Oct15
How to Get Better Real Estate Leads
There’s a common theme in advice for getting real estate leads: use your network.
However, when you’re just starting out, your network may not include anyone who’s looking to buy or sell their house. Or maybe you don’t want to go around hitting up all your friends for business.
In this case, you may have to use some salesmanship to generate leads and get your first clients. This will form the basis of a larger, more productive network.
During this early stage, it’s likely that you’ll need to do some outbound marketing. A more common term for outbound marketing is “cold outreach.”
Cold outreach is the toughest type of salesmanship, no matter what communication channel you use. Cold calling, cold emailing, cold sales visits. All of them are hard.
Talking to complete strangers is nerve wracking.
So the first step is working up the courage to do cold outreach at all.
Once the butterflies calm down, the next step is to increase your chances of success.
To do that, you’ll need to get warmer leads.
Corporate sales teams rarely get leads that are completely cold. Research teams gather tons of data about every lead before it gets passed to the sales team for outreach.
As a real estate agent, you’re usually in charge of both sales and research. One huge mistake people make is neglecting the research phase of the outbound sales process.
You’d be surprised how easy it is to get good information for cold outreach. Especially for real estate agents.
Here’s how to get the information that will warm up your leads and give your cold outreach the greatest chance of success.
Tools for Researching Your Real Estate Leads
Real estate agents need personal, address, and geoeconomic data to create quality leads.
Having a complete portfolio of information—including name, address, email address, phone number, employment, and so on—makes it much easier to evaluate a lead’s potential.
It also takes some of the dread out of starting that first conversation.
There’s a large suite of real estate tools designed to help real estate agents get economic information about neighborhoods and cities.
However, there are fewer tools for getting personal information so that you have an idea of who you’re contacting when you do cold outreach.
There are even fewer good information finding tools.
So what information can you get, and how do you use it to get better real estate leads?
Home Sales Stats
The best leads are the ones who stand to benefit the most from selling their house. So targeting the right areas is key.
The MLS database offers a lot of information about average and projected home values.
However, it also helps to know how often people in a certain area sell their homes. That can indicate a neighborhood with good equity to capitalize on.
The MLS database is rather inefficient for getting this sort of data. A good home sales statistics tool will gather the information you need much more efficiently, and save you a lot of time.
A good tool like this gathers information from the county recorder’s office. So the results are usually accurate.
You can also look at the sales trends for the last year to identify areas with potential that haven’t started selling yet.
Reverse Address Lookup
Getting addresses from the various real estate databases is fairly straightforward.
But it helps to know who’s living at the residence before you make a call or visit. That way you’ll at least have a name to start with.
Fortunately, there are tools designed specifically to get all the information associated with an address.
Doing a reverse address lookup for each address you want to target will give you the name, phone number, and email address connected to the physical address.
This opens up a lot of communication channels for cold outreach.
If you’re a trooper and have pulled a large list of addresses from your real estate software, you can use batch processing to speed things up.
Be aware that a reverse address lookup isn’t bulletproof. False positives are possible.
This is especially true for apartments or houses that have been divided into multiple units.
However, for single family residences, the success rate is much higher.
Reverse Phone Lookup
Reverse phone lookup tools are good to use in conjunction with in-person networking events.
It can be uncomfortable to ask people for their address when you meet them, especially for realtors. People feel the sales pitch coming and run away.
It’s much easier to just gather phone numbers, then use a reverse phone lookup tool to complete the information so you can follow up with a mailed information package or email.
Here’s a tip: if you plan to send physical materials or marketing emails, be sure to give a follow up phone call before sending anything more substantial.
A package or email out of the blue can be a bit jarring. It’s less surprising if the prospect has had more than one conversation with you.
Phone Validator
These days, a lot of people will give you their cell phone number when you exchange information in person.
However, some people still give their landline. Maybe they don’t want to be bothered on their cell phone. Or maybe they don’t have a cell phone.
Additionally, if you get phone numbers using a reverse address lookup, you may not know whether it’s a cell phone or landline, depending on the reverse address lookup tool you use.
Either way, you can’t send text messages to a landline.
Why does this matter?
Text messaging is quickly becoming an acceptable mode of communication, even for business.
