Why Every Business Needs an Email Finder Tool: A Guide to Enhancing Lead Generation

Sometimes, you’re one email away from your next business success. But reaching the person who could make it happen isn’t always easy. Below, we look at why every business needs an email finder tool – and how you can use one to connect with genuine prospects and help your company flourish.

Let’s face it: just about everyone is using email these days. By 2025, more than 4.5 billion people will have an email address. Email keeps business professionals connected. It’s been a while since we were all hovering over a fax machine and some of you were asking “what’s that?”. 

If you’re doing any kind of outreach, you’ve needed a certain email address on more than a few occasions. Chances are you went online and tried to find it, but sometimes, it remained a mystery. 

Maybe you tried to guess it, but you didn’t get through. All you got was another bounce. LinkedIn helps, but not everyone is active there, so good luck trying to get ahold of that prospect. 

Those who have been down this road before know that there is a solution. Email finder tools save you time and frustration, and accelerate your results. 

It’s easy to see why an email finder tool is necessary in a business world where email is the dominant communication channel. An email finding tool is no longer a fringe extension or software. Instead, it’s a tool millions of business professionals can’t imagine working without.

But what exactly is an email finder, and how does it work? 

Read on to learn more about this tool that can help your outreach efforts, make life easier and give you better results. Using an email finder will soon become second nature.  

What is an email finder tool?

An email finder is a tool you can use to find specific email addresses. An email finder is typically used for business purposes but can also be for personal reasons. 

Sometimes an email finder is used to find a person like John Smith, who works at the Acme Corporation. Others use an email finder to locate specific categories of people, such as the Chief Operating Officers at the businesses they want to target. 

Email finders save time by allowing business professionals to get in touch with the right people, pitch their ideas and build new relationships.

So, what can you use an email finder for?

Let’s look at a few use cases and see the difference an email finder makes to your business. Whether you’re conducting an email outreach campaign or you’re a PR professional trying to reach a journalist, an email finder streamlines your process for getting in touch. 

Businesses need to make new contacts

It’s no secret that many work email inboxes are drowning with emails. Depending on the person, the messages may never stop. That’s why many people go to great lengths to hide their email addresses. 

Others don’t necessarily hide their email addresses, it’s just that their role isn’t public-facing. Although they’d welcome communication, their company doesn’t publish their email address on its website.

However, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to get in touch. These professionals trying to weed out the riff raff may want you to contact them. Even the CEO of a major corporation wants to hear from you if you can help them or have just the right information they need. After all, you’re not the person they’re trying to avoid. If you’re reading this article, you’re legitimate and want to make new contacts for your business.

Salespeople need to generate new leads

The savvy sales team manager knows that their work is easier when the team has the right tools. The unit can exceed goals. Some customers prefer the phone, but norms are shifting. Especially if there was no introduction from a third party, some would consider a phone call as the first contact to be pushy or even uncomfortable. 

It’s not uncommon for a potential customer to ask you to email them immediately after you introduce yourself. It’s “and how are you?” and then a request you send the details via email. Sometimes it’s virtually impossible to get someone on the phone.

You and your team may use a variety of ways to make contact, including in-person. However, it’s a mistake not to increase your email leads. You can send a high volume of emails to these leads. Although you could spend much time scouring websites and LinkedIn, both may lead to a dead end. Your business needs an email finder tool that provides correct email addresses. 

Bonus tip: Once you find the right email address, you can craft a personalized message unique to that potential client. Ensure you write different, personalized messages instead of copying and pasting the same text. Doing so will decrease your chances of success because it will feel generic. 

Furthermore, don’t engage in spammy behavior like CCing or BCCing a slew of contacts. It will likely hurt your sender reputation, negatively affecting your ability to show up in the inbox. 

We will cover more about how emailing new contacts should be treated more delicately than someone you correspond with frequently.

Email finders help a business save money

Every business needs to reach its target market to survive. For the longest time, this meant advertising, but results can vary. It’s frequently challenging to reach your audience, but you can make connections with greater precision using an email finder tool.

After identifying your target audience, you can pinpoint your ideal customers and reach out to them directly. For many buying ads, it’s a lot of trial and error. That money is gone once you spend the advertising budget, and there are no refunds. 

On the other hand, if you begin a dialogue with your new contact, you’re free to try several different approaches to turn them into a customer.

Email finder tools help you with public relations outreach

Journalists and publicists alike have long enjoyed the benefits of an email-finding tool. Whether you have a dedicated public relations manager or your marketing department is attempting to make media inroads, an email finder can help.

