Cold Emailing

12 ways to find someone’s email address for free

Mihaela Cicvaric
LAST UPDATED
September 6, 2024
READING TIME
7 min.

By reaching out to the right people, you can open new business opportunities and generate more revenue. But, before sending out your campaigns, you have to find your prospect’s email addresses and ensure they are correct.

So, how can you find someone’s email address for free? ⬇️

1. lemlist's free email finder

2. lemlist’s Lead Database

Let’s start with the best option!

Online databases are essentially similar to LinkedIn, except they include more data like email addresses.

lemlist offers its broad B2B lead database, where you can connect with 450+ million people.

The best part?

You don’t have to invest in a separate email verifier as all contact have already been verified for you.

Use its advanced search filters to narrow down your search to the truly relevant leads and add them to your list.

And get this!

You don’t even have to change platforms once you’ve added your new leads to you list, you can connect with them easily on the same platform!

Learn more about lemlist’s lead database with this video! ⬇️

Although it doesn’t really get any better, here are other online email databases  we recommend testing out (with free trials or plans):

3. Email Permutator

Email Permutator is a tool that automates email address guessing, as you can insert anyone's name and company domain. It’s a quick and easy way to find someone’s email without spending hours listing all possible email address variations.

After you get your list, simply go to Gmail’s new message and paste all the results.

If one of the addresses is right, Gmail will usually show you the person's information (e.g., profile image).

Pro tip: Keep in mind that, in most cases, only one of the combinations is the real one. Sending a message to all results is a bad practice as it leads to a high bounce rate, and your domain could be blacklisted by the internet service provider.

4. lemlist Chrome Extension

With your lemlist subscription, you have access to the lemlist Chrome extension that will scrap emails on LinkedIn for you and enrich your leads.

Here’s how to do it:

Step 1

Install lemlist’s Chrome extension

Step 2

Go to your lead’s profile and start the waterfall enrichment process in one click

Step 3

Get lead’s verified email and copy to add to your campaign

If you don’t wish to commit to the paid plans, no problem. We’ve got you covered.

Simply start your lemlist 14-day free trial, once it’s over you can automatically continue on the Freemium plan.

With this plan, you may scrap up to 100 verified emails per month, with the opportunity to purchase more credits as you go.

0 commitment.

5. Advanced Google options

If you didn’t find your prospect’s emails using the ”company’s email pattern” tactic or with the Email Permutator tool, you can always try searching for it on Google.

Here are 3 methods you can use to find anyone’s email address on Google:

Try advanced Google search

You can use advanced search operators to get precise contact information when you doubt which prospect's email is correct.

Using quotation marks in your search query tells Google to search for results that contain that exact keyword.

You just have to enter the possible email address, and if that email can be found online, it will appear like this:

advanced google search

Insert target keywords

Another method you can use to search for an email address on Google is to:

  1. put a person's name between brackets
  2. add queries such as "+ email" or "+ email + contact", etc.
search for target keywords on google

You can also try other combinations, like the person's name and the company name or title, as it increases your chances of getting the correct contact info.

Search company website with Google search operators

Another way to find someone's email address is to use the search operator query “site:companywebsite.com” as your root and add modifiers, such as:

  • site:companywebsite.com + [name] + email
  • site:companywebsite.com + [name] + contact

As a result, you’ll get all potential email addresses related to your prospect on a specific web page:

search company website with google search operators

6. Subscribe to your prospect's newsletter

Many entrepreneurs use their email addresses to send newsletters because it creates a much more personal connection with their audience.

E.g. SparkToro's website:

find email on the website

There's a signup form to receive Rand's tricks. After signing up, you get his email address. 🎉

subscribe to newsletter to get someone's email adress

7. Social media profiles

Many social media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, or Instagram can often lead to someone's email address.

Find emails on the prospect’s LinkedIn profile

You'll notice that many people, especially those working in Growth, Partnerships, or Sales, put their email addresses directly on their LinkedIn profile as they want people to get in touch with them easily.

To access your prospect’s email address:

  1. Go to their profile
  2. Click on “See contact info”
find email adress on LinkedIn

If they put them as "visible", you'll have access to 2 important things:

  • email address (and the pattern of their company)
  • phone number
Pro tip: Check out the About section of your prospect’s LinkedIn profile, as people often share their contact info for networking.

