What is the Purpose of an Email Finder Service?
An email finderⓘ service helps businesses discover and connect with new prospects, customers, and fellow professionals. By providing information such as a person’s name or email domain, the email finderⓘ service will look for a valid email address so that you can reliably make contact.
In addition to this, an email finderⓘ can help your business in the following key ways.
An accurate email finder reduces bounces
One trickier part of looking for new email addresses is verifying their validity. You can guess and attempt to email different variations of an email address, but each incorrect address adds to your email bounce rate.
A high email bounce rate negatively impacts your sender reputation, which leads to poor email deliverability.
A trustworthy email finderⓘ helps your business circumvent this process by providing valid email addresses. You’ll have confidence that the person you’re attempting to reach is on the receiving end of the newly-discovered address.
Email Finder connects you with more contacts
A crucial part of the email-finding process is identifying the email address pattern used by the company. A domain-based email finder searches for business email patterns, including:
- first_name.last_name@company
- first_initial.last_name@company
- first_name.last_initial@company
The email finderⓘ will identify the different email patterns and how confident it is that a particular pattern is being used. Adding a person’s name for a name-based email finderⓘ search drastically improves the likelihood of a valid result.
This information helps connect you with the right contacts. If you can identify a person at a company better suited to receive your emails, you can plug their name or role into the suggested pattern to find a valid email address.
Email Finder preserves your email deliverability
When your business relies on email for critical communications, you can’t afford to hurt your email deliverabilityⓘ.
Whenever an email says “delivered,” it doesn’t necessarily mean “delivered to the inbox.” Your emails can hit the inbox, spam folder, or bounce, depending on your deliverability. The worse yours is, the less likely you are to connect with your email contacts.
Using Email Finderⓘ to search for valid email addresses, you ensure your email list stays clean. A clean email listⓘ results in more reliable inbox placement so that you can connect with and convert more customers.
Learn more about ZeroBounce’s Email Finder service
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How Does Email Finding Differ from Email Verification?
While the ZeroBounce Email Finderⓘ uses email verification during the search, the two services differ in the following ways.
Email verification determines the validity of an email address. In other words, once you have an email address, you can use email verification to determine if an actual person uses it. You can and should verify a list of email addresses to avoid unnecessary email bounces.
Email Finding features multiple processes that help search for a person’s email address using key data points. You can perform an email finderⓘ search just by providing a company domain. The email finderⓘ then guesses and tests possible email address patterns for the provided email domain. This search does not involve email verification.
The ZeroBounce Email Finderⓘ, however, incorporates its email validationⓘ technology into the email-finding process. The email finderⓘ searches for possible address patterns whenever you provide a domain and the contact's name. Then, it will attempt to verify different addresses in real time until it yields a valid result.
Do all email finders use email verification?
No. In fact, the ZeroBounce Email Finderⓘ is the only email finderⓘ that guarantees a valid email address.
Most email finders merely do the guesswork described above, the initial, basic step involved with email finding. Because email verification does not take place, there is nothing to guarantee that the email address is valid.
Thanks to our proprietary internal technologies, the ZeroBounce Email Finderⓘ can search for patterns and verify emails in real time. It also preserves our existing customers' privacy and security rights as it never uses stored or processed data to provide email finderⓘ search results.
Can I trust email finding results that don’t use email verification?
Using an address found with email finding without email verification poses a risk to your email deliverability.
Even if the email finder provides a probable email address pattern for the provided company domain, there’s no guarantee that it’s still in use. Employees frequently switch roles and leave for new jobs, leaving once-valid emails outdated. The company may also choose to update its email address format.
The following can happen to an outdated email address:
- Becomes invalid
- Remains valid but provides zero engagement as it has no owner
- Repurposed as a catch-all
- Repurposed as a spam trap by blacklist services
All of these scenarios negatively impact your sender reputation and email deliverability. They’re little more than dead ends and provide little to no benefit to your email marketing efforts.
Learn more about the ZeroBounce email-finding process ->
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What Are the Primary Sources Used by Email Finder Services?
The sources used by email finderⓘ services differ depending on the type of email finderⓘ. Let’s look at some common email-finding methods and how ZeroBounce’s Email Finderⓘ differs.
Web scrapers
Many email finders are little more than web scrapers that scour the HTML of publicly available web pages and pull found email addresses. While scraping is technically allowed, many sites have privacy policies prohibiting emailing users who did not opt into your messaging.
Database searches
Some email finders scour publicly available email databases to identify email addresses in use. This method is not unlike using a phonebook to look up a telephone number, which can work if the email address in question is listed.
Both web scraping and database searching can potentially pull data from the following sources:
- Websites
- Social media platforms
- Company directories
- Public Records
- Shared email lists
The problem with these methods is that they rely entirely on source accuracy. In addition, emails decay rapidly (as much as 23% annually), quickly making these already-limited sources outdated and unreliable.
