At a five-person business the owner decides everything, reads the shared inbox and answers the phone. At a fifty-person business they've handed some of it off. Who you email should change with the size of the business, and so should how you write.
Up to about 10 people: the owner
The owner is usually the buyer, the user and the person who reads info@. An email to the shared address reaches them anyway, but one that uses their name and the business's name reads as written for them, not sprayed at a list.
- Where the name comes from: a licence in their own name, the state registry, or the "about" page.
- What works: one specific thing you noticed, one small next step.
About 10 to 50 people: the owner, or whoever runs that area
There's often an office manager, a general manager or a bookkeeper who handles vendors. The owner still signs anything that costs real money, but they may forward your email first.
- Write it to be forwarded: one paragraph someone else could pass on with "is this worth a call?"
- Name the role if you can't name the person: "whoever looks after your bookings" beats a guessed name.
- Trades with a manager on site: hotels, restaurants and clinics usually have one; the licence sometimes names them.
50 people and up: the department, not the owner
Here an owner email often goes nowhere. Find who runs the area you sell into (operations, IT, finance, marketing) on LinkedIn or the company's site, and keep the owner for when you need a signature.
Shared addresses aren't a dead end
info@, office@ and hello@ reach a person at most small businesses. Make it easy for that person: say who you'd like to reach and why, in the first two lines. "Could you pass this to whoever handles payroll?" gets forwarded far more often than a pitch that pretends the reader is the buyer.
Things that don't work
- Guessing addresses (first.last@) and hoping. Unchecked addresses bounce, and bounces hurt your sending reputation.
- Emailing several people at once at a small business. They talk to each other; it reads as spam.
- The registered agent's address from the state record. It's often a filing service, not the business.
How we do it
BeatTheDoor shows the owner or manager we found for each lead with where the name came from and how sure we are, checks the email address before anything is sent, and marks addresses that belong to filing agents so they're never emailed.