Some industries find that cold outreach texts actually get much higher response rates than cold phone calls. A text message is also an excellent follow-up to a face-to-face conversation.
This is especially true with young people.
Using a phone validator saves you a lot of time and spares you the inconvenience of sending text messages to landlines.
Reverse Email Lookup
Email marketing is incredibly effective across all industries.
But gathering emails is its own beast.
Typically, people tend to be hesitant to give out their email on the internet. However, they tend to be looser with their email in person.
Whichever method you use to get email addresses, validating email addresses is the first step.
People often give fake email addresses or make mistakes when entering their email address online. Validating the email addresses on your list spares you the annoyance of bounced emails. It also preserves your domain and IP reputation.
Then, for realtors, there’s an additional step.
At minimum, you’ll want the address associated with the email. But more information is better.
The good news is that a reverse email lookup tool will give you most of the associated information.
This information makes your life much easier if you use email for cold outreach or follow-up.
Just like the other tools, you can use batch processing to check large databases of emails.
For most leads, you most likely won’t need to use all of these tools. One, maybe two, will usually do the trick.
Having a complete profile for each person makes cold outreach a bit less nerve wracking and helps you craft a proposition that’s right for each person.
Tips for Contacting Warm Leads
Now that you’ve got a collection of leads with complete profiles, it’s time to start making connections.
But before you get after it, take a moment to realize that you have a lot more information about each person than they gave you.
It’s very easy to come off a little bit creepy if you sound like you know too much from the start.
Take these things into consideration before you start your cold outreach:
- Use your complete profiles to evaluate how likely it is that the person is interested in selling their home or buying.
You can check for other homes in the area that are owned by the same person or if they’ve completed any sales recently.
Your outreach will be more relevant if you’re contacting someone who’s actually interested in doing real estate business.
- Use the information you’ve gathered to personalize your messaging, but only let on that you know basic information like their first and last name.
People are used to marketing that’s personalized with their first name. Some mailings even mention their phone number.
But it’s best to avoid mentioning their employment or how long they’ve lived in their house unless they’ve told you.
Remember that some information is best used behind the scenes.
- If you can, meet people in person first.
Even if they didn’t give you their email or phone number, they’ll be far less suspicious about a phone call or email if they’ve seen your face.
Chances are they’ll just assume they gave you their contact information when they talked to you.
Mention that you’re following up with the conversation you had before when you follow-up.
This helps them make the assumption that they gave you their contact information then. It’s also an easy ice breaker.
In the end, real estate has one thing in common with most other industries: it’s about building relationships.
Getting better leads helps you build relationships faster. It’ll also help you tame the cold outreach dragon and start building a network that will do work for you in the long run.
How do you prepare for cold outreach?
Check out these information gathering tools.
Then leave a comment and let us know how you get quality real estate leads!
Sep10
Account Based Marketing: How to Build and Use ABM Profiles
Account based marketing, or ABM, is a smart marketing tactic that enables your company and sales teams to address customer-specific barriers to buying and provide a better overall customer experience.
The backbone of ABM is detailed company profiles. You can’t treat every enterprise-level customer as a market of one if you don’t know all about them.
Without fully developed ABM profiles, your account based marketing plan will fall to pieces.
So, to help you ensure that your account based marketing generates the sales you need, we’ve outlined the process for building precise customer profiles.
But before we get too deep into those weeds, let’s cover some ABM basics. That way we’re all on the same page.
What is account based marketing?
This is a solid account based marketing definition to supplement our summary above:
Account based marketing is hyper-targeted marketing designed to appeal only to your highest quality leads.
ABM is particularly effective for attracting enterprise-level clients. Actually, it works best on companies. Account based marketing for individuals is possible, but there are very few individuals that would be considered enterprise-level clients and that don’t have additional people helping them make decisions.
As such, ABM is best for B2B marketing.
The reason ABM is great for marketing to enterprise businesses is because these businesses have complex buying processes.
Some businesses have over 10 people involved with making purchase decisions. Therefore, you need marketing materials that address the concerns and needs of each of those 10 (or more) people.
With ABM, you create a sales funnel specifically designed to capture all of the people involved with the purchasing decision and get the nod from each of them.
