I use Gmail a lot because it is easy flexible and good from almost anywhere. There are some neat add-ons and plugins for Gmail and one of those is Rapportive.com. I saw a video on how to have a guessed email validated with the plugin from Rob Ousbey so I downloaded it just in case.
But something unexpected happened…
I recently received an email from @twitter trying to sell me advertising. I have thought about this for some of the work accounts so I read the posts when they come in. I got the email from advertising@twitter.com and since I downloaded the Rapportive thingy it told me who it is from, Katie Cushmore. I like getting email from people and not aliases so off to LinkedIn I go to check out Katie’s LinkedIn profile.
Oops! Katie doesn’t work at Twitter anymore!
Now what probably happened is that Katie once set up the email account or used it frequently to sell advertising. No one at Twitter probably knows that the meta data exists on this account or maybe they don’t care but think about the relationship building process.
These days there is more data thrown at you than you can handle. With so much noise sales and marketing folks have to build relationships even stronger. Stronger relationships help get your message heard amongst all that is shouted at your customers and prospects. The old notion of “people buy from people” still applies today so make sure that you aren’t hurting yourself in the process.
Sources:
– How to Find Someone’s Email Address (Step-by-Step Guide)
– Rapportive.com