5 More Tips for Finding the Best Contact Person for Your Content Marketing Letter of Introduction
I have spent the past few weeks focusing on marketing and have sent out over 100 letters of introductions this year so far. But I have to admit that one of the biggest challenges isn’t finding markets, but figuring out who is the best person to send my email to. Spending a few minutes searching for the best contact and email address is well worth the time and is often the difference between a response and crickets. A few weeks ago I gave some tips for finding an email address, but I have recently learned a few shortcuts that I wanted to share.
1. Look at the Employee Bio Pages on the Company Website – Last week I sent out LOIs to local law firms and quickly realized that many of the partners put their email address on their bio page. I found the same to be true on some marketing agency websites as well as other businesses. Look at the About section of the website to see if there is an employee bio page and check to see if you can find an email address of the CEO (if a small company), someone in marketing or a human resource rep.
2. Check LinkedIn for Contact information – Go to the person’s LinkedIn page. On the left side of the page right above the background section is a grey box that says Contact Information. Click on the box and see if their email address is listed. I have found many email addresses this way.
3. See if Their Email is Listed in the Contact Advice section – Click on the Send InMail box for the person that you want to contact and the Compose Your Message box is displayed. On the right side of the box is a section that is titled “Helen’s contact advice.” While this section is often left blank, some people will put their email address in this section.
4. Do a Web Search – People sometimes put their email addresses on press releases, blog posts and other content that is on the web. Do a web search including the person’s name, company and the word “email”. This can be especially successful if you are looking for someone who works in marketing or PR.
5. Look on Twitter – While I have had less success with this method than the others, I have gotten lucky a few times. If I strike out with the other methods, I check out the person’s twitter page and see if they have listed an email address in their profile.
Any tips to share on finding email address? Have you had any luck with the above methods?
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Most companies use the same email formula for all their employees. So if you find one person’s email address (perhaps an ad salesperson or a PR contact listed on the website?), you can figure out the formula and plug in another person’s name to get their email. This isn’t 100 percent foolproof but it works most of the time.
Great idea! I have used that many times and you are right, it works most of the time. Thanks for sharing. I had forgotten about that trick.
Jennifer,
One method that seems to be working well for me: Do a LI search for companies, using “content marketing” + your niche in the search box (not advanced search). If you look on the left side where it says “relationships” you can click on 1st connections, 2nd connections or 3rd connections. I clicked on 2nd connections and found a whole new list of content marketing firms to reach out to in one of my areas of expertise.
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