Finding leads

Reaching the decision maker

Why info@ rarely reaches the person who decides, the route from company to named person, the polite gatekeeper email, and the legal line at each step

5 min readUpdated 27 September 2026

A pitch sent to info@ or hello@ is usually read by whoever clears the inbox, not by the person who can say yes. This article covers the route that tends to work better, the one place a generic address is genuinely useful, and what the law allows at each step.

Why info@ rarely works for the pitch

A shared inbox is triaged. Unsolicited sales email in it is filtered, ignored or forwarded with no context, and the person who reads it has no reason to act. It is also hard to follow up on: you never learn whether the right person saw it.

A generic address is still useful for one thing: asking who the right person is. See the gatekeeper email below.

That is why a prospect whose only address is a shared mailbox (info@, hello@, sales@, contact@, enquiries@ and similar) is not approved automatically. A Find Leads run marks it for review with Contactability could not be confirmed automatically, so you decide whether to write to it, and what to say.

The combination route

Step 1: Find the company. Describe your ideal customer in Find Leads and run a search. Google Places is used to discover candidate businesses, and Companies House to confirm the company exists and what kind of business it is. See Discovering companies with Find Leads.
Step 2: Read its website. ClientTurn reads the company's own team, about and contact pages. A named person and their role are taken from what the company publishes about itself.
Step 3: Pick the named person. Choose the person whose role owns the problem you solve: the founder of a small studio, the head of marketing at an ecommerce brand, the operations director at a professional-services firm.
Step 4: Connect on LinkedIn, yourself. ClientTurn drafts a short connection note and gives you a link to their profile. You send it from your own LinkedIn account. ClientTurn never sends on LinkedIn for you. See LinkedIn and Sales Navigator (assisted).
Step 5: Email a verified business address, where the rules allow it. A work address found on the company's own site, or verified through licensed contact data, can be used for cold email once the company is confirmed as a corporate subscriber and your Data Controls are set up. See Cold email that gets replies (and stays legal).

A connection accepted first and an email sent second is not a trick. It gives the person two ways to recognise you, and the email can mention the connection honestly.

The gatekeeper email

When a company publishes no named person, or you cannot tell who owns the area, write to the generic address and ask. Keep it short, polite and clearly not a pitch.

Subject: Quick question about who handles marketing

Hi,

I'm hoping you can point me in the right direction. Who looks after
marketing at Example Studio, and what's the best way to reach them?

Thanks very much,
Sam

Another version, for when you know the area but not the person:

Subject: Right person for your website?

Hello,

Could you let me know who is responsible for the website at Example
Retail Ltd? I'd like to send them a short note, and would rather reach
the right person than fill up the wrong inbox.

Many thanks,
Sam

What makes these work:

One question, answerable in a line.
No pitch, no link, no attachment.
Your name, not a department.
A thank-you that does not assume they will help.

If they reply with a name and address, that person's details came from the company itself. Record it as the source when you add them.

When they ask for a call

If someone replies asking for a call ("call me", "give me a ring", "can someone phone me"), the conversation assistant treats it as a yes. When you have a calendar or booking link connected, it offers two real times for a phone call and books the one they pick, through the same booking flow as any meeting, so nobody has to step in. The booking is marked as a phone call, and their preference for a call is remembered.

Add a meeting type with "call" or "phone" in its name, such as "Phone call", with the length you want, and those bookings use it, so a call lands in the right calendar with the right person. See Meeting types and routing. ClientTurn does not place phone calls itself: the person the call is booked with rings them.

If they ask for a person outright, or you have no way for the assistant to book, the conversation goes to your team as before. See Taking over a conversation.

The legal line at each step

Step	Who it goes to	What the rules allow
Gatekeeper email to info@	A generic role address at a limited company or LLP	Allowed. It is a corporate subscriber's address, and ClientTurn adds the opt-out
Pitch to a named employee	A named person at a limited company or LLP	Allowed under legitimate interests, with the source line on the first email and an opt-out in every email. The person can object at any time
Pitch to a sole trader or ordinary partnership	A person PECR treats as an individual	Blocked unless they have given consent, or they contacted you first
Opener to a sole trader who accepted your connection	An individual-type subscriber you are connected to	One non-promotional opener, such as a thank-you or a relevant question. Marketing waits until they reply
Company type not known	Anyone at a company ClientTurn could not match on Companies House	Held for review. Nothing is sent until you resolve it

A generic address at a sole trader's business (a one-person studio's hello@, for example) is still the sole trader's address. Being generic does not make it corporate.

Still stuck?

Customers can raise a ticket from the help button inside the app. Not a customer yet? Talk to us.