# Email count Actor

[![Email Count Actor](https://apify.com/actor-badge?actor=tomba-io/email-count)](https://apify.com/tomba-io/email-count)

A powerful Apify Actor that counts email addresses for domains using the **Tomba Email Count API**. Perfect for sales teams, marketers, and researchers who need to understand the email landscape of target companies for lead generation planning, market sizing, and competitive analysis.

## Key Features

- **Email Counting**: Get accurate email count statistics for any domain
- **Departmental Breakdown**: Email counts by department (sales, engineering, marketing, etc.)
- **Seniority Analysis**: Email distribution by seniority levels (junior, senior, executive)
- **Quality Metrics**: Confidence levels and data freshness indicators
- **Rate Limited**: Respects Tomba's 150 requests per minute limit
- **Bulk Processing**: Process multiple domains efficiently
- **Error Handling**: Robust error handling with detailed logging

## How it works

The Actor leverages Tomba's powerful Email Count API to gather comprehensive email statistics:

### Process Flow

1. **Authentication**: Connects to Tomba API using your credentials
2. **Domain Processing**: Accepts array of domains to analyze
3. **Count Analysis**: Retrieves detailed email statistics for each domain
4. **Rate Limiting**: Automatically handles 150 requests/minute limit
5. **Data Storage**: Saves results to Apify dataset

### What You Get

For each domain, you'll receive:

- **Total Email Count**: Complete number of email addresses found
- **Email Type Breakdown**: Personal vs generic email distribution
- **Department Statistics**: Email counts by department (engineering, sales, marketing, etc.)
- **Seniority Distribution**: Email counts by job level (junior, senior, executive)
- **Quality Indicators**: Confidence levels and data freshness
- **Organization Context**: Basic company information for context

## Quick Start

### Prerequisites

1. **Tomba Account**: Sign up at [Tomba.io](https://app.tomba.io/api) to get your API credentials

### Getting Your API Keys

1. Visit [Tomba API Dashboard](https://app.tomba.io/api)
2. Copy your **API Key** (starts with `ta_`)
3. Copy your **Secret Key** (starts with `ts_`)

## Input Configuration

### Required Parameters

| Parameter        | Type     | Description                     |
| ---------------- | -------- | ------------------------------- |
| `tombaApiKey`    | `string` | Your Tomba API key (ta_xxxx)    |
| `tombaApiSecret` | `string` | Your Tomba secret key (ts_xxxx) |
| `domains`        | `array`  | Array of domains to count       |

### Optional Parameters

| Parameter    | Type     | Default | Description                         |
| ------------ | -------- | ------- | ----------------------------------- |
| `maxResults` | `number` | `50`    | Maximum number of results to return |

### Example Input

```json
{
    "tombaApiKey": "ta_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
    "tombaApiSecret": "ts_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
    "domains": ["tomba.io", "stripe.com", "google.com"],
    "maxResults": 100
}
```

### Best Practices

- **Domain Selection**: Use clean domain names without protocols (http/https)
- **Rate Limits**: The Actor automatically handles Tomba's 150 requests/minute limit
- **Batch Size**: Process 10-50 domains at a time for optimal performance

## Output Data Structure

The Actor returns comprehensive email count statistics for each domain:

### Example Output

```json
{
    "domain": "tomba.io",
    "total": 245,
    "personalEmails": 198,
    "genericEmails": 47,
    "department": {
        "engineering": 45,
        "sales": 38,
        "marketing": 32,
        "hr": 15,
        "finance": 12,
        "legal": 8,
        "executive": 25,
        "support": 28,
        "other": 42
    },
    "seniority": {
        "junior": 89,
        "senior": 125,
        "executive": 31
    },
    "source": "tomba_email_count"
}
```

### Data Structure Overview

The output contains comprehensive email statistics organized into logical sections:

#### Email Count Statistics

- **Total Count**: Complete number of email addresses found for the domain
- **Email Types**: Breakdown between personal and generic email addresses
- **Quality Metrics**: Confidence levels and data freshness indicators

#### Departmental Analysis

- **Department Breakdown**: Email counts by department
    - Engineering, Sales, Marketing, HR, Finance
    - Legal, Executive, Support, and Other departments
- **Distribution Insights**: Understanding of team structure and size

#### Seniority Distribution

- **Junior Level**: Entry-level and junior position email counts
- **Senior Level**: Senior and mid-level position email counts
- **Executive Level**: C-level and executive position email counts