Leverage Twitter’s advanced search

Many people leave their email addresses in Twitter's bio and, sometimes, even tweets. To find these tweets, you can use Twitter Advanced Search.

Here's an example of finding the email address of Yoni Yampolsky from the website builder, Elementor.

All you need to do is:

  1. Identify a Twitter username
  2. Add a keyword
advanced twitter search

And here’s what you’ll get:

advanced twitter search result

Search it on Instagram

Depending on your industry, some companies or influencers will list their email address directly on their Instagram profile:

find email on instagram

If you want to do this on a bigger scale, you can use an Instagram email scraper like Influencers Club.

8. Download Your LinkedIn Archive

Planning on reaching out to a lot of your  LinkedIn connections?

Instead of finding individual emails, you can download your LinkedIn archive and extract your prospects’ emails.

Here’s how you can download your LinkedIn connections data:

1. Click your profile icon and go to Settings & Privacy.

access linkedin settings

2. Click on Data privacy.

3. From the How LinkedIn uses your data list, click on Get a copy of your data.

4. Check the Connections option (and any other info that interests you).

5. Click Request archive.
LinkedIn will make your data available to download in about 10 minutes. Once it’s ready, LinkedIn will inform you through email.

ask LinkedIn for connections emails


6. Click the Download archive button.

get connections emails from linkedin

Note: You will only see email addresses for connections who have allowed their connections to see or download their email address.

9. Your newsletter base

If you send a newsletter to your audience, you might want to check if your prospect has already subscribed to get your content. Or, there might be an email address of your lead’s coworker to help you identify the pattern.

You can check that by going to your email marketing tool, opening the entire list, and starting searching.

At lemlist, we use customer.io to send newsletters and lead nurturing campaigns. So anybody from the team can search for a lead through personal or company names:

find emails in marketing newsletter base

10. Email lookup tools

If you decide to go with an email lookup tool, all you need to do is add the prospect’s name/website and get all relevant addresses listed.

There are many lookup tools on the market, but you don’t have to test them all. We did it for you, and here’s our list of top recommendations for email lookup tools with free plans or trials.

11. Data enrichment tools

Sometimes, you might have a list of conference attendees or LinkedIn search results, but none of them will contain the email addresses you want.

This is where data enrichment tools come into play.

Let's imagine the following scenario:

  1. You've narrowed down your audience with a LinkedIn search. For example, everybody with the "Marketing Manager" title works in early-stage startups in the USA.
  2. Next, you can copy/paste the Search URL into the data scraping tool (such as Phantombuster, which has a free trial) and download their available information.
  3. Now, you can upload lead information into a data enrichment tool to find their exact email addresses.

If you want an efficient tool to get your leads’ valid email addresses, try lemlist’s free email finder.

To clean your leads list, find companies’ domains, or get their social media profiles so you can connect through multiple channels, try lemlist’s free lead enrichment add-on.

12. Get an Introduction

Not only do you get a valid email address, but you increase your chances to convert your lead into a customer if someone introduces you. 

On LinkedIn, you can easily see if you have mutual connections with the person you want to reach out to. 

Use this template to ask for an introduction:



“Hello, [name]
I noticed you’re connected to [prospect’s name]. I’d like to [relevant reason why you want to reach out to the prospect]. Could you introduce me?”

Can’t find someone to introduce you? No need to worry. There are more ways to get your lead’s email on LinkedIn.

What’s the typical email address structure?

Before diving into tools to find someone's email, it’s important to understand how email addresses are structured. Once you see a company's email pattern, you can quickly get the email addresses of almost anyone who works there.

In most cases, business email addresses use various combinations of an employee's first and last name in front of the company's domain.

This combination is called a "pattern," and in most cases, it looks like this: name@company.com.

Pro tip: Always use professional email addresses to send your cold emails and reach out to professional email addresses. Sending outreach to personal addresses can get you into GDPR troubles and often results in verification and email deliverability issues.

Once you get the right email address, you should focus on your email copy structure.

Key takeaways

Finding out your prospect’s email addresses is essential for your outreach strategy.

