In this article, we'll talk about how you can obtain more data from an email address. Examples of data from an email include contact information about a person or company to verify their authenticity, or collating emails to generate leads for marketing purposes and so on.
In the next sections, we'll explore what reverse email lookup is all about, what it can be used for, and how you can start using it to get all the data you could possibly want.
What is Reverse Email Lookup?
Reverse email lookup is a data enrichment process used to uncover more information relating to an email address. It's used to harvest actionable data about a person or entity that can be found online.
Examples of information you can get from an email address include:
- Finding the owner of the email address
- The country they are based in
- Job information and social media accounts associated with the email
- Phone number, physical address, profile pictures, and much more
Why would you want to perform a reverse email lookup? For example, you can use it to verify the authenticity of an email you received from an unknown source. Hiring managers can get more information or perform risk analysis using a prospect's email address. In fact, ways to use reverse email lookup is the topic of the entire next section.
There are many tools and services available online which allow you to do a reverse email lookup. They range from free to paid with different features depending on your use cases.
What is Reverse Email Search used for?
Considering the type of information you can obtain from performing a reverse email lookup, the only limit to what you can use it for is your imagination. In this section, I'll break down the different use cases where you may require data and information about an individual or entity using their personal or work emails.
Reverse lookup of personal & generic emails
The information available through reverse lookup of personal emails is usually based on whatever platforms, social media accounts, and so on that the email is used on, be it their names, location, date of birth, education background, connections, and more. Below are some popular cases of reverse email lookup using personal or generic emails.
Scams & fraud prevention
Reverse email lookup can be used in order to verify the identity of the email sender, whether or not they are legitimate or if they are scammers. And in today's world where there is a proliferation of scams, it's worth worrying about your own security. Luckily, you can use a reverse email lookup to verify the identity of the emails, to further protect yourself from theft and risks.
Know more about a potential date
For a more relatable practical day-to-day usage, you can do an email search to find out more about a potential date, learn about their interests and what type of personality they have on social media before actually going on one. "Armed" with enough information, you can quickly determine if it's a date worth going on. Or you might even identify your one true love even before the date, who knows?
Verification of ecommerce transactions
Finally, one important use case is to check and verify an online buyer or seller especially when ecommerce shopping is so prominent today. With a simple reverse email lookup, you can mitigate your chances of running into scams and also be protected from transactors with bad track records.
Reverse lookup of work & professional emails
Another valuable use case where a reverse lookup can be beneficial is verifying work and professional emails. In the same way that personal emails can tell you a lot about a person, a professional's email contains valuable details about their past and present jobs, skills and capabilities, location, and more. These details can be used to determine if the person is a good fit for a particular job.
Many industries benefit from this process of background scrutiny and depend on it heavily in order to find professionals in their field through reverse email searches.
HR talent identification
Hiring HR recruitment firms gathering all the information available on the candidates and filter them accurately to fast-track the hiring process. Using a simple email search, they can also retrieve relevant information that is not disclosed by the candidates.
Lead generation
Another great use case is in sales and lead generation. Using a reverse email lookup, sales team can qualify leads accurately, thus cutting down time wasted to work on leads and instead, focus on getting sales quicker and more efficiently.
Credit risk analysis
Financial firms, especially those that extend credit and loans to their customers, can identify the risk level of a prospective customer before dealing with them based on the data that they are able to obtain from a reverse email lookup.
How can I do Reverse Email Lookup? Three simple methods
Let's look at the different ways in which you can perform a reverse email lookup now that you understand what it is and what it involves. There are three primary methods to be covered here, ranging from free to paid to a highly-efficient, automated option. Since all three methods are available for use by anyone, it's up to you to pick which one suits your use case the best.
1. Free Reverse Email Lookup (Google & LinkedIn Search)
The most straightforward way to perform a reverse email lookup is to use Google. As you would do a normal Google search, you can do the same with email addresses. All you have to do is input the email in the search bar, and it will return search results with information related to that email.
However, this method is very manual and can be time consuming if you happen to be dealing with a large number of email addresses. Most importantly, it's not guaranteed to return an accurate result as an email might not be crawled successfully by Google.
Another great free alternative to Google is LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the de-facto platform on which to get information about the professional profile of a person. However, you can't perform a reverse email lookup directly in LinkedIn. But you can derive the person's name and company through its email prefix and domain, which you can then use to perform the search according to these two queries.
2. Paid Reverse Email Lookup Tools
If you want a more efficient and reliable solution to handle large datasets of email addresses then you may want to consider going for a paid reverse email lookup tool. With paid tools you can quickly gather the data you need which are all scattered online and present them in a manner easy to use. In addition, you can do searches more quickly and accurately, with all the information properly presented in a dashboard or sheet, ready for you to use and act upon.
There are a lot of paid reverse email lookup tools and services available, so it's up to you to choose what works best for you. One great tool is Spokeo. Spokeo lets you make reverse lookups involving name, addresses and phone, thereby allowing you more ways to obtain data and more data points to utilize.
3. Automated Reverse Email Lookup using an API
If you still want something better, something that can integrate seamlessly with your existing business system or application, you can consider going for a reverse email lookup API. With an API, a reverse email lookup process can practically run on its on within your application. The data obtained from the email search can then be fed back automatically into your application, allowing you to utilize the data points immediately for your business without worrying about the lookup process itself.
Proxycurl is an excellent tool for obtaining and enriching data about people and companies. One of its many services includes a Reverse Work Email Lookup API which you can use to programmatically pull data into your applications. Proxycurl excels in data relating to the professional world, a more valuable type of data widely sought after. Another attractive feature of Proxycurl is its agile pricing structure, at a cost of as low as $0.03 per search. You have the option to pick between monthly subscriptions if you want volume and a cheaper cost/unit, or a low-commitment pay-as-you-go system where your credits will never expire.
Conclusion
Now you know all about reverse email lookup, what it's used for, its capabilities, and the different tools available out there depending on your use case. Will you now choose to integrate it into your current business workflow, or start using it personally to protect yourself against certain risks or fraud?
Give Proxycurl’s Reverse Work Email Lookup API a try today, and send us an email to find out more.
