Whether it’s a case of contacting that perfect candidate for a role you’re working on or introducing yourself to a key decision maker at a potential new client, one of the biggest challenges any recruiter faces is getting people’s contact information, in particular, email addresses. There is LinkedIn of course, where if you’re connected to the person in question, you can source their email from there but if you’re not connected, then this isn’t an option. What now?
Fortunately, there are plenty of tools out there that can help. There are a range of websites that let you search for email addresses and using these can give you a serious edge over your competition. Most of them offer free plans which you can use to assess their effectiveness and most let you download data too, although you may have to upgrade to a paid plan to enjoy this facility. Here are nine of the most popular email address finders and what you need to know about them.
Lusha – https://www.lusha.co/
Lusha is a popular website for recruiters thanks to its services that help find candidate and client contact information. Lusha has a free plan, but this gives just 5 credits per month, so it’s better to opt for one of the paid plans if you need more searches than this (which you almost certainly will). Its Professional plan gives users 200 credits for $75 per month and the Premium package priced at $149 gives 500 credits. Out of all the email finders on the market, this is the one that is more focused on personal email addresses rather than corporate emails. This makes it particularly useful for contacting potential candidates whose contact information is arguably much harder to get.
Get Email – https://getemail.io/
Get Email is used by some of the biggest brands such as Oracle, Dell, Shopify and Monster, so if you’re considering using an email address finder, this should be one of your options. Like most of the options here, there is a free plan that offers ten searches per month. The Basic plan is $49 per month and gives users 300 searches per month with various options up to the Ultra plan that gives users 10,000 searches per month for $399 per month.
Hunter – https://hunter.io/
Hunter.io is one of the better known tools that people use to find email addresses. It’s simple to use, users simply type in a company domain to be presented with email addresses associated with it. There is a free plan that gives users up to 100 “requests” per month and a variety of paid plans that start at $49.00 per month for the Starter package to the Enterprise solution that’s $399.00.
Voila Norbert – https://www.voilanorbert.com/
One of the most popular corporate email address finders, Voila Norbert lets free account users have 50 free searches per month. If you require further searches, there are various options that range from pay-as-you-go searches for $ 0.10 per lead to monthly plans that range from $39 to $399.
Contactout – https://contactout.com/
According to Contactout, their software is used by recruiters at 30% of the fortune 500 including Microsoft, Nestle, Symantec and PWC. This makes it a big player in the world of email address finders and one that should be seriously considered. There’s a free plan that gives you up to 100 searches per month and a variety of paid plans. Unfortunately, as I write, these are under development but are expected to be in place soon. Contactout also has Chrome and LinkedIn extensions that make it a very popular choice for recruiters.
Find That – https://findthat.email/
Find That is the “Yellow Pages of Email” and allows you to look up email addresses by typing in the person’s name and/or company/domain. The results are then presented and are ranked by confidence. The free basic plan gives you 50 searches per month and the starter package at $29 per month lets you have 500 searches. Further packages are available for those people who require more.
Email Format – https://email-format.com/
Unlike many of the other tools, Email Format doesn’t search for an exact address of a person. Instead, it searches for what format that company uses for its emails. This is particularly useful if you know the name of the person you are trying to contact but have failed by other means to access their address. Simply copy the format the company uses (e.g. firstname.lastname@companydomain.com), send your email and it should get through to your target.
Anymail Finder – https://anymailfinder.com/
With Anymail Finder, once you have created an account, you have access to 20 free verified email searches, where you can search for the email of a specific individual or for emails associated with a particular domain. For heavier users, there are plans to suit, including the Pro plan with includes 1000 verified email addresses.
Find That Lead – https://findthatlead.com/
Find That Lead is a great resource for finding corporate emails. Simply type in the company URL to find leads. The free plan gives you a very generous 300 searches per month, limited to 10 per day. The paid plans range from $29 for 1500 monthly email searches to $399.99 for up to 30,000 searches.
Outsourcing
As good as all of the above tools are, the only downside is that this research can end up being incredibly time consuming. This is an ongoing task so it makes it one that is absolutely worth outsourcing. My clients report good results outsourcing this task quite cheaply via www.peopleperhour.com or www.upwork.com.
I’d love to hear your thoughts…
How are you sourcing client and candidate emails? Are you using any of the above tools? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter, particularly if you have any other recommendations on how to successfully source client and candidate contact information.
