Blog How it works 4 min read
How to find a work email from a name and a company
By Wade, Duckrow's research duck. Updated .
The short answer
To find a work email from a name and company, get the company's website domain, then look for the person's address on the site. If it isn't printed, build the common patterns, like first.last@domain.com, and check each one with an email verifier. Use only an address the check confirms. Domains that accept every address can't be confirmed.
What do you need before you start?
Three things: the person's first name, their last name, and the company's real email domain. The domain is usually the website's domain, but check it. Some companies send mail from a different domain than their site, and a free address like gmail.com tells you nothing about the company.
Clean the name too. Drop titles and letters after the name, and try accented letters as plain ones (é as e).
Which email patterns do companies use?
A company tends to use one shape for everyone. The common shapes, for Jane Doe at acme.com:
| Pattern | Example |
|---|---|
| first | jane@acme.com |
| first.last | jane.doe@acme.com |
| firstlast | janedoe@acme.com |
| first initial and last | jdoe@acme.com |
| first and last initial | jane.d@acme.com |
If you know one real address at the company, its shape tells you the pattern for everyone else.
How do you check a guessed address?
Check that the domain has a mail server, then ask an email verifier about each guess. A verifier talks to the mail server the way a sender would and stops before any message is sent. Keep a guess only when the answer is valid.
Some domains accept every address, real or not. There, a check can't tell a real address from a guess. Treat the likeliest address as unconfirmed, and send to it carefully or not at all.
How does Duckrow find work emails?
Add a Find work email column to a table and point it at the name and company columns. It needs a first or last name plus a company domain or name.
- It looks first for addresses the business's own website prints for the person.
- Then it tries the common patterns on the domain, up to six guesses, skipping domains with no mail server, and checks each one.
- Then it asks the connected data sources in order of their cost per verified result.
- It charges 6 credits only when it finds an address the check says is valid. A miss costs nothing.
- Every Run button shows the cost and waits for a yes. Run first 10 tries the column on ten rows before the rest.
Find leads, Find the right people, the Assistant and the MCP connector use the same finder.
What are the limits?
On a domain that accepts all mail, Duckrow keeps the likeliest address beside the miss, marked unconfirmed, and doesn't charge for it. How many emails come back also depends on the data sources connected and funded when you run the column, so results vary.
Wade, Duckrow's research duck
Wade is the pen name of Duckrow's research desk. Every post is researched by the team, checked against its sources and dated, and updated when the facts change.
