Day 22 – Finding an editor’s email address
Let’s assume the following:
- You’ve chosen a major publication that you want to get featured in e.g. Huffington Post.
- You’ve done your research and understand the type of content they publish on their site.
- You have an article idea you want to pitch.
- You have the editor’s/relevant decision maker’s name (usually a Google search or a visit to the company About page reveals this)
The next step is to find that editor’s email address so that you can pitch your article. You always want to pitch the relevant decision maker or editor as opposed to going through online submission forms. This improves your odds of getting featured in that publication, especially in the larger ones where there are thousands of submissions daily.
But how do you find an editor’s email address particularly if it’s not on display on the website (often it is) and a simple Google search yields no results? You use email finding apps. Huh? Okay, so there are online email finding apps that let you find almost anyone’s email. And by anyone, I MEAN ANYONE. All you need is their name and website domain, and the app does the rest of the work for you.
There are plenty of these apps on the market, from Voila Norbert, FindThat, and Lusha to Hunter, Rocket Reach, and Rapportive. My personal favorite is FindThat. I used it yesterday to find an editor’s email address in just a few minutes. A friend was telling me he couldn’t find the relevant editor and email address for Huffington Post. I told him I’d give him that information in less than 15 min.
A simple Google search gave me the link to the companies about page, where all the editor’s names for the different Huffington Post categories are listed. Knowing the name and the company domain, I went over to FindThat, typed in the relevant information, and viola, it gave it to me.
It really is that easy. Certain people’s email addresses may prove more elusive than others, buy I guarantee that if you try all the apps, combined with Google searches and scouring company websites, you will eventually find it.
Hope this tip helps. For more freelance writing tips and daily rants check in daily.
If you want to say hello feel free to email me at nick@nickdarlington.com.
Nick D
I used http://www.zerobounce.net and it is an amazing platform for online email validation that is created to ensure companies avoid email bounces. This is accomplished by identifying invalid, abuse, spam-trap, and other hard bounce email addresses. They also provide a real-time API for email verification on your platform.
Nick, what a great article, thanks! I’d like to add that if you’re looking for personal emails — you should try Improver https://improver.io/.