There are a variety of journalists at publications, media outlets, podcasts and blogs open to starting a dialogue with you. However, some people in these fields receive more than 100 pitches daily. Because of the high volume of emails these individuals receive, many avoid posting their email addresses anywhere. 

With a reasonable ability to entice journalists and content creators, and a reputable email finder tool, your company can start getting some valuable exposure. 

Related: How to write a media pitch that gets you coverage

Pursue business partnerships more easily

At every company, some movers and shakers can make things happen. The challenge is that frequently those people are insulated. Many of them receive lots of emails and keep their addresses private. They’re surrounded by gatekeepers who have no choice but to scrutinize every message.

Sometimes an excellent idea never lands in front of the right eyes because it’s never passed on or you don’t manage to identify the right contact. So you may be missing many partnership opportunities.

If you have some well-thought-out partnership strategies that are mutually beneficial, give them a fighting chance by finding the correct email address. An email finder tool can help you do that. Gatekeepers have a job, but you must do whatever possible to give your idea a shot. 

What you should look for in an email finder

So, by now you know that you could benefit from an email finder. You want to eliminate the guesswork and the perils of going down the wrong roads.

Email finders make life easy. But the problem with many of them is that some of the results they return can be invalid.

If you’re like most professionals, you need to send plenty of emails. And if your emails bounce, you may start having email deliverability problems. The email you wrote to someone may land in the spam folder. Who’s going to see it there?

Accuracy is foremost

Some email-finding services provide an email address for a contact that they specify as “partially verified” with a 50% or 70% accuracy rate. Others provide any email address ever associated with an individual. Some emails were abandoned years ago, and you’re expected to try them all.

Sending a personalized email to obsolete email addresses is a waste of time and damaging to your cold outreach efforts. The other option would be to verify all newly found emails, which adds an additional step that might still be a dead end.

A quality email finder weeds out invalid results automatically – and gives you only verified email addresses. That way, you’ll avoid bounces and increase your chances of a good outcome. No good ever comes from a bounced email. It means wasted time, a tarnished reputation, and no possibility of a sale.

Related: The difference between hard and soft bounces – and 9 ways to reduce them

Why you must only use valid results

It’s worth driving home the point that the quality of your email finder tool’s results make a monumental impact on your success. It’s not just that you can’t contact someone with a dead email. Not getting the actual email address of your lead defeats the whole purpose of using these tools.

There’s a pernicious outcome from using faulty email finders. You’re certain to get bounces from obsolete or false email addresses. Furthermore, you will eventually hit some spam traps. It may cause you to end up on a blacklist. Are you aware of blacklists?

You’re rolling the dice with your sender reputation, which is the score that Internet Service Providers use to assess your reliability as a sender. If your score starts to shrivel, so do the number of emails that actually show up in the inbox. 

Why? 

A low score is indicative that someone is sending junk. You don’t want to recklessly use an inferior email finder just to save a few bucks. If you can’t be confident in what the email finding tool yields, don’t use that service.

Choosing an email finder tool that works for you

So, how do you choose the right email finder tool? Here is a checklist to help you save time and to ensure you’re making the right choice.

Accuracy of results

While you have to keep price in mind, let accuracy be your top priority. Otherwise, you’ll be wasting your budget on invalid addresses that cause your emails to go to spam. 

Reputation

Every tool or SaaS of great utility is certain to spawn a number of copycats. Sometimes the end product leaves a lot to be desired. If you’re looking at an email finding website and aren’t filled with confidence, there’s probably a reason why. You don’t want to work with a tech company that looks  sketchy.

Tech Support

Tech support is a lot like roadside assistance. You don’t necessarily consider it unless you need it. Although a good email finder tool should require minimal support, it should be available just in case. Nobody wants to be scouring the internet for a way to get in contact with a company that’s trying to keep their customers at bay. For a lot of those businesses, they hide a way to reach you precisely because so many people are trying to get in touch! It’s not a comforting sign if there is no available support.

Ease of use

This isn’t rocket science, but it’s astonishing how counterintuitive some email finders are. If you can’t get the hang of the service because it’s clunky, think about all of the time you’ll save if you use something that’s nice-and-easy.

Price

Are you getting a good value for the email finding service? Keep in mind that you have to pay for each lead generated whether it results in a sale or not. Consider your averages and make sure that the price is something you can work with.

Choose an email finder that guarantees its results by verifying them first. You’ll hit Send knowing that you’re saving time and connecting with real prospects. 

Want to give ZeroBounce Email Finder a try?

Sign up for an account and find 10 email addresses for free – all guaranteed by our 99% accurate email validator. Plus, get 100 free email validations every month and ensure your existing leads are legit.