It’s important to note that ABM can’t replace inbound marketing. Rather, ABM is a supplement to your inbound marketing.
Inbound marketing brings you basic leads. These basic leads are the foundation of your ABM profiles.
Essentially, account based marketing is creating a complete marketing ecosystem that aligns your marketing and sales teams. This way, leads are completely prepped to make that buying decision when it comes time to buy.
How to Build Account Based Marketing Profiles
Now that we’re clear about what ABM is, let’s break down the most important part of the process—building solid account based marketing profiles.
Identify Your Most Valuable Leads
The first step is to check your rolodex and find out who’s already in your database. These will be the easiest to build ABM profiles from because you already have a bit of information to work from.
Also, leads from your inbound marketing funnel have expressed some interest in your product. It won’t be awkward or invasive if they receive additional marketing from you, as long as you’re professional in your outreach.
You can also simply pick out companies that you want to have as customers.
This may require a bit more work as you build out your customer profiles. But it can be just as effective.
It’s also a great way to avoid wasting marketing on companies you don’t want as clients.
Another way to identify your most valuable leads is to establish the most valuable attributes of a company. Consider things like:
- Location.
- Industry.
- Company size.
- Annual revenue.
- Market influence.
- Likelihood of repeat purchase.
- Expected profit margin.
This isn’t the same as building customer personas. You’ll actually do that in the next step.
Right now, you can either use these company attributes to identify your best leads outright or to get more granular with the companies that you’d like to have as customers.
Choose your best leads based on the attributes that are most valuable for your company.
Build a list of these most valuable leads.
Identify Who You Need to Appeal to With Your Marketing
Remember how many people are involved with buying decisions in enterprise companies?
This is where you determine who those people are, so you can address their needs.
Typically there are four types of people you need to identify:
- Interested Stakeholder. This is usually a project manager or a department head. This is the person who’s interested in purchasing your product or service for their team.
- Users. These are the people who will actually be using your product or service once it’s purchased. They have a strong influence over buying decisions because good managers don’t want to buy tools their teams can’t or won’t use.
- Bean Counters. In most corporations, there’s an accounting department that has to sign off on purchases. In some companies, the accounting department has veto power over purchases.
It’s critical to keep accounting happy with your marketing.
- Gatekeepers. The second layer of approval for corporate purchases are the compliance departments. Security, legal, and compliance issues can shut down a purchase pretty easily.
So be sure to include information for these teams in your ABM as well.
At this point, you’re essentially creating a list of the key decision makers and influencers within the decision making trees of your ideal enterprise-level clients.
All you need to do right now is identify the people you need to research. You’ll flesh these leads out into customer profiles in the next step.
Research Each Company to Build Specific Profiles
If you’re using leads from your inbound marketing, you’ll usually have at least one name and maybe an email address to start with.
From here, you’ll want to use some people finding techniques to identify the influencers, users, bean counters, and gatekeepers that your initial lead associates with.
Social media, especially LinkedIn is a great way to identify the network of people who make buying decisions for the company.
If you have incomplete information that makes it difficult to pinpoint someone on social media or if you need to find an email address, you can use data cleansing services on your contact list to complete the information.
Also, be sure to validate any emails you use for social media marketing.
This way you can be sure you’re reaching out to the right people with your marketing.
Use Your Profiles to Build Highly Personalized ABM Campaigns
It’s time to use the information from your super detailed profiles. Create marketing messages that address the specific needs and barriers to purchasing that your prospects have.
Keep in mind that collecting a lot of information—especially personal information—can make you look like a stalker if you bring these things up out of the blue.
Using a first name in an email for personalization is fine. People are used to that.
Asking how someone’s significant other is if they’ve never offered you that information? Skip that line of personalization.
Stick to using the personal information to help reduce buying friction. Point out the benefits that will most appeal to your prospects and address their specific concerns.
Talking about how much their significant other might appreciate your product might be a bit scary.
But pointing out that your product will save them time at work so they can spend more time with the people they care about will likely strike a more sensitive chord with someone who’s married.
Here are some specific issues that you can use your detailed ABM profiles to address:
- Logistical issues. If the company is located in a place like New York, there may be some challenges to moving physical products around.
