If you use Gmail often your inbox is full of valuable contacts. This is even more true if you use Gmail to run your business. Whether you are a small business or a big business it makes sense to ensure you can find and leverage those contacts.
There are a couple different ways to find contacts in Gmail. You can search Google contacts or you can use third party tools to extract contacts for you.
Gmail Person Search Patterns
In Gmail you can search for people using some basic patterns.
Search for an email by sender
from:john smithor
from:john@example.comYou can use other prefixes for contacts like to , cc , or bcc in the same way.
Gmail and Google Contacts
Gmail is a great email tool but it's not a contact management system. It does keep track of the people you communicate with and it will automatically add them to Google Contacts. To get to your Google contacts just go to the top right of your Gmail interface. Look for the square icon (red box in image below) and you will see Google Contacts.
There are three main categories of contacts.
My Contacts or Contacts - These are contacts created by you. You either promote them from the "Other Contacts"label or you add them directly yourself. If you sync your phone with Google Contacts your contacts will be in this label.
Other Contacts - Catch all for anyone you have ever emailed, called, or somehow interacted with. Google automatically creates these contacts based on your email communication.
Frequently Contacted - These are contacts you frequently communicate with from both your "My Contacts" and "Other Contacts" Label. The" Frequently Contacted" label is a summary of the other two labels and only stores about 100 contacts at any time.
What Don't Gmail and Google Contacts Do
While Gmail does create a contact for you of every person you communicate with, it's pretty limited in the detail it captures. It gives you the basic info like first name, last name and email address. But what about phone numbers, titles, company names and locations for contacts? Gmail also does not create contacts from your calendar, only email. Nor do they create contacts from people on the cc of an email or any forwarded contacts. This means that there are quite a few contacts you may be looking for that are still trapped in Gmail or Google Calendar. Below is a list of the contact management features that Google doesn't provide :
Email Signature Scraping - Email signatures are the contact details that people put at the bottom of their email. They typically include things like their phone numbers, titles, locations, etc. Being able to read and update contacts from these email signatures is super valuable to keep your contacts constantly up to date. SigParser can do this for you though and update Google Contacts.
Contacts From Meetings - If you invite people to meetings using Google Calendar it's probably safe to say that those contacts are important. Today Google does not add contacts who are included on a meeting invite.
CC'd Contacts - A lot of email communication has important people on the cc line. You may want these contacts even though you have not directly communicated with them. Google will only add contacts to Google contacts from people in the to and from part of the email, not CC.
Forwarded Contacts - If someone forwards you an email and it has a very important thread of contacts below it, Google won't add those contacts. There are a lot of important business contacts in those forwarded emails.
SigParser Makes Your Google Contacts better
SigParser (shameless plug alert) can makes it easy to fill your Google Contacts from your everyday email communication. SigParser connects to your email and automatically scrapes your inbox for all the contacts and contact details it can find. It can then load those details into Google Contacts automatically every day.
The algorithm is so good that most of its customers put SigParser on autopilot and allow it to make updates on their behalf. SigParser can execute this process for an individual, a team or an entire company. SigParser creates a database of contacts and contact details like phone numbers, titles, and locations found, then constantly scans incoming email for new details. It's completely cloud based, which means no downloads or complicated set up. If you don't have the time for tedious tasks and have a lot of them then SigParser is the tool for you.
Import contacts into your CRM using SigParser.
Summary
If your needs are basic and you just want a quick way to get first name, last name, email address then Google Contacts might be all you need. If you need more sophisticated contact management then something like SigParser is probably a better bet. Find out more about SigParser's features for using your email inbox to its full potential.
Discover how to build an email marketing list with SigParser.