To find someone's work email address, start with the company website and their LinkedIn profile, then work out the company's email pattern (such as [email protected]) and confirm the guess with an email finder and a verifier before you send. Always verify first: a guessed address that bounces hurts your sender reputation more than not emailing at all.
This guide is about business email: reaching a journalist, a potential partner, a podcast host or the person who decides on a deal. It isn't about tracking down private individuals, and if that's what you're after, this isn't the page for you.
Step by step: find a work email address
- Check the obvious places first: the company's contact page, team page, press page and the person's author bio. Many people publish their address on purpose.
- Look at their LinkedIn profile's contact info, their personal website and any recent podcast or speaker pages. People who want to be pitched usually make it easy.
- Find any published address at the same company to learn the pattern. If one colleague is [email protected], your contact is very likely firstname.lastname too.
- Run the name and company domain through an email finder to get a suggested address with a confidence score.
- Verify the address before you send anything.
- Send a short, specific email. Say who you are and why them in the first two lines.
The common email patterns
Most companies use one format for everyone. Once you know it, you can usually work out anyone's address. These are the usual suspects:
| Pattern | Example for Jane Smith |
|---|---|
| first.last | [email protected] |
| first | [email protected] |
| firstlast | [email protected] |
| flast | [email protected] |
| first_last | [email protected] |
| lastf | [email protected] |
Smaller businesses lean towards first@ because there are fewer people to clash. Bigger companies lean towards first.last or flast. A pattern is only a guess until it's verified.
How email finder tools work
Email finders search for addresses that have appeared publicly in connection with a domain and then estimate the most likely address for the name you give them. Hunter's Chrome extension, for example, lists every address it has found on the web for the domain you're visiting, with the source where each one was found and the date it was discovered. Hunter says the extension doesn't save data from the pages you visit, and that it needs a free account with 50 free credits a month.
Other finders such as RocketReach, Snov.io, Apollo and Voila Norbert work on the same idea with different databases. Results vary by company and country, so it's worth testing two on your own target list. I compare the options in my roundups of RocketReach alternatives and free email finder tools.
Why you must verify before you send
A verifier checks whether the mailbox exists and can receive mail, without sending an email. Hunter's help centre describes four possible results, and they're a good map of what any verifier is telling you:
| Result | What it means | Send? |
|---|---|---|
| Valid | Passed every check and is deliverable | Yes |
| Accept all | The domain accepts all mail, so the specific mailbox can't be confirmed | Only with a high confidence score |
| Invalid | Failed one or more checks and doesn't exist | No |
| Blocked | The mail server blocked the check, so the status is unknown | Find another route |
The accept-all case is the one people get wrong. Hunter shows a confidence score for those addresses, says a score of 95% or higher is generally more likely to be deliverable, and suggests filtering out anything below 85% if you're worried about bounces. Even then, it's an estimate, not a promise.
Why bounces matter more than you think
Mailbox providers watch how you send. Google's sender guidelines for Gmail ask every sender to keep the spam rate reported in Postmaster Tools below 0.3%, to set up SPF or DKIM authentication, and, for anyone sending more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail accounts, to add DMARC and one-click unsubscribe on marketing mail. A batch of guessed addresses that bounce or get marked as spam is the quickest way to land in the junk folder, even for people who'd have been happy to hear from you.
Free ways to find an email without a tool
- Search the person's name in quotes with the company domain and the word email.
- Check the company's press releases and blog posts, which often list a media contact.
- Look at conference speaker pages, podcast show notes and guest post bios.
- Ask a mutual connection for an introduction. It beats any cold email.
- Use the contact form on their site. It's slower, but it reaches the right inbox.
Stay on the right side of the rules
Finding a public work address is one thing; what you send there is another. Email marketing rules differ by country, and B2B outreach is treated differently from consumer marketing in some places. Keep messages relevant to the person's job, say clearly who you are, make it easy to opt out, and never add someone to a newsletter list because you found their address.
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If you're building outreach as a regular habit rather than a one-off, my comparison of Hunter alternatives covers tools that combine finding, verifying and sending.
My verdict
The best email address is the one the person published themselves. When you have to find it, learn the company pattern, confirm it with a finder, verify it, and send something worth opening. Five verified, personal emails will do more for you than five hundred guesses.
Once you've got a candidate address, I walk through checking it in my guide to verifying an email address before you send so nothing bounces.
Frequently asked questions
How can I find someone's email address for free?
Check their company's team and contact pages, their LinkedIn contact info and author bios, then work out the company's email pattern. Many finder tools also have a free tier.
What's the most common business email format?
First.last ([email protected]) and first name only ([email protected]) are the most common. Confirm the pattern with a colleague's published address before you rely on it.
Are email finder tools accurate?
They're estimates. Finders suggest a likely address with a confidence score, so always run the result through a verifier before you send.
What does accept all mean in an email verifier?
The domain accepts every incoming message, so the verifier can't confirm the specific mailbox exists. Hunter suggests relying on a high confidence score for these addresses.
Why do bounced emails matter?
Bounces and spam complaints damage your sender reputation. Google asks Gmail senders to keep their reported spam rate below 0.3%.