- Personal benefits. If your product can make their life away from work better, let your prospects know.
- Profession-Specific Features. If there are parts of your product that are especially useful for certain positions or professions, put it in your marketing.
For example: if you have software that helps engineers, but there are certain features that mechanical engineers will especially appreciate and the team your targeting has some people who went to school for mechanical engineering, speak to those mechanical engineers!
Ultimately, the result of this exercise is to have all the information you need to address all the questions and buying objections that may be presented during the purchasing process.
Also, you should be able to contact the key decision makers directly, if you need to.
Build Marketing Campaigns for Each Person Who’s Involved in the Buying Process
There’s another fork in the road here.
You may or may not want to contact other members of the interested stakeholders team directly.
Some companies have been very successful in distributing free samples or freeware versions of their software to the influencers.
Then they send an ABM campaign to the interested stakeholder.
When the interested stakeholder asks the influencers what they think of the software, the influencers say they’re already using it in some capacity.
Something like that can pretty much seal the deal.
But, depending on the business, it may be better to only communicate with the interested stakeholder. Use your detailed customer profiles to predict the questions that influencers and gatekeepers might ask. Then provide that information in advance.
That way, when team members ask questions, the interested stakeholder can work as your salesman by providing answers based on the information you provided.
Last thing:
If you advertise on social media, add all the team members to the custom audience for your paid social ads.
It should be super easy if you’ve built good ABM profiles.
This way, if someone asks about your product in a group setting like a weekly meeting, everyone will know what they’re talking about.
That’s the basic framework for creating ABM profiles. This is an incredibly effective marketing technique if you can get the right information.
Leave a comment and let us know what your favorite tools for building ABM profiles are!
Credits: People vector created by Freepik
Aug20
What is Skip Tracing and How You Can Use It
Skip tracing seems like pretty serious business, right?
The term sounds technical. And you may have heard it tossed around by bounty hunters or private investigators on TV.
However, skip tracing is useful for more than hunting down fugitives. Skip tracing can be handy for harmless things like finding a friend from high school that you’ve lost contact with. Or doing a little skip tracing yourself can save you money if you need to hire a private investigator or processing service for something more serious like a missing person search.
In any case, skip tracing may be useful for you. Or you may need to hire somebody to do it for you. We’ll cover the basics here to help you decide.
What is Skip Tracing?
First, a basic definition: “skip trace” is the process of using the information you have about somebody to discover their current location.
The name “skip tracing” is derived from the term, “skip town.” Someone who has dropped off the grid is said to have “skipped town.”
What you’ve seen on TV regarding bounty hunters and private investigators is partially correct. Bounty hunters and private investigators perform skip traces to find people. However, just because you don’t know where a person is, doesn’t mean they’re trying to hide from you.
Sometimes people just move and neglect to tell everyone they were moving. Maybe they’re doing some extended travel. Either way, there are a lot of reasons that people who aren’t bounty hunters or private investigators might want to do a skip trace.
Here are some examples of other professionals who have use for skip tracing:
- Genealogists.
- Real estate agencies.
- Marketing departments and agencies.
- Missing children organizations.
- Insurance fraud investigators.
- Repossession companies.
- School alumni reunion organizers.
- Employment and tenant verification services.
There are others. But you see how skip tracing is useful in a broad range of professional fields.
Since it’s possible (maybe even probable) that skip tracing is useful for you, here’s what you need to know before you do it:
Is Skip Tracing Legal?
Skip tracing is legal in the U.S.
As long as you’re not breaking laws in order to get information (for example: accessing private records illegally or using violence to get information from somebody), there’s no law against using what you know to find out where someone is.
However, there may be laws in your state or related to your business that govern how you can use your knowledge of a person’s whereabouts. For example, if you’re in the debt collection industry, it’s illegal to mislead or lie about your intentions when contacting debtors. So it’s legal for debt collectors to find people. But you have to tell them truthfully why you’re contacting them, if you do.
Check your local laws and business specific regulations to make sure that you don’t step over the line once you’ve discovered where someone is.
Now, let’s get into the meat and potatoes of skip tracing.
