first name, last name, and company domain:

• first.last@domain.com
• firstlast@domain.com
• first.{{first-letter-of-last-name}}@domain.com
• {{first-letter-of-first-name}}.last@domain.com
• first@domain.com
• last@domain.com
• last.first@domain.com
• lastfirst@domain.com
• …

This means that by knowing personal data like first and last name and the company's internet domain, you can likely find their email address. This is why LinkedIn is such a valuable source for company data. You can find personal information and likely connect it with company data based on declared experience.

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What to watch out for when searching for email addresses? 3 common mistakes

1. Remember, whenever you process any personal data, you are subject to GDPR (or Polish RODO), which states you must inform the person about the processing of their data within 30 days of acquiring it (Article 14 RODO). Additionally, you must inform them at the latest during the first contact or when transferring data to another entity. This isn't a major issue since email addresses are usually acquired to contact the person, making it a natural progression. I also prepared another post on RODO in the context of cold email campaigns here.
2. Don't buy ready-made databases from companies that don't clearly state they either update their data frequently or acquire contact data "fresh" based on current online data.
3. Not all email addresses, even those provided by special email search tools, will be correct. There are several reasons for this:
   
   1. Some email addresses for specific domains can't be verified due to DNS settings that accept any messages sent to the domain regardless of the email address. These are known as "catch-all emails." The solution is additional email verification with a domain settings verification module.
   2. Some domains also have settings implemented as spam traps. If you overuse communication to specific recipients in a domain, use blacklisted keywords, you'll eventually be tagged as a spammer by the domain, and your communication will be blocked without your knowledge, as messages will still be delivered.

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Which tools help find email addresses?

When searching for email addresses, diversify your sources. If one provider doesn't find an email, another likely will.

For searching email addresses from various providers simultaneously, use a tool like Clay.com, which I wrote more about here.

Tools for validating email addresses

• Prospeo,
• Lead Magic,
• Lemlist,
• Findymail,
• Enrow,
• Zerobounce,
• Debounce,
• Bouncer,
• Clearout.

Tools for finding email addresses based on first name, last name, and company domain

• FindyMail,
• Prospeo.io,
• Full Enrich,
• LeadMagic,
• Better Contact,
• Enrow,
• Snov.io,
• Hunter.io,

Tools with their own database of millions of email addresses

• Lem List
• Woodpecker
• Instantly
• Apollo

If you want to see a comparison of email search tools and tools with their own email databases, check out the post: Comparison of the best email search tools. I've prepared a comparison table for data acquisition costs considering different packages in selected tools and conducted a data search test for each in terms of data acquisition efficiency. I've also added some personal insights on which tool or tools are worth choosing.

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