Use Case: Look Up a Contact from an Email Address

You have an email address, maybe from a form submission, an inbound enquiry, or a list — but you don't know who it belongs to. The Surfe API lets you look up a person's details using just their email address. Here's how.

What You'll Use

Enrich People by Email — to look up a person's details using their email address
Webhooks — to receive results automatically when the lookup completes

When to Use This

This endpoint is ideal when you have an email address and want to find out:

Who the person is (name, job title, company)
Where they work
Their LinkedIn profile
Their country

Common scenarios include:

Qualifying inbound leads from a contact form
Identifying who signed up to a trial or webinar
Enriching a list of email addresses with professional context

How It Works

This endpoint uses search credits rather than email or mobile credits. Costs 10 search credits per successful match. Credits are locked at request time and refunded if no match is found.

→ See: API - Credits & Quotas

Step 1: Start the Lookup

Send the email address to the Enrich People by Email endpoint.

Endpoint: POST /v2/people/find-by-email

Headers:

{
  "Authorization": "Bearer YOUR_API_KEY",
  "Content-Type": "application/json"
}

Request Body:

{
  "notificationOptions": {
    "webhookUrl": "https://your-server.com/webhook"
  },
  "people": [
    {
      "email": "david.chevalier@surfe.com",
      "externalID": "your-internal-id-123"
    }
  ]
}

You'll receive an enrichmentID in the response confirming the lookup has started.

Example Response:

{
  "enrichmentID": "your-enrichment-id"
  "enrichmentCallbackURL": "https://api.surfe.com/v2/people/enrich/your-enrichment-id",
}

→ See: API - Enrich people by email

Step 2: Receive Results via Webhook

When the lookup completes, Surfe sends the results to your webhook URL. The response may include the following fields when available:

{
  "eventType": "person.enrichment.completed",
  "data": {
    "enrichmentID": "your-enrichment-id",
    "person": {
      "externalID": "your-internal-id-123",
      "firstName": "David",
      "lastName": "Chevalier",
      "companyName": "Surfe",
      "companyDomain": "surfe.com",
      "jobTitle": "Co-Founder & CEO",
      "country": "France",
      "linkedInUrl": "https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-maurice-chevalier",
      "status": "COMPLETED"
    }
  }
}

→ See: API - Webhooks

Step 3: Use the Results

Once your development team receives the enriched data, they can use it to:

Automatically qualify inbound leads and route them to the right sales rep
Enrich your CRM with the person's professional details via your CRM's API
Trigger personalised outreach sequences based on job title or company
Store the enriched profile in your own database using externalID to match records

Things to Keep in Mind

This endpoint uses search credits — not email or mobile credits
Costs 10 search credits per successful match — credits are locked at request time and refunded if no match is found
Results depend on data availability — not every email will return a full profile
Use externalID to match results back to your own records

→ See: API - Credits & Quotas

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.

Additional Resources

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