LinkedIn is the perfect place to go when you need to connect with industry leaders, or your next great hire.
But if you’ve ever tried to figure out how to get contact info from LinkedIn, you will know it can be a time-consuming and frustrating process.
In this guide, we’re going to show you some tried-and-tested techniques for finding emails on LinkedIn faster — so you can spend more time selling.
Why LinkedIn Should Be Your No. 1 Place to Find Leads
LinkedIn is the top social networking platform for professionals, with a whopping 740 million active users in 2020. You can use its targeted search function to find users who make the buying decisions in various industries in companies around the world.
So when you’re ready to connect with the fresh leads that are critical to the success of your next marketing campaign, LinkedIn is the place to look.
Your strategy for gathering email addresses from LinkedIn will depend on your goals and the time you want to spend on research.
If you have more time on your hands and a relatively small list of leads to build, manual email harvesting methods are a simple way to get started.
But for bulk prospecting needs, it’s a smart use of your time and money to use a tool like the ones we recommend in this guide.
Let’s get started with a look at the methods to manually find emails from LinkedIn.
How to Manually Find Email Addresses on LinkedIn: 4 Steps
Email addresses on LinkedIn are often hiding in plain sight. If you’re willing to do a little bit of detective work and educated guessing, you can find a treasure trove of contact details as you browse through member profiles.
The first place to look for email addresses on LinkedIn is in the profiles of individual members.
Step 1: Start With ‘Contact Info’
If a LinkedIn user wants to share their email address publicly, the contact
info section just below the profile headline is an easy place to find it.
This is also a great place to find any other contact details you could use to get in touch, such as the person’s phone number, social media links, their company website, and the date you first connected. Add this information to your database to create a fuller profile of your prospects for more targeted marketing.
Step 2: Check Their Banner Photo
Serious users of LinkedIn know that their banner photo is a prime opportunity to establish the brand identity of their profile. The best LinkedIn Profile banners include enticing shots of authority-boosting social proof and information on how leads can get in touch for work opportunities.
Take a moment to examine the banner photo of your prospect, and you may find their email address and other contact information included here.
Step 3: Read Their Bio
Another great place to find an email address on LinkedIn is directly in the prospect’s bio.
LinkedIn members who are open for opportunities are aware that their bios are going to be read by recruiters and sales specialists who are eager to connect with them. It’s typical for users to include their email address in their bio for easy access.
Step 4: Use the Company Page to Make an Educated Guess
If a user has chosen to omit their email address from their LinkedIn profile, there is one more way to use their profile to get in touch with them. This method involves making an informed guess using clues from their individual profile and their company LinkedIn page.
Take a look at the experience section of the prospect’s profile. Here, you’ll find a list of their past employers and their current employer.
If you click on the company icon of their current employer, the link will take you to the company page on LinkedIn. Beneath the headline section, you’ll see a list of all the employees who are on Linkedin.
Click on the link to see the profiles of those other company members. Once you find an email address in one of their profiles, you’ll be able to understand what format is used for emails within that company.
Here is a list of typical formats for company emails:
mary@businessdomain.com
maryjones@businessdomain.com
mary_jones@businessdomain.com
MJones@businessdomain.com
mary.jones@businessdomain.com
You can try emailing the prospect using the preferred email format used by their company.
A word of caution: some companies employ multiple email formats, so this method isn’t foolproof. If you want to be more certain that you’re getting in touch with the right person before sending the campaign, you can verify the email format by using a tool like Hunter or TrueMail.
The Best Free and Paid Tools for Finding Email Addresses on LinkedIn
When you’re preparing for a large-scale marketing campaign, getting emails in bulk from LinkedIn is the way to go.
Option 1: Export Your Connections
The easiest way to begin with bulk gathering of emails on LinkedIn is to export the data from the profiles of your first connections.
You should make it a priority to be intentional about adding new connections daily on LinkedIn. Aim to send a minimum of 4–5 connection requests per day, and you’ll have over 1,400 new contacts within a year.
Save their emails to a Google Sheet using the following method:
- Click the Me icon at the top of your LinkedIn homepage.
- Select Settings & Privacy from the dropdown menu.
- Click Data privacy on the left hand menu.
- Beneath the How LinkedIn Uses Your Data section, click the Change option located to the right of Get a copy of your data.
- Select the radio button next to Want something in particular? and click the checkbox next to Connections and any other data you’d like to download.
- When your selection is complete, click the blue button that says Request archive.
- Enter your password when prompted and click Done.
- The link to download your connections’ data will be sent to your primary email address on file.
Option 2: How to Use Tools to Extract Email Addresses From a Wider Pool
Chances are you aren’t connected to all of your ideal prospects. Fortunately, you can use tools to gather email addresses from LinkedIn users who are outside of your network.
Sales Navigator
Sales Navigator is LinkedIn’s own paid lead generation tool that will give you additional information about LinkedIn users who are outside of your network. It won’t give you the ability to see the email addresses of your prospects directly, but it will give you a way to quickly gather the names of high-quality leads and the names of the companies where they work.
You can take these two pieces of information and use them to find email addresses using one of the email verification tools listed earlier in this guide.
Chrome Extensions
An easier tool to use for finding emails on LinkedIn is a Google Chrome extension. These powerful sales prospecting browser apps can help you find valuable data for just about anyone on LinkedIn, including your third-degree connections.
The type of contact information and number of prospects you can access through these tools is determined by the service tier you choose, but many of these extensions offer plenty of data even with their free options.
Here are some of the best Chrome extensions for finding email addresses on LinkedIn:
Datanyze
Datanyze is shaking up the lead generation game with features that make it easy to find and connect with prospects in minutes.
This sophisticated tool makes gathering email addresses from LinkedIn as easy as pie, with a price point that won’t tank your budget. Datanyze allows you to browse, collect contact information, and export data directly from LinkedIn, in real time.
Skrapp
Skrapp is an email scraping tool that sales representatives like because it plays nicely with LinkedIn Sales Navigator. It’s a convenient and easy-to-use extension that offers a free tier for teams that would like to test the waters before making a commitment.
Wiza
Wiza is another extension that acts as a power-up for Sales Navigator. Add it to your browser if you want to turn a Sales Navigator search into a ready-to-go list of clean emails for your campaign. You can get started with Wiza for free, but exporting the results will cost 15 cents per lead.
Make the Most Out of Your Prospecting Efforts on LinkedIn
As we have discovered, LinkedIn is actually a really good place to find contact details for your prospecting campaigns. The methods and tools described in this guide should help you start packing your CRM full of potential customers, ready for your next big sales push.
Upgrade Your Prospecting Toolkit With Datanyze
Of course, there is more to prospecting than finding an email address. If you would like to learn more about your prospects without a major time investment, Datanyze is worth your attention.
Our Chrome extension can reveal a whole range of B2B contact information, including email addresses, phone numbers, and more. You can also see vital company information for each prospect, such as company size and industry.
Just as importantly, Datanyze is committed to ethical sourcing of business information. Our data is collected in accordance with GDPR and CCPA, so you’ll never have to worry that you’re putting your reputation at risk.
Want to give it a try? Sign up today for a free 90-day trial to discover how Datayze can transform your sales process.
