Once you have a suitable outreach prospect, you need to get your request to the person or process that handles it. Start with the contact instructions the site publishes. Use the stated process for your request before looking for an individual's email address.
Look the site up
Site Info searches records for around 40 million sites and returns the contact information a website publishes about itself: contact pages, email addresses, phone numbers, social accounts, and Contact, About, Partner and Affiliate page paths where available.
It works without a campaign, so a site found through any research can be checked directly. A lookup for a subdomain returns the subdomain's record, and related hosts are listed separately, which matters when a publication and its parent company are different entities.
Match the route to the request
This is the decision that changes reply rates.
| Your request | The right route |
|---|---|
| A contribution or guest piece | The submissions page and its stated requirements |
| A correction or a missing link | The editorial or corrections address |
| A directory or resource listing | The suggest-a-resource or listing form |
| A partnership or sponsorship | The Partner or Affiliate page, not general enquiries |
| An award or speaking submission | The entry form and its deadline |
Sending a contribution pitch to a general enquiries address routes it to somebody who cannot act on it. Sending it through a stated submissions process reaches whoever handles it and demonstrates you read the page.
Why a named person is often the wrong goal
The instinct is to find an individual. For these placements that is frequently slower, and on a site with a clear process it reads as having ignored the instructions.
Read what the site publishes first. Look for an individual only when no route is stated and the placement justifies the effort.
Three things these details are not
Not verified for deliverability. Nothing tests whether an address still accepts mail. If bounces are your problem, an email verification service solves it.
Not a journalist database. No reporter profiles or beats.
Not necessarily current. No fixed refresh interval or separate correction channel is promised. Stored data describes the site as collected, and websites change contact arrangements often. Confirm the contact details on the current page before using them.
When a record is thin
An empty record means no contact route was found when the site was collected, not that none exists. Form-only contact pages, details rendered by script and contact information published as an image all produce it.
Open the site when the prospect matters. A missing record is a reason to look, not a reason to skip a good fit.
When to look up contact details
After qualification, not before. Contact details for a site you should not be approaching are worthless, and qualification eliminates most rows.
For a list, use the multi-site lookup to triage, then open the few worth reading individually.
Look up contact details after qualifying the opportunity. Following the published route gives your relevant request a clear destination.
See Site Info, assessing contact information, or checking a list at once.