Email Lookup Tools And Methods: How To Choose The Right One

Building bridges with leads is challenging when all you have is their name, email address, or company’s webpage. It’s obvious you need to find more information about your potential customers without asking them directly. 

Luckily, special tools can help solve this problem and save you from puzzling your brains over the job you can’t do manually. They can be of two types: email lookup tools, also called email finders, and reverse email lookup tools. 

Let’s try to draw a line between them and figure out how to choose the right email lookup service for your business. 

How email search tools work

An email lookup tool, or an email finder, is an instrument that allows getting a lead’s email address based on their personal data. This may include their name, the company’s name, links on social media, and so on. 

An email finder parses HTML pages to find email addresses that have been published somewhere on the internet. With this tool, you may look up email addresses using both single and bulk email search. 

How reverse email search tools work

A reverse email lookup tool is an instrument that helps in searching for a person’s detailed data using only their email address. The operating principle is simple: you type in the email address you are interested in, wait for the tool to perform the search, and collect the results. It provides you with all kinds of public information found on the web: 

• First name
• Last name
• Country/Location
• Phone numbers
• Social media profiles
• Photos, etc.

If the email is fake or invalid, you won’t get any data. That’s why you need an email checker to verify email addresses before performing a reverse email search.

Email lookup services and methods

There are many email finder methods depending on the goals you pursue. Let’s take a close look at some of them:

How to find email address if I only know the prospect’s full name and the company name 

Email lookup services like Snov.io can offer you many options. If you need to find an email address of one particular person, Single Email Search is at your disposal. All you need to do is to fill in a person’s full name and a company domain name, and Snov.io will do the rest:

If you need to find emails in bulk, use the Bulk Email Search tool by uploading a CSV file with prospects’ first name, last name, and domain name columns (in such order). 

I know a company website and need the email addresses of its team

You may want to get a list of prospects who work for the company you are interested in. In this case, use the email domain lookup option. What you need is just a company’s domain name.

The tool will provide you with a list of people whom you may filter by positions. Their emails will be displayed right after you add them to your list. Easy, yeah?

If you want to get employees’ emails from various companies, you may do it easily with Bulk Domain Search. You have two options here:

• • You may upload a CSV file with domain names from your computer.

• • You may choose one of the lists of companies you’ve previously found and saved to your account.

I have links to prospects’ social media accounts but no email addresses

Good news: this method is also possible with Snov.io. Its Social URL Search allows you to find email addresses on Linkedin and Twitter in bulk. What you need to do is to upload a CSV or TXT file with links to these social networks. The email finder will then generate the list of their emails, already verified. 

I need emails and company data

If you know which companies you need to find info on, you can take advantage of Snov.io’s database search feature. To do this, create a free account on Snov.io and choose the Database Search tool. 

This email lookup tool will help you find a complete company profile, including the names and professional emails of employees. You can search for businesses by:

• Company name
• Company location
• Industry
• Company size
• Founding date
• Revenue
• Specialities
• A combination of any of the above

After the search, you will get a list of businesses that fit the filters. Tick those which you want to add to your list. 

You can go to the company’s profile page and see all the publicly available information about it.

I need a tool right in my browser

Such a solution exists, and it will be your real finding. Snov.io offers the Email Finder Extension, which allows you to collect prospect’s emails from any corporate website, including Twitter.

As soon as you install the extension, you’ll see Snov.io’s icon on the top right-hand corner of your browser.

When you install it: 

1. Go to the website you want to get email addresses from.
2. Click the icon in your browser.
3. Save generated emails.
4. Enjoy.

And if you want to grab emails from LinkedIn, Snov.io has got another Chrome extension – LI Prospect Finder. Its algorithm is the same. You need to install the extension and activate it as soon you are on a prospect’s LinkedIn profile or company profile page:

LI Prospect Finder works with Sales Navigator perfectly well too:

Now that finding your prospect’s emails is not as difficult as it seemed before, sign with relief and let’s figure out the reverse process. What do you need to do if you have an email only but need other data about your potential customers?

