Few things are more challenging in the building of links than
discovering the ideal connection opportunity but being utterly unable to locate
a contact email address.
It's definitely happening to you — if you want to create ties
or do some sort of outreach, it almost always includes sending out a relatively
large number of emails. There are many good articles out there on building
relationships within the sense of building ties, but when you can't even locate
a contact email address, it is hard to develop relationships.
So I want to concentrate on how you can get better at finding
those valuable email addresses for today.
Link builders spend a lot of time just trying to locate
contact details and it's always a frustrating process, just because it can be
very difficult to find out email addresses. Secondly, the site you are
approaching might not even have a contact page. Or, if the site has a contact
page, a generic email address can only be shown. And occasionally, too many
email addresses can be listed at the web. There are eight different people with
similarly sounding job titles — should you contact the PR guy, the marketing
manager, or the webmaster? It's not clear on that.
I can't help but wonder how many errors are made on the way
to a response rate so small.
While there are undoubtedly cases in which there is simply no
simple and obvious method of communication, this should be the exception — not
the law! An experienced connection builder understands that their performance
depends on finding important contact information.
Begin by
looking around
First, let's start with my golden rule: you should always
search for the correct contact email yourself manually before you fire up any
device.
If you rely heavily on software and automated solutions, far
more misfired emails would end up with you than if you were to go the manual
path. The explanation for this is simple: the email address listed on your
target website that, surprisingly, belong to the right person you should
contact!
Now, if you're using a device, thousands of email addresses
can be created, and you'll never really end up emailing the right person.
Another reason I recommend searching for emails manually is that many email locating
tools are restricted and can only locate email addresses associated with a
domain name. So if there's a webmaster with a @gmail.com email address, it
won't be identified by the email locating tool.
In order to remain GDPR compliant, it is also necessary to
only reach out to people you truly believe may have an interest in your email.
So, always continue your search by browsing around the web. A
link to the contact page will usually appear in the header, footer, or sidebar.
If there is no specifically named "message" page, or if the message
page has only generic email addresses, that is when I would suggest moving to a
"About Us" tab, if there is one.
You are still looking for a personal email, not a generic one
or a contact form. Outreach is more successful when you are able to contact a
single person, not everyone checks info@domain.com that day.
Use a
search-engine
Maybe the contact page you've been searching for was
well-hidden; maybe they don't want to get in touch with that much or they
urgently need a new UX individual.
For assistance you may turn to search engines.
Lately my go-to search engine is Startpage. Dubbed as the
most private search engine in the world, Google SERPs are presented in a way
that doesn't make you feel like you've just reached Times Square. They also
have a cool option for "Anonymous View" to browse the search results
anonymously.
If there's really a contact page or email that you couldn't
find anywhere on their website, any professional search engine will find it for
you. If the site query above does not return any results then I will start
extending my search to other web corners.
Email-Finding
Tools
There's plenty of fantastic email-finder resources to choose from. The first thing I want to
think about is that Hunter. Hunter has an update to Chrome that's very easy to
use. There is not much else to do once you've downloaded the extension.
Go to the place you want to send an email to, click on the
extension in the top right corner of your browser, and Hunter, well, hunts.
This email finder
returns any email address associated with that domain which it can find and
allows you to filter category-based tests, too.
I said "email address?" "I meant saying email
address, name, work description and so on. Essentially, it's a one-click
workaround for getting anything you need to streamline.
Since I use this email
address finder frequently (and, as you can see, for good reason), it's the
one I'm most familiar with. You can also search emails in bulk using Hunter's
online app.
The big drawback to operating in bulk is an easy method to
sift through all the emails. Hunter will produce hundreds of emails for one
platform, leaving you essentially to guess which email address is best for
reaching out to. So if you depend on guesswork, chances are pretty high you
leave perfectly good outlook on the table.
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