Role-based email

A role-based email address is tied to a job function rather than a named individual: info@, sales@, support@, admin@, billing@, careers@, abuse@, postmaster@. RFC 2142 lists several of these as conventional mailbox names, and RFC 5321 requires SMTP servers that deliver mail to support the reserved postmaster mailbox.

Role addresses often deliver to a shared inbox, a ticketing system or a distribution list, so several people (or nobody in particular) may read them. They're usually real, working mailboxes, so a verifier may well confirm them as deliverable.

For cold outreach, a role address rarely reaches the decision-maker you wrote the email for, and shared inboxes tend to have more people who might mark a message as spam. Many email service providers restrict or discourage sending to role addresses for that reason. They can still be useful (for example, partnerships@ for a partnership pitch), but a named person's work email is usually the better target.

Skrap.ai flags role-based addresses during verification so you can decide whether to keep them. If you need a named contact instead, the email finder takes a person's full name plus company name or domain and returns the most likely work email, verified before it's returned. Start by running your list through the free email verifier.