How to Skip Trace Someone
Skip tracing is more of a process than a one-off activity. There are several steps. However, the process fairly straightforward.
Here’s how it works:
Build a profile
The first step is to collect all the information that you have about the person you’re searching for. This is all the data you can currently verify.
Consider personal information:
- Names (first, middle, and last), aliases, and nicknames.
- Date of birth.
- Email addresses.
- Physical addresses.
- Land line and cell phone numbers.
- Social security number.
Also look for historical information:
- Previous physical addresses.
- High school attended.
- College or university attended.
- Previous employers and professions.
- Military service.
And gather associative information:
- Names and addresses of relatives.
- Ex-spouses and significant others.
- Friends, colleagues, and other associates.
- Business associations or affiliations.
Then, take into account any assumed information you may have. The person may have mentioned something about a place they intended to go in your last conversation. A friend of theirs might have said something offhand about a new address or job.
Assumed information can’t be verified. But it can be useful for narrowing your search later on. At the very least, it gives you somewhere to start.
This is by no means an exhaustive list. But you get the idea: collect all the information you can. The more information you have, the easier the entire process will be.
Make sure the person is alive
This might be a bit dark, but one reason people fall out of contact is because they’re deceased.
So the first step is to ensure that you’re searching for a live person. To do this, you need to check death records. Fortunately there’s a tool that checks death records.
There are free people search tools. However, free searches don’t check death records. So it’s unlikely that you’ll find this information with a free search tool unless information from the death certificate is published somewhere independently.
Premium records searches usually check death records. However, these aren’t free.
Single premium public records searches are affordable. You can usually get one search done for a few dollars.
If you’re doing a lot of premium member searches, purchasing a subscription to a premium public records search service can save you money.
Once you’ve got this out of the way, move on to the next step.
Check standard phone directories
The most basic information sources are the yellow and white pages. Searching these directories is free.
This search may not turn up any direct matches. Most cell phone numbers aren’t listed in the yellow and white pages. And people are more and more going without any landline at all. So free reverse phone lookups can be spotty.
However, you may get lucky and find something. Or you could tun up a relative or roommate. This is good information when you’re trying to find someone.
Next up: the internet.
Do a Standard Internet Search
This method can be ineffective if you have very limited information. If you’ve only got a phone number or an email address, search engines may not find much.
But, an internet search can turn up some legitimate results if you’ve built a good profile to work from. With a few pieces of information, you can start connecting the dots and get a hit. If you do find someone, cross reference your findings with as many pieces of information as possible. You want to verify that you’ve found the right person.
Also, use the advanced search function to narrow your criteria. Most search engines offer advanced search functionality.
However, if you come away from Google empty handed, you’ll have to forge ahead to the next step.
Search Social Networks
The first thing to know about searching social media is that you’ll usually need an account to get meaningful results. You’ll get extremely limited information if you search without being logged into a valid account.
Social network searches can be very effective if you have the right information. Since social media accounts require an email address, you’ll usually get a good match if you have an email address to search with.
Also, people are usually friends on social media with their actual family and friends. If you already have a list of associated contacts, you can use this to verify that you’ve found the right person on social networks based on the contacts associated with their profile.
Also check the birthday on any social media profiles you find. If it’s not publicly displayed, look for happy birthday messages posted by their friends. The more pieces of information on their social media profile that match what you already know, the more likely it is that you’ve got a positive match.
Facebook and Instagram are by far your biggest information pools. But old networks like MySpace can also be good places to search. A person may have an old MySpace account that they forgot to make private or remove information from.
If you find someone on social media, this will often give you enough information to find them. It’s very common for people to post updates about their whereabouts on social networks.
But, if the person is actively trying to avoid being found, they may intentionally keep sensitive information off the web.
However, if social media doesn’t pan out for you, it’s not the end of the road.
Search professional networks
People have more interest in being found on professional networks. There’s a perception that there are fewer people snooping around on professional networks. This means that sometimes people are a bit looser with their information on social media networks like LinkedIn.
The rules for professional networks are essentially the same as social networks:
- You’ll need an account to find any good information.
- An email address is your best search criteria.
- Check their connections and birthday to verify you’ve found the right person.
If you’ve still found nothing at this point, there’re still a few more options.