Pattern recognition
Other email finders apply a guesswork system to determine if an email address is in use. They attempt this by generating a list of potential email address patterns used by a company domain.
The email finderⓘ tests every pattern using a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) check. Every email server has an SMTP protocol that allows it to send and receive email communications. When you email a server, it checks for the address you provided and accepts or rejects the message based on the result.
In other words, it can receive the email if the address exists. If the address is invalid, the email finderⓘ discards the pattern and moves on to the next test.
How ZeroBounce Email Finder finds emails
First, ZeroBounce never scrapes the internet for email addresses. Privacy and security are our top priorities, and we work hard to ensure our platform complies with policies and regulations worldwide.
While we cannot give away the complete secrets of how Email Finderⓘ works, it does contain a domain pattern-guessing component. Our tool uses our internal proprietary technologies to discover and test probable email address patterns used by the provided company domain.
What makes Email Finderⓘ different from other tools is that we can leverage our 99.6% accurate email verification technology to test possible email addresses further. To emphasize our privacy compliance, these tests occur in real time and never utilize existing or stored customer data from email validationⓘ.
The verification process takes our sophisticated domain guesswork further by identifying and ruling out problematic email address types, such as role-based catch-alls and toxic domains.
All processes together allow us to search for and provide trustworthy, valid business email addresses that you can safely add to your email list.
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How Accurate Are the Emails Found Using Email Finder Tools?
The accuracy of an email finderⓘ tool is highly variable, depending upon the methods and technologies used to find an email address.
Below, we’ll look at what impacts email-finder accuracy and how accurate each email-finding method is.
What impacts email finder accuracy?
The following factors have a direct impact on email finderⓘ results:
- The method used (Scraping, Database searching, Pattern detection)
- Trustworthiness and age of sources (email lists, websites, social media profiles, etc.)
- Address complexity (complex personalization options; domain settings that make verification difficult)
How accurate is scraping and database searching?
Some email-finding processes, like web scraping or database searching, rely more heavily on source accuracy. These email finderⓘ tools use automated methods to scour online resources such as directories, social media, and websites to pull existing email information. If these sources are not vigilantly kept up-to-date, the emails found are more likely to be inaccurate and invalid.
How accurate is pattern detection?
Pattern detection uses a different approach. This method guesses possible email address patterns that may be in use by a given email domain. The tool then performs an SMTP checkⓘ to determine if the email address exists.
However, it does not further qualify the email address. As with scraping and searching, this can be problematic if the address is outdated or not meant for incoming emails.
How accurate is scraping and database searching?
Some email-finding processes, like web scraping or database searching, rely more heavily on source accuracy. These email finderⓘ tools use automated methods to scour online resources such as directories, social media, and websites to pull existing email information. If these sources are not vigilantly kept up-to-date, the emails found are more likely to be inaccurate and invalid.
Email verification provides accurate email finder results
The only way to protect your email deliverability when using an email finder is to pair it with email verification.
Validating and determining the status of discovered emails will allow you to filter out invalid and risky email types such as catch-alls, role-based catch-alls, and problematic domains.
To summarize, email finder accuracy is impacted by:
- The email-finding method used
- The quality of the source (age, trustworthiness)
- Email address or domain complexity
- Whether or not email verification is used
The ZeroBounce Email Finder provides sophisticated domain pattern detection along with 99.6% email verification, guaranteeing valid, accurate email finder results.
Learn more about how ZeroBounce Email Finder works ->
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Why is it Crucial for Businesses to Have Accurate Email Finding?
Every business can benefit from expanding its email database with an email finder. However, the email discovery tool is only as good as its accuracy.
But an inaccurate email finder won’t just give you useless email addresses. It can negatively impact all of your future email efforts.
Inaccurate email addresses lead to bounces
Every business needs to keep a clean email list. Your bounce rate will climb if your contact database contains invalid or risky email addresses.
Therefore, your email finder results must be accurate to maintain your email list hygiene. The trial-and-error approach with your email discovery will almost certainly deliver unneeded email bounces.
Instead, you should use an email finder with email verification or verify your email finder results immediately after receiving them.
Invalid, risky emails hurt your sender reputation
A high bounce rate negatively affects your domain sender reputation. You must keep your bounce rate at 2% or lower, or internet service providers begin to view you as an untrustworthy sender.
However, bounces aren’t the only risk.
If your email finder provides questionable results, you may have risky email addresses on your list. Some of these include catch-alls, role-based catch-alls, emails with toxic domains, and spam traps.
While some may pass as “valid,” they’re not meant to receive incoming emails and may even land your domain on an email blacklist.
