Are incomplete CRMs and data gaps hampering your outreach? Here are 9 strategies for finding email addresses and other firmographic datapoints on your ideal buyers.
by
Karli Stone
UPDATED Nov 26, 2024
5Min Read
As you try to connect with prospects, it’s common to be stuck with one piece of information without having the other; be it a phone number without an email address, a work email without a personal email, or a first name without a last name.
Here’s a walkthrough of your best options to uncover all contact info that’s missing from your CRM.
Sometimes the simplest solution is the best one: using a search engine
To find a person’s email address online, Google the name of the person or company associated with the phone number (using another search engine like Bing or Yahoo can work as well) and just see what comes up.
If they make their email address public, you should be able to easily find it.
You can also try a search in Google with their phone number, to see if any directory listings appear. This may be a good option if the person or company does not have a website or public profile, but has listed their phone number in a directory.
Email Lookup Tools like Apollo allow users to quickly search for additional information by using a name, phone, email, social profile, or address.
It works by searching through a comprehensive contact database with data collected and verified against multiple data sources to identify the best source of truth.
To use Apollo's email finder tool simply sign up for a free account, then enter the phone number into the search bar. Apollo will then scan through all the records in our database to find any associated email addresses.
If any listings appear associated with the phone number, there is a good chance that the email address associated with the phone number will appear in these results
Many company websites lists their employee's contact information, including email addresses and phone numbers, in the About Us or Contact Us page.
If there is a phone number listed for their office, try calling and asking for your prospect's email address.
Receptionists are usually more than willing to provide this information.
If you have a correct email address from someone else at your prospect's company, you can try making an educated guess. All you need to know if your prospect's name.
Most businesses use a consistent email address formatting such as:
You can also run your guesses through an email verification tool to verify which email address is most likely correct.
There are a few reasons why a data-driven sales rep might skip the extensive, one-off reverse phone look-up services and opt to use a B2B contact database.
With Apollo.io, you can search for contacts by name, email address, as well as phone number. All you have to do is enter the phone number into Apollo.io’s search field and hit enter.
If a match is found, you can view their contact page and not only find their email address but their mobile phone number, work history, company website and info, social networks, revenue, and funding information; everything you need to conduct effective outreach at every stage in the funnel.
Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn allow you to search for people by their cell phone number if they have set their accounts to public. Give your prospects a search and check out the bio or “about” section of their profile to see if you can find their email address or other contact info.
This is also a great time to get a little more context on your prospect, as well.
With knowledge of their professional history, upcoming events, and their topics of interest, you can personalize your outbound and quickly become a friendly face.
Pro tip: Not all the information you glean from social media profiles is worth sharing. Personalization like “Hey! I know where your kids go to school!” will have the reverse effect of what you’re going for.
Ultimately, the most impactful way to prospect on social media is to do it alongside a sales intelligence tool that brings the data to you.
The Apollo Chrome Extension pulls business email addresses, mobile numbers, and other important data across LinkedIn, Gmail, Google Calendar, CRMs, and across the web.
For example, from any contact or company LinkedIn profile page, Apollo will automatically pull up verified contact information as well as all the in-depth data points on them that live in Apollo’s database.
One of the best things about it?
It seamlessly unites your prospecting and engagement process by allowing you to add contacts directly into your personalized outbound Apollo sequences in one click. You can also add prospects to email lists, view any action items, and add notes.
Download the Apollo Chrome Extension for free.
The ICANN database is a little-known secret to finding public records of registered domain names, associated email addresses, and phone numbers.
When you enter a domain into the search bar, the ICANN database will look for any registered information associated with that domain, such as its registrar, contact information, and more. You can try government databases and the white pages, too—they often contain public records of contact information like email addresses and phone numbers.
But, remember, the information on these databases decay quickly and may not be up to date.
It’s best to use a combination of tactics when searching for supplementary contact information.
One of the best ways to fill gaps in your CRM? Always-on data enrichment that prevents your CRM from decaying to begin with.
When Built In synched Apollo to their Salesforce account, their contact data was automatically pushed and pulled between the two. All of their data gaps were filled and all their errors were corrected.
“We have a large number of accounts in our Salesforce instance and Apollo started enriching it on a daily basis,” said Mark Turner, VP of Revenue Operations at Built In.
That large number? 100k accounts. Effortlessly enriched. Every single day.
- Mark Turner, VP of Revenue Operation at Built In
When you sync your CRM to Apollo, you’ll have the option to turn on CRM enrichment
From here, it’s as simple as clicking the checkboxes of the contacts you’d like to enrich (or selecting “Enrich All”) and watching as Apollo fills your records with every update that’s available in Apollo’s 210M+ contact database.
While you’re there, turn on auto-enrichment! (it’s worth it—trust us…)
Go to “Settings” > “Contact/Account Fields”, choose the CRM fields you want Apollo to automatically enrich, and select “Auto Overwrite”.
Apollo will take the reins from here.
Finding updated contact information, especially as you engage in lead generation and outreach, can be difficult. Apollo offers a comprehensive contact database with updated contact information from millions of sources, beyond helping you find an email address with a phone number.
You’re able to search for contacts by name, email address, phone number, and more. Plus, Apollo’s advanced search capabilities and segmentation features make it easy for sales reps to target their ideal customers.
With Apollo, it’s easy to find the contact information you need to reach out to potential prospects.
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