Search other online resources
There a few more repositories of information that you can access online for free.
Check blogging sites like WordPress. There’s no universal search engine for blogs. But if you check the most popular blogging sites, you’ll cover a vast majority of that ground.
If you know where the person went to high school or college, check their school alumni and reunion websites. This can turn up location information, as people often talk about where their traveling from for a reunion or what they’re up to now.
At this point, if you’re still coming up zeroes, it may be time to throw a few dollars into your search.
Do a Skip Tracing Search
There are skip trace searches that are often very effective.
However, skip tracing searches usually costs a few dollars. And you’ll usually need some sort of business account to use these services. But you can purchase as many searches as you need.
If you’ve got a ton of people to find, say you’re cleaning up a business or consumer list, you can do a batch append. Batch append won’t complete your skip trace.
But it’ll help build more complete profiles for skip tracing.
If you do a lot of skip tracing, a subscription to a people finding service may be the most cost effective option for you.
Anyway, if all else fails, you may need to hire a professional to find someone for you. If a person can’t be found using online resources, it may be necessary to contact someone who knows them and use investigative prowess to get information. This sort of work is best left to people who do it for a living.
So that’s skip tracing. Depending on your needs, a DIY online skip trace may work for you.
If you’re struggling, check out our people finder to find out if a free people search will find who you’re looking for.
Feel free to leave a comment and let us know if you’ve successfully skip traced anyone. If you have, what methods worked for you?
Aug13
How to Do a Free Reverse Address Lookup (and What to Do if It Doesn’t Work)
Reverse address lookup is a super useful tool for most businesses.
Having an address for a lead or business contact opens up a lot of possibilities for marketing and follow up conversations.
If you have addresses for your entire customer base, you can do even more advanced analytics and make your advertising more targeted.
So, knowing how to do a reverse address lookup is a good skill to have in your pocket. We’ll show you how to do it in this post.
But, before we get into the meat of doing reverse address lookups, let’s cover the basics.
What is Reverse Address Lookup?
Reverse address lookup is simply using a street address to find out the name and phone number of the person that lives or works there, or who owns the property at that address.
Doing a reverse address lookup will get different results based on what sort of address you’re reversing.
Reverse IP address lookup is available, but it’s a different service. We’ll focus on physical addresses here…
How Accurate is Reverse Address Lookup?
Reverse address lookups are generally more accurate for single family residences or detached houses. If the address is a large apartment building or an office building with a lot of offices, the information can be spotty.
The trouble with apartments and office buildings is that people often leave out part of the address when they fill out official documents or public records.
This information can include:
- The apartment number.
- A fraction if there are two apartments in the same unit.
- The office number or letter.
People sometimes do this out of convenience or because they don’t want to be found. Either way, these incomplete addresses make their way into marketing company databases or get used in organizational algorithms.
Whether you’re purchasing address lists, gathering them from customer registrations, scraping them from the internet, or using some other method of address collection, it’s critical that you verify the addresses are valid.
Even if you paid for the addresses, that doesn’t mean they’re correct or current.
You don’t want to waste time trying to find the name, phone number, or email address associated with a physical address that’s invalid. The most accurate and free way to validate addresses is to use the USPS Zip Code Lookup.
You can only lookup one address at a time using the USPS website. But it’s effective and it’s free. If you want bulk address validation, you may have to pay a bit for it.
Once you know that an address is valid, you can do a reverse address lookup to find more information about that address.
How to Do a Reverse Address Lookup
How you go about doing a reverse address lookup comes down to how much time and money you’re willing to invest in finding address information.
While it’s possible to do a successful reverse address lookup for free, it could take you a significant chunk of time.
So reversing addresses yourself may not be a viable option if you’ve got a lot of addresses to lookup.
But if a free reverse address lookup makes sense for you, here’s how to do it:
Check Search Engines
The first place to look is search engines. Simply type the address into Google, Bing, Yahoo! or any other search engine. This won’t reliably turn up the information you need, but you might get lucky.
For private residences, the success rate using this method is rather low. But an internet search works quite well if the address belongs to a business. Businesses publicize their addresses so people can find them.
