How to Find Almost Any Email Address
Please use this info responsibly.
I’ve tested a good number of tools that let you find people’s email addresses if you fill in some basic info. I’ve seen them usually fall short at some point, as it’s hard to have something algorithmically get every email address right.
The best solution i’ve found is a hybrid of running some basic automated calculation and then just doing some manual double checking/verification.
1 — Find out the domain name of the company that the person of interest works at, as well as any other backup domain their company may use for emails. For example, some employees at Facebook have addresses of @facebook.com and others have addresses of @fb.com
2 — Install the Rapportive plugin to your browser — https://rapportive.com/
3 — Use this Google Doc by Rob Ousbey, to find the standard possible combinations of email addresses for the person (this is read only, so please make a copy). Fill in the person’s first name, last name, and company domain name: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TOext5gpelFOmsQWn5QccANZTwRpessoLlAIZ4q92bg/edit#gid=0
4 — Copy and paste all the combinations of email addresses generated into a new email draft in Gmail. Hover over every email address, one by one. For each you should see either no info, or a picture of the person and perhaps a quick bio. Keep in mind, that this works in most cases if the person has their email account linked to some social networks or a Google account. In some cases you will only see a match on Rapportive, in others only on the Google preview, in some both, and in some, you will see neither.
5 — If none of the email combinations work for you at the company domain name you selected, try using gmail.com, yahoo.com and other popular email service domains and repeat steps 3 and 4.
6 — If you haven’t found anything yet, try a https://who.is/ lookup for the domain name of the person’s company.
7 — Still nothing? Do a basic Google search of the person’s name + “email address” or + “gmail.com”
If all the other steps fail, ask around. Ask some of your immediate friends/acquaintances or ask your Twitter/internet friends.
Lastly, it’s always better to get a warm intro. Just make sure any cold email you send out is interesting and non-spammy so that you don’t waste your time or anyone else’s time.