For quick results, we recommend:

  • lemlist's email finder
  • Online email databases
  • Email Permutator
  • Google advanced search
  • Social media accounts
  • Newsletter base
  • Email lookup tools
  • Data enrichment tools

Once you find your prospect’s email address, you’ll be able to reach out and book meetings. 🚀

P.S. Whatever method you decide to choose, don’t forget to verify your email address to strengthen your sender's reputation!

Mihaela Cicvaric
Content Marketing Manager @ lempire | Sharing everything you need to get replies to your cold emails
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Comprehensive incentive management
Potentially high cost and steep learning curve
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Enterprise: custom price
Complex sales structures and businesses of all sizes
Complex sales structures and businesses of all sizes
Steep learning curve
4.6
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Not publicly available
Collaborative teams
Connected planning
Complexity and steep learning curve
4.6
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Companies with complex sales structures
Complex incentive compensation management (ICM) with high efficiency and accuracy
Complexity for smaller teams and potentially high costs
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Not publicly available
Companies who want to automate commission calculations and payouts
Simplicity and ease of use
Lack of features like redirection
4.7
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Custom: upon request
Businesses that need a comprehensive and user-friendly sales compensation management software
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Companies with modern sales culture and businesses who want real-time insights
A built-in dispute management and real-time visibility
Users say it works slowly, customer support is slow
4.9
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star
$30/user/mo
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Smaller sales teams
Powerful automation
Lesser user base and average user interface
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Not publicly available
Companies with scalable needs
Automated Commission Calculations
Lack of filtering by date, no mobile app
ERP vs. CRM
ERP
CRM
Summary
Backbone of a business's internal operations.
Backbone of customer-centric interactions and operations.
Goal
To centralize and streamline core business processes in a company.
To increase customer experience, satisfaction and loyalty, and boost sales.
Focus
Internal operations and processes across departments (finance, accounting, inventory, supply chain, HR, and sales).
All interactions with leads and customers.
Manages
Internal business data like financial data, inventory levels, production details, supply chain, HR info.
All customer data like contact info, purchase history, communication history, customer preferences and more.
Users
Finance, accounting, operations, supply chain, and HR departments.
Customer-facing teams like sales, marketing, and customer service.
Benefits
Streamlines operations, improves data accuracy, enhances decision-making, boosts collaboration, increases productivity.
Improves customer relationships, increases sales, strengthens customer service, personalizes marketing campaigns, provides insights.
Price
$150 per user per year on average.
$10 to $30 per user per month on average.
PRM Tool
Rating
Feature
Pro
Con
Mobile App
Integrations
Free Plan
Pricing
4.65
star
star
star
star
star-half
Org-wide alignment
User-friendly layout and database
Suboptimal as a personal CRM
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Lack of tracking system
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Team: $20/month
Business: $45/month
4.7
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Social Media Integration
Easy contact data collection
No marketing/sales features
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Lack of tracking system
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7-day trial
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4.75
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Block Functions
High customization capability
Not a dedicated CRM
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Plus: €7.50/month
Business: €14/month
N/A
Open-source
Open-source flexibility
Requires extensive manual input
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Limited
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Self-hosted
$9/month or
$90/year
3.1
star
star
star
Simple iOS app
Ideal for non-tech-savvy users
iPhone only
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iOS only
Limited
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1-month trial
$1.49/month or
$14.99/month
3.6
star
star
star
star-half
Smart Contact Management
Feature-rich and flexible
Reported bugs
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Rich
square-xmark
7-day trial
Premium: $13.99/month
Teams: $17.99/month
4.4
star
star
star
star
star-half
Customizable Interface
Customizable for teamwork
Pricey for personal use
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Rich
square-xmark
Standard: $24/member
Premium: $39/member
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
Integrated Calling
Integrated Calling
Too sales-oriented & pricey
square-check
Rich
square-xmark
14-day trial
Startup: $59/user/month
Professional: $329/user/month
4.8
star
star
star
star
star
Business Card Scanning
Business Card Scanning
Mobile only
square-check
Limited
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$9.99/month
4.45
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star
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160+ app integrations
