Email marketing is still so important when it comes to marketing a professional services firm. It provides a professional and direct medium that allows businesses to reach out to their leads and customers/clients. It enables you to stay in contact with your audience, it’s affordable, it increases brand awareness and it’s timely.

Email campaigns like email marketing newsletters help you build brand awareness, which contributes to sustainable growth over time.

You have a great opportunity to connect and build (business) connections using email marketing but only IF you have your recipients’ correct email addresses. Here are some tips for how to find anyone’s email address quickly and easily – and for free.

Go to the company web site: While this may seem obvious, it’s one of the best places to start when you are searching for someone’s email. Many companies provide contact information for certain employees, and you can use their email construction to help you figure out someone else’s email based on this formula.

Also the news section of a company web site is another great destination, as PR contact email addresses are often listed front and center on that page.

Sometimes a company’s Contact Us page will yield results, but more often than not you are greeted by a form (and your message gets dumped into a customer service download somewhere), so don’t be surprised if this doesn’t work.

Use Google – There is a lot of information floating around online, and unicorn Google’s search feature can be the key to accessing it. You might be able to find someone’s email address just be searching their name and the word “email” or “contact.”

Take an educated guess based on email formats: Almost every company uses a standard format for the emails (like [first name].[last name]@[company].[com]). If you find even a single email address to someone in the company, it isn’t hard to crack the code once you see the formatting. This only works if you have the person’s name and it can be trickier for people with common names.

Most email addresses follow the same handful of patterns. They are often based on simple formats. So if you know your prospect’s first name, surname and domain, you might be able to guess their email address. If you already have the email address of someone else at the same company, you can probably figure out which structure they use.

If not, try these common formulas:

[name]@example.com
[name].[surname]@example.com
[name][surname]@example.com
[initial].[surname]@example.com

Check LinkedIn Contact Info: Sometimes, people list their work email addresses on their LinkedIn profiles. You can copy and paste it right from their profiles. The only caveat with this is that you usually have to be connected with them in order to see their profiles.

Export your LinkedIn Connections: Did you know that LinkedIn allows you to export your connections? So if you’re connected with your prospect, you may be able to get hold of their email address. Not all emails will be in the spreadsheet depending on the user’s settings, but it’s a start.

Utilize sources from the web: There’s an almost endless list of email lookup tools on the web. Some are paid and some are free. Here are three quick ways to find emails for free:

  • Clearbit Connect is a Gmail and Outlook add-on that looks for a person’s email from a variety of sources as well as their own database (related: check out the best Gmail add-ons and extensions to improve your productivity).
  • GetProspect is a Chrome extension that allows you to find someone’s email address by their name and domain.
  • RocketReach can quickly find emails for you, especially if your target is fairly high profile. Just sign up for a free account and start email hunting.

Good luck hunting – this is a worthwhile exercise to do and can yield major dividends because email marketing is so important in your visibility and business development strategy.