Reverse email search services and methods

There are many solutions, but picking the right one can get tricky.

Some of them are expensive; others offer email search free plans. Some are software that performs a bulk search; others are manual input methods for individual search. So which should you choose? 

As always, it all depends on your goals and resources. The manual search takes dedication and is a time-consuming option, as you have to go through the whole process of data search on your own. This method will not work for a business looking for data in bulk. At the same time, powerful bulk tools may be too big and expensive for smaller and one-person companies.

Let’s analyze all the best reverse email lookup tools and methods for both big and small businesses so that you can find the service you’d love to give a try.

I have an email list, but no personal data

If time is of the essence and manual lookup doesn’t work for you, reverse search tools will access public databases and find contacts attached to email addresses.

These email address lookup tools work in most cases. If a person has left their info on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or has a profile on e-commerce services such as Amazon, you will find the data you need.

The most popular search services are Pipl, Social Catfish, Spokeo, and EmailSherlock. All of them are paid, but Pipl offers you a one-by-one free reverse email lookup.  

Each reverse search tool provides different features depending on the plan you choose. But one of the cons of paid services is that you won’t find out if the search is successful until you pay. 

I need personal data on-the-go when composing an email 

If you’ve already started composing an email and realized you have no information on the recipient at all, some email clients can help you out by working as email reverse search tools.

For instance, to find a name in Outlook, click the email owner’s Outlook profile, and you will see their details, including name and social profile links. If they don’t have any social links in their Outlook profile, you can at least see their name.

Mac users should consider trying Polymail. This amazing email client displays the owner’s profile right next to their email address. Meanwhile, MailBird is an excellent alternative to Microsoft Outlook for Windows users.

I need a tool right in my browser

Even among Chrome extensions, you can find a reverse email lookup tool. They are a solid choice, as they are easy to install and use. The extension shows the information about the sender, like their name, social profiles, and other public info, when you click on an email. 

An example of such a service would be LinkedIn Sales Navigator. This extension gives you all the information on the sender right next to their email address. This is a LinkedIn browser extension, but the reviews in recent months have been… Well, you can look through them yourself and make your decision. Another alternative you may consider is FullContact for Gmail.

Although these are great and user-friendly email lookup tools, they are usually bare-bones services with limited options. Besides, some don’t provide free email search plans, which isn’t compelling if you only need to check a couple of email addresses.  

Choose the right email lookup tool

As you’ve noticed, there are dozens of email lookup services that will tempt you to try their product. Still, before making your choice, think about the following factors:

1. Your goals. Depending on the size of your company, objections may differ considerably. Define what you want to achieve first. 
2. Type of the email lookup service. As soon as you understand your direction, think about what kind of email search tools you might need. Will email search be enough, or do you also need a company’s profile? Maybe, you require an extension right in your browser? 
3. Price and freemiums. If you are a company that makes its first steps in the market, you’ll most likely want to have a free trial to see how the service works and find out whether it fits your needs. Even if you’ve chosen your plan, compare it with the options other services offer.
4. Positive reviews. If you still have any doubts about what email lookup service will bring you all success in the world, why not look at what other companies think about the email search tools they’ve already tried or are using at the moment. For example, you may visit such platforms as G2 or Capterra, where you’ll find lots of user experience feedback, as well as a comparative analysis of different email lookup services. 

Wrapping up

Finding data about prospects in the web universe seems complicated. The process is indeed time-consuming and takes dedication. That’s when email lookup tools come up to save the situation, offering various methods of how your company may use them. No matter whether your business chooses a paid or a free email lookup service, it will definitely help you enrich your data and create better-targeted campaigns. 

And better targeting means better conversions. Why not try sending a highly targeted email drip campaign right now? Take advantage of custom personalization and triggers and automate your email outreach.

Happy sending, and don’t forget to thoroughly check your campaigns with these email testing tools!