Test your email finder results with email verification ->
Accuracy is key to healthy email list growth
Though many people go to great lengths to hide their business email addresses, your business is not who they’re hiding from.
By ensuring you can obtain accurate email addresses, you can quickly expand your email marketing list in no time. Just know who you’re contacting, and craft the perfect content for the reader as you usually would.
An accurate email finderⓘ can open a new world to healthy, responsive email contacts that can potentially become new clients. Conversely, emailing a bunch of duds and bouncing too many emails can quickly derail your email marketing efforts.
Get accurate email discovery with ZeroBounce
ZeroBounce Email Finder provides a valid email address thanks to sophisticated pattern detection and email verification.
Check out Email Finder with your free account today to test your results.
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What Are the Risks Associated with Using Inaccurate or Outdated Emails?
Using inaccurate or outdated emails for your email marketing will guarantee future bounces.
However, while the occasional email bounce is acceptable (and expected), bouncing too many emails can harm your business’s domain reputation in the following ways.
Outdated emails lead to higher bounce rates
The immediate risk associated with an outdated email is a high bounce rate.
When an email address is inaccurate or outdated, your email has no target destination. The message bounces back to your bounce address and increases the bounce rate for that campaign.
Internet service providers also keep tabs on the average bounce rate for your email domain. If you use an inaccurate email finder service to generate new leads, your email bounce rate will increase quickly.
High bounce rates decrease email deliverabilityⓘ
Many believe that email bounces aren’t an issue. You can delete the contact from your list if your email bounces back because the address is invalid.
The problem is that the more email bounces you have, the harder it is to deliver future emails. We use the term “deliverability” to describe your email domain’s ability to reach the inbox. When your domain has a high average bounce rate, your ability to deliver messages to the inbox declines.
In short, inaccurate emails lead to high bounces, lowering overall email engagement.
Spammy behavior can lead to email blacklists
Spamming and spoofing is a legitimate issue in email. Internet service providers (ISPs) look for bad actors and use email hygiene to measure a domain’s behavior.
An email bounce rateⓘ higher than 2% will impact your domain reputation. Because your deliverability declines, your open and click rates will also suffer. This lowered email engagement is also a warning sign for ISPs.
The effects of emailing a batch of outdated, inaccurate emails quickly compound and can leave you looking like a spammer. When your domain is no longer trustworthy, many ISPs may reject your emails, and some may even add you to a blacklist.
You may lose your email account
Similar to ISPs, your email service provider also has rigid terms regarding your emailing behaviors. Some of these requirements include:
- Keeping a clean, valid email list
- Minimizing your bounce rate
- Providing a clear unsubscribe link
- Minimize spam complaints and abuse reports
If your domain violates these terms, they may revoke your emailing privileges.
In summary, using inaccurate or outdated emails found with an email finderⓘ harms you in the following ways:
- Increases your email bounce rate
- Lowers email engagement
- Lowers your email deliverability (ability to reach the inbox)
- May result in a blacklisting
- May result in email service suspension
It’s essential to use email verification to keep your email list clean and your campaigns running smoothly.
Learn more about how to keep clean emails on your list ->
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How Can Businesses Maximize the Benefits of Email Finder Services?
The best way to maximize the benefits of email finderⓘ services is to verify your newly-found email addresses. Businesses can use email finders for various purposes, but none amount to much if the discovered emails are invalid.
It’s best practice to do one of the following when using an email finderⓘ:
- Take your newly-discovered addresses to an email verification service before you send any emails
- Use an email finder that features email verification as part of the process
Why email verification is essential for email finder
The accuracy of email finders can significantly vary depending on the processes used and the complexity of the email address. Some only guess at possible patterns, while others use publicly available resources that may be outdated.
Thus, attempting to email various new unknown contacts can result in a high volume of bounces. The potential benefits are quickly lost as your email deliverability plummets and your sender reputation declines.
By using an email finder like ZeroBounce with built-in email verification, you’ll know the status of each discovered email address before you click send.
Compliance with privacy regulations
The legality of emailing contacts found with an email finderⓘ can be confusing. Most, if not all, of your email contacts came from organic signups, whether from your newsletter or paid advertising. You can email those contacts freely if you feature an unsubscribe option.
You can more easily navigate privacy regulations by opting for an email finderⓘ that’s also compliant. Look for a service compliant with laws like GDPR, CCPA, and other data protection acts. This means the email finderⓘ service only uses data from publicly available sources.
Use email finderⓘ for more than lead generation
The most common reason for using an email finder service is to generate more viable leads.
However, limiting yourself to just lead-gen will cause you to miss out on more than a dozen additional benefits for your business. Some examples include talent recruitment, partnership opportunities, and more.
Check out 21 benefits of an email finder service ->
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What are the risks associated with using inaccurate or outdated emails?