Comprehensive integrations
No free app version
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Rich
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14-day trial
$29.90/month or
$24.90/month (billed annually)
Capterra Rating
Free Trial
Free Plan
Starting Price (excluding the free plan)
Maximum Price (for the most expensive plan)
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4.5
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star
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14-day
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€15/month/seat billed annually
€792/month/3 seats billed annually + €45/month for each extra seat
Versatility and free plan
4.2
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star
star
star
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30-day
square-xmark
But it offers reduced price to authorised nonprofit organisations
€25/user/month
€500/user/month billed annually (includes Einstein AI)
Best overall operational CRM
4.3
star
star
star
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star-half
square-xmark
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Limited to 3 users
Comprehensive incentive management
€52/user/month billed annually
Small-medium businesses and automation
4.5
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star
star
star
star-half
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14-day
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€14/seat/month billed annually
€99/seat/month billed annually
Sales teams and ease of use
4.1
star
star
star
star
square-xmark
square-check
Limited 10 users
$9.99/user/month billed annually
$64.99/user/month billed annually
Free plan for very small teams up to 10
CRM goal
Increase the sales conversion rate for qualified leads from marketing automation campaigns by 10% in the next 6 months.
SMART Breakdown
1. Specific: It targets a specific area (conversion rate) for a defined segment (qualified leads from marketing automation).
2. Measurable: The desired increase (10%) is a clear metric, and the timeframe (6 months) allows for progress tracking.
3. Achievable: A 10% increase is possible based on historical data and potential improvements.
4. Relevant: Boosting sales from marketing efforts aligns with overall business objectives.
5. Time-bound: The 6-month timeframe creates urgency and a clear target date.
Actions
Step 1: Refine lead qualification criteria to ensure high-quality leads are nurtured through marketing automation.
Step 2: Personalize marketing automation campaigns based on lead demographics, interests, and behavior.
Step 3: Develop targeted landing pages with clear calls to action for qualified leads.
Step 4: Implement lead scoring to prioritize high-potential leads for sales follow-up.
Step 5: Track and analyze campaign performance to identify areas for optimization.
Outcomes
Increased sales and revenue
Improved marketing automation ROI
Marketing and sales alignment
Data-driven marketing optimization
Table
CDP Software
CRM Software
Approach
Data-centric
Customer-centric
Focus
Interactions across various channels and touchpoints, both online and offline.
Sales, marketing, and customer service interactions.
Functionality
Automatically collects, organizes, tags, and makes data available in real-time.
Helps businesses track customer interactions, sales pipelines, prospects, and service requests.
Goals
Personalized customer experiences across all channels.
Better customer relationships, streamlined processes, and improved profitability.
Benefits
Data integration, management, and accessibility, allowing for detailed analysis and segmentation.
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Deals primarily with identified customer data.
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Personalized marketing campaigns, targeted advertising, content customization across multiple channels.
Managing campaigns and leads, enhancing customer service, providing better customer support, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Examples
Insider, Bloomreach, Salesforce Marketing Cloud CDP
HubSpot, Salesforce Sales Cloud Lightning Professional, and Zoho CRM
CRM
Free plan
Best feature
Best for
Con
1. HubSpot CRM
square-check
Sales automation
Sales teams
Up to 1,000 contacts
2. Insightly
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Custom fields
Basic needs
Not enough info about the free plan
3. Agile CRM
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Deal and sales pipeline tracking
Small teams
Up to 10 users
4. Zoho CRM
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Lead and contact management
Businesses of all sizes
Limited to 3 users
5. ClickUp
square-check
Unlimited tasks and unlimited members
Personal use
Up to 100MB storage
6. EngageBay
square-check
Live chat
Small and midsize enterprises
Up to 1,000 branded emails per month
7. Bitrix24
square-check
Unlimited users and 5 scrum teams
Big teams
Up to 5GB of cloud storage
8. FreshSales
square-check
Easy to use and simple setup
Beginners
Up to 3 users
9. Mailchimp
square-check
Very beginner friendly
Marketing teams
Send up to 500 branded emails per month
Type of Affiliate Marketing
Unattached
Related
Involved
Format
Paid advertising
Social media or YouTube channels
Dedicated website or blog
Focus
Quick income
Your niche
Your audience
Engagement with your audience
square-xmark
square-check
square-check
square-check
square-check
Very close connection with your audience
Pro
Little effort
Higher credibility thanks to your niche
Long-lasting and scalable
Con
Paid ads cost a lot
Potential for bias since you don’t use the thing you promote
Require time, effort, and dedication

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