How To Find (Non-Public) Email Addresses

[Vigilante]

I needed to contact a senior level executive at a professional sports franchise today. As you can imagine, their contact information isn't out there for public consumption. Email is the quickest and most effective way to get someone's attention, especially if their email address is hard to get! Direct hit.

Step 1. Simply call their office. Ask the receptionist. He/She might give it to you. She might transfer you. Ask the next person. You might have to explain (in one sentence or two) the purpose. Make it beneficial. She might give it to you. She might not.

Step 2. LinkedIn - see if by some miracle of God they listed their contact information on LinkedIn

Step 3. And the most FREQUENT way to cause a direct hit, is by searching for corollary email addresses. corollary means like one that is provided elsewhere.

Here are a few examples :

• I might search for the Chicago Cubs Press Release contact. That might be SallyS@chicagocubs.org

• Then I know that Mr.Big would probably be FredB@chicagocubs.com. I am looking for the pattern of how they encode their emails.

• If Sallys was SmithSally@chicagocubs.org, than Mr. Bigs is probably BigFred@chicagocubs.org

Step 4. Many times, organizations use email addresses with different extensions than their web sites. McDonalds might not use a McDonalds.com for their email addresses, specifically because they don't want randoms emailing their executive teams. Find the pattern.

Step 5. Some times, executives use their real email addresses in affiliation to charities they volunteer for, community service projects, or even church email bulletins. A Google search can sometimes yield a deep hidden result. If you search for Sally Smith Chicago Cubs email, you might find her email address in a .PDF put out by the American Red Cross for some charity work Sally does with one of their committees.

In today's result, I got a DIRECT HIT, and was fortunate enough to even get an auto responder that the guy was out of the office for today, indicating/confirming to me that I got the right address.

You can find it. Don't stop at the first road block. The harder the barriers to entry, the better you will be when you figure out how to navigate past them.

 

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[eekern]

I try the the CEO name + domain name here: http://cobisi.com/email-validation/validate-address

 

[Paul Thomas]

This strategy works great, I've gotten in touch, and had meetings with many high ranking people in the world of Investment Banking, technology and more.

I'd add that if you're email goes through and you don't get an answer, follow up once a week until you get an answer. Make sure the follow up email shows your awareness of their busyness, and that you wanted to "help out" in following up.

If I didn't follow up on many of emails, my success rate would have been cut more than in half.