API - Personal Email Enrichment

Surfe can find personal email addresses (Gmail, personal Outlook, Yahoo and similar) through the Enrich People API. When a work email is outdated or unreachable, personal email enrichment gives you a validated alternative, so you can reach contacts on a personal channel when a corporate inbox isn't working.

The personal email cascade must be enabled on your account. Contact Surfe API Support to enable it before using the steps below.

Who Is This For?

Personal email enrichment is most useful for:

• Recruiters: reaching candidates who may not check a work inbox or have recently changed jobs
• Multi-channel outreach teams: adding a personal contact point when a work email bounces or goes cold
• Anyone whose prospects are hard to reach through a work address

How It Works

Personal email enrichment runs through the same Enrich People endpoint you already use, with one extra option. Instead of the regular work email search, Surfe runs a cascade built only for personal emails, optimized for better find rate and speed. Every address is checked for deliverability before it reaches you, and you only pay when an email is found.

Getting Started

Step 1: Start the Enrichment

Call POST /v2/people/enrich with include.email set to true and acceptedEmailType set to "personal" in the enrichmentOptions object:

{
  "enrichmentOptions": {
    "acceptedEmailType": "personal",
    "skipMobileEnrichmentIfNoEmailFound": false,
    "timeoutSeconds": 1
  },
  "include": {
    "email": true,
    "jobHistory": false,
    "linkedInUrl": false,
    "mobile": false
  },
  "notificationOptions": {
    "webhookUrl": "https://your-server.com/webhook"
  },
  "people": [
    {
      "companyDomain": "surfe.com",
      "companyName": "Surfe",
      "externalID": "external-id",
      "firstName": "David",
      "lastName": "Chevalier",
      "linkedinUrl": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-maurice-chevalier"
    }
  ]
}

Note: When the personal email cascade is enabled, include.mobile is ignored. Mobile numbers aren't returned in the same request.

You'll receive an enrichmentID in the response. Use it to retrieve your results.

→ See: API - Enrich People - Understanding Surfe's Asynchronous Split Request

Step 2: Retrieve Your Results

Poll GET /v2/people/enrich/:id with your enrichmentID, or set up a webhook to be notified automatically when the enrichment completes.

Each email in the response includes:

• emailType: "personal" when a personal email is found
• validationStatus: how deliverable the address is, either VALID, CATCH-ALL or UNKNOWN

Addresses that fail the deliverability check are never returned.

Example result (emails section):

"emails": [
  {
    "email": "david.chevalier@gmail.com",
    "emailType": "personal",
    "validationStatus": "VALID"
  }
]

→ See: API - Webhooks

Step 3: Understand the Cost

• 2 email credits are charged per person when a personal email is found.
• No credits are charged when no personal email is found.
• If your account doesn't have enough credits to cover the request, the API returns a 402 error before the search runs, and nothing is charged.

→ See: API - Credits & Quotas

Things to Keep in Mind

• The personal email cascade must be enabled on your account. Contact Surfe API Support via Zendesk to enable it.
• Personal email enrichment uses the same two-step async flow as standard enrichment. Start with a POST request and retrieve results with a GET request or webhook.
• include.mobile is ignored when the personal email cascade is enabled.
• Always check emailType in the response to confirm whether the result is a personal or professional email.
• Credits are only charged on a successful find. You pay nothing on a miss.

Need Help?

If you have any questions or need further assistance, feel free to reach out to our support team or email api.support@surfe.com.