If the address appears to be a business, double check to verify the right business is listed. Sometimes, the first results aren’t the actual business at that address, as you can see in the image below.
Also, the information you find may be outdated or inaccurate. Be careful using information you find this way.
Search social networking sites
A standard internet search sometimes turns up information from social networks. But the best way to search the massive repository of information on social networks is by using the search function in the social networking apps themselves.
If someone has their address openly displayed on their Facebook or LinkedIn page, it should turn up when you search for that address.
Also check the less popular networking sites like MySpace. Although MySpace is mostly a ghost town now, there may be some address information left on an abandoned MySpace page.
Searching review sites like Yelp and Google reviews is a good way to find out if the address your reversing belongs to a business. Most businesses have their address listed on these pages so they can get reviews.
Remember, that just like information from search engines, anything you find on social networks may be old or incorrect information. Be cautious with this data as well.
Use a free online address lookup
Free online address lookup tools tend to be more reliable than internet searches in terms of finding some information. However, free online address lookups can’t guarantee the accuracy of the information they find.
Free address search tools rely mostly on information from the white pages and yellow pages. This information is publicly available. Most of it is used by police departments or published in libraries. That’s why information from these sources isn’t reliably found using a simple Google search.
Note: the white pages and yellow pages are public information for free use. Never pay for an online address search that relies only on these sources.
You’re less likely to come away from a free address lookup empty handed. But it’s probably unwise to hire a process service or pay to have something delivered to an address you found using a free address lookup tool.
Use a premium records search
If the free reverse address lookup methods don’t work for you, it may be time to invest a few dollars into your search.
A premium records search scours unpublished records like court proceeding records and marriage applications for information. All this information is publicly available but usually doesn’t show up in an internet search or free reverse address lookup.
Premium records searches are a good way to find names, phone numbers, email addresses, and aliases connected with an address. Premium records searches are also relatively inexpensive. But the information may not be 100% accurate.
You can also do bulk premium records searches, also called batch appends, if you have a list of addresses to check.
You can simply upload a TXT, CSV, or Excel file with the addresses you need information for. Good services allow you to choose the information you need to gather.
It’s not entirely free. But a premium records search is a good compromise if you need to find decent information without investing a lot of time and money. Batch append services are usually reliable enough for businesses to use with purchased lists of leads or for completing customer profiles.
Note: some companies offer inexpensive non-recurring people search memberships. However, be wary of any people search company that wants you to sign up for a monthly subscription without knowing if they actually found the information you’re looking for.
A good reverse address lookup provider also won’t charge you if they don’t find any information.
Hire a professional
This is the best option if you:
- Need the most accurate information possible.
- Are willing to pay for it.
Hiring a private investigator is best when you need well-verified information. It’s also the most expensive and takes the longest.
To find information, a private investigator will usually do what’s called a utility search or a utility billing contact information search. The best way to get information about an address is to find out who pays the utility bills at that address.
This might point to a landlord. However, private investigators can often get tenant information with a bit more investigative work.
Finding information this way is usually very reliable. But beware of any private investigator who doesn’t offer at least a partial refund if they fail to find information for you.
All the same principles apply to doing a reverse address lookup for a PO box or a private or personal mailbox (PMB, like a UPS store box). You can try to find the information inexpensively or for free. But if you absolutely need verified information about the real address, it’s best to pay for an assisted search.
And one last thing…
Is a Reverse Address Lookup Legal?
In short, yes, using an address to find information is legal.
However, there may be protections for the way you use that information, depending on your business.
Protections provided by the government are fairly minimal in the United States. But there may be limitations or restrictions for using personal information in the terms of service for some businesses, such as Amazon sellers.
It may be perfectly legal to get information using a reverse address lookup. But check to be sure that you’re not breaking any rules when you use the information you find.
So, that’s it. If you’re trying to find information based on an address, these are your options.
The reverse address lookup method you use depends on how vital it is that you get accurate information. Searching the web or playing with free online address lookup tools can be entertaining. And a premium records search is accurate enough for many commercial business uses.
When you really need dependable information, though, you’ll probably have to invest in some professional services.
Leave a comment and let us know how you find address information, or check out our people finding tools if you need to do a reverse address lookup now.
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