Outreach isn’t easy.
And not having access to accurate business email addresses makes it even harder.
So, how do you find company email addresses and ensure that the emails you receive are fresh, correct, and compliant?
There are several ways to track down professional email addresses without spending a fortune. This blog will cover nine tried and proven methods.
Let’s start with a quick summary, if you’re in a rush. 👇
You can find business email addresses for free using email lookup tools, company websites, LinkedIn, Google search operators, online directories and press releases.
Other effective methods include guessing standard email formats or asking directly.
Otherwise, you can skip the manual work and speed up your processes with a trusted B2B data provider.
Sometimes, the most obvious place is the best starting point.
Many companies list contact information directly on their websites. Go to the company website and poke around the “About,” “Contact Us,” or “Team” pages.
Don’t skip the blog or company press releases; they may also feature employee names and their business contact email addresses.
LinkedIn is a goldmine for B2B contact discovery. While you won’t typically find corporate email addresses listed, you can identify key decision-makers and cross-reference them with email finder tools, B2B data providers, or email format guessers.
Company pages and personal bios sometimes include emails or links to individual websites.
You don’t need to stop at LinkedIn, though. Twitter bios and Facebook business pages may also contain contact information, including email addresses, particularly for startups and small businesses.
👉 How to find an email on LinkedIn
👉 How to find an email on Facebook
Great for pinpointing the right person to contact.
Up-to-date job titles.
Sometimes profiles link to sites or blogs with publicly available email info.
Startups often share contact details on social bios.
No direct email visibility.
Time-intensive.
It can appear intrusive.
This brings us to our next technique for finding company contacts: LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
Many B2B businesses use it to find email leads.
That said, it doesn’t always give you direct access to email addresses because a LinkedIn user must first set their email to public before Sales Nav can give it out.
You can use a data provider to supplement its database, as many companies do. Take Allego, for example 👇
Cognism’s Sales Companion works directly with Sales Navigator to help you find verified business email addresses and phone numbers.
Once installed, you can access your lead lists or visit an individual LinkedIn profile. The extension will display additional contact details that aren’t visible on LinkedIn.
This saves time by eliminating the need for manual searches and guesswork.
To get started:
By combining Sales Navigator with Cognism, sales teams can spend less time searching and more time closing deals.
While free methods can take you far, they often leave gaps, especially when accuracy and compliance matter. That’s where trusted B2B data providers come in.
While there are a couple to choose from: ZoomInfo, Lusha, and Apollo, for example, our favourite is Cognism.
Here’s why:
It offers verified contact data, including business email addresses and mobile numbers, making it easier to reach the right people, faster.
It also seamlessly integrates with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Outreach, and Salesforce, to name a few.
And the compliance is top-notch. It’s GDPR and CCPA compliant, so you can prospect worry-free across regions.
All in all, Cognism is perfect for sales and marketing teams who:
Get a data sample to test out the contact info.
Email finder tools are some of the quickest ways to find corporate email addresses.
Free platforms like Hunter.io, Voila Norbert and FindThatLead let you input a name and domain to return likely business email addresses.
These tools also reveal the company email format (e.g., firstname.lastname@company.com), helping you guess addresses for other team members.
Look, sometimes you’ve got to roll the dice when finding business email addresses. Most companies aren’t exactly creative with email formats. They usually go with:
Just do yourself a favour and check if it’s real before hitting send. You can use tools like Hunter.io and Cognism to verify.
There’s nothing worse than a high email bounce rate to ruin your sender reputation.
Quick and free.
Effective for known formats.
Works well with verification tools.
Accuracy not guaranteed.
Time-consuming.
Risk of bouncing.
Risk of ruining domain reputation.
Here’s a trick most miss when finding corporate email addresses:
With the right search commands, Google can be your personal email detective.
Combine names, companies, and file types to uncover hidden email addresses in documents or PDFs.
Try these searches:
This method is handy when finding emails of company employees or small businesses.
Totally free.
Surprisingly effective.
Flexible and customisable.
It can be hit or miss.
Requires search skills.
Time-consuming.
Sometimes the best way to get a business email is to ask.
Use a company’s contact form or direct messaging on LinkedIn or Twitter to politely request the relevant contact.
If reaching out cold, explain who you are, why you’re reaching out, and that you want to connect with the right person by email.
Here are a few LinkedIn messaging templates to help you out.
Direct and respectful.
Opens the door for dialogue and builds rapport from the start.
Bypasses guesswork.
Messages can be ignored.
May take time to receive a reply or be routed to the right person.
Works well for one-off outreach but not ideal for high-volume prospecting.
Why not skip the email altogether?
Tools like Cognism have phone-verified (Diamond Data®) direct numbers for decision-makers.
And guess what? Our latest cold-calling report showed that Cognism’s cold-calling success rate was 6.7%, compared to the industry standard of 2.3%.
So, skip the gatekeepers and the email finding battle and get a data sample to test it out.
Instant feedback.
Builds rapport faster.
Higher conversion rates.
Avoids crowded inboxes.
Verified mobile numbers.
Some prospects may view unexpected calls as disruptive or unwelcome.
Cold calling success often depends on having well-trained sales reps.
Finding business email addresses for free takes a bit of legwork, but it’s entirely possible with the right tools and techniques.
Whether you’re in sales, marketing or recruitment, these list building strategies can help you build your contact list without spending a fortune.
But remember, always respect privacy and legal considerations, and avoid scraping or sending spam.
By applying these methods, you’ll soon master business email search and improve your outreach success rate.
Stop wasting hours trying to figure out how to find company email addresses.
Cognism gives your team instant access to verified email addresses, direct dials and mobile numbers.
Skip the dead ends and guesswork. Get a data sample today.