### Key Benefits

- **Market Sizing**: Understand the email landscape of target companies
- **Lead Planning**: Plan outreach campaigns based on email counts
- **Competitive Analysis**: Compare email presence across competitors
- **Quality Assessment**: Confidence levels ensure data reliability
- **Strategic Insights**: Department and seniority distribution for targeting

## Use Cases

- **Lead Generation Planning**: Estimate potential lead volume before launching campaigns
- **Market Research**: Analyze email presence and organizational structure of target markets
- **Competitive Intelligence**: Compare email footprints across competitor domains
- **Sales Planning**: Size potential markets and plan outreach strategies
- **Data Validation**: Verify domain email capacity before major campaigns
- **Business Intelligence**: Understand organizational structure through email distribution
- **Campaign Optimization**: Plan department-specific or seniority-targeted campaigns

## Resources & Documentation

### API Documentation

- [Tomba API Docs](https://tomba.io/api) - Complete API reference
- [Authentication Guide](https://app.tomba.io/api) - Get your API keys
- [Pricing & Limits](https://tomba.io/pricing) - Understand rate limits and costs
- [Email Count API](https://docs.tomba.io/api/finder#email-count) - Specific endpoint documentation

## FAQ

### General Questions

**Q: What does email count analysis provide?**
A: Email count analysis tells you how many email addresses are associated with a domain, broken down by department, seniority, and other attributes. It's like getting domain email statistics without seeing actual email addresses.

**Q: Why would I need to count emails instead of finding them?**
A: Email counting helps with market sizing, campaign planning, lead qualification, and understanding company structure without the cost of retrieving individual email addresses.

**Q: How accurate are the email counts?**
A: Counts are based on Tomba's comprehensive database and are typically accurate within 10-20%. Large companies may have more variance due to complex email structures.

### Usage & Features

**Q: Can I get counts for specific departments?**
A: Yes! Results include breakdowns by department (sales, engineering, marketing, etc.), seniority levels, and job functions when available.

**Q: What's the difference between total and verified email counts?**
A: Total count includes all discovered emails, while verified count only includes emails that have been validated for deliverability.

**Q: How many domains can I analyze at once?**
A: You can process up to 1000 domains per run. For optimal performance, analyze 20-50 domains per batch.

**Q: Do you provide historical email count data?**
A: The current API provides point-in-time data. For trend analysis, you'd need to run periodic counts and track changes over time.

### Technical Questions

**Q: What are the rate limits for email counting?**
A: The Actor automatically handles Tomba's rate limits. Email counting is typically faster than individual email discovery operations.

**Q: How should I interpret zero email counts?**
A: Zero counts might indicate new companies, very private organizations, domains with no public email presence, or domains outside Tomba's coverage area.

**Q: Can I count emails for any domain?**
A: You can analyze most business domains. Personal email providers (gmail.com, yahoo.com) won't return meaningful counts since they don't represent single organizations.

**Q: What happens if a domain doesn't exist?**
A: Invalid domains will return an error or zero count. The Actor handles these gracefully and continues processing other domains.

### Business Applications

**Q: How can this help with sales planning?**
A: Email counts help estimate market size, plan outreach capacity, prioritize target companies by size, and set realistic campaign goals.

**Q: Is this useful for competitive analysis?**
A: Yes! Compare email counts across competitors to understand relative company sizes, growth patterns, and market positioning.

**Q: How does this help with lead qualification?**
A: Companies with larger email counts typically indicate bigger organizations, which might be more valuable prospects depending on your business model.

**Q: Can I use this for market research?**
A: Absolutely! Aggregate email counts across industry domains to understand market characteristics, company size distributions, and sector insights.

### Data & Privacy

**Q: Does email counting violate privacy?**
A: No, email counting only provides aggregate statistics without revealing individual email addresses or personal information.

**Q: Is this GDPR compliant?**
A: Yes, email counting uses only aggregated, publicly available information and doesn't expose personal data.

**Q: How often is the count data updated?**
A: Tomba regularly updates its database. While specific update frequencies aren't guaranteed, data is generally refreshed monthly or quarterly.

**Q: Can I track email count changes over time?**
A: You can run periodic analyses to track changes. Consider storing historical results to build trend analysis for your target domains.

## Support

If you need any help, have questions, or encounter any issues while using Tomba.io, please don't hesitate to reach out to our support team. You can contact us via:

- **Email**: support@tomba.io
- **Live chat**: Available on the Tomba.io website during business hours

## Contributing

We welcome contributions to improve this actor. Please feel free to submit issues, feature requests, or pull requests to help make this tool even better for the community.