LinkedIn is a great platform for connecting with other professionals and growing your network. With over 800 million members, it’s likely that many of your target contacts are on LinkedIn. While you can connect and message people within LinkedIn, having their direct email address allows you to build deeper relationships outside of the LinkedIn platform.
Extracting email addresses from LinkedIn connections can be very useful for sales prospects, recruiting, marketing campaigns, and more. However, LinkedIn does not make email addresses publicly visible for all members. So extracting emails requires using some tools and tricks to uncover email patterns and formats.
Why Extract Emails from LinkedIn?
Here are some of the top reasons you may want to extract email addresses from your LinkedIn connections:
- Send connection requests and messages outside of LinkedIn platform
- Import into email marketing tools for targeted outreach
- Research prospects for sales and business development
- Recruit contacts for open positions
- Discover email naming conventions of a company
- Verify if a contact still works for a certain company
Having the direct email allows you to engage with your connections outside of LinkedIn. This can help strengthen relationships and improve response rates compared to LinkedIn only messaging.
Can I Export All Emails from LinkedIn?
Unfortunately, LinkedIn does not allow bulk exporting of all connection email addresses. LinkedIn wants to prevent scraping and spamming of their platform.
However, there are still methods to uncover and extract email addresses individually or in small batches. So while not completely automated, you can still obtain targeted email addresses from LinkedIn with some manual techniques.
LinkedIn Connection Email Extraction Methods
Here are some of the main techniques people use to extract email addresses from LinkedIn connections:
1. Export LinkedIn Connections
The easiest starting point is to export your 1st degree LinkedIn connections to a CSV file. Here’s how:
- Go to your LinkedIn connections page
- Click “Manage synced and imported contacts”
- Choose “Export connections”
- Select only 1st degree connections
- Export format CSV
This will download a file with all your 1st level connections and their profile data.
2. Use Email Verifier Tools
Once you have the LinkedIn connections CSV file, you can use email verification tools to automatically detect and extract email addresses. These tools will analyze the profile data like name, company, title, etc. to identify probable email patterns and formats for each connection.
Some good email verifiers to try are:
- Mail Tester
- Zero Bounce
- Kickbox
- NeverBounce
The accuracy will depend on the amount of profile data available. Expect between 20-40% of connections to return a verified email address.
3. First Name.Last [email protected]
One of the most common business email formats is [email protected]. You can filter the LinkedIn connections for ones that have complete name and company info. Then try constructing the email address with their first . last name @ company domain.
This method works best with contacts at large companies that use standard formats. For common names, you may get some inaccuracies.
4. Use Rapportive Chrome Extension
Rapportive is a clever Chrome extension that displays social/contact information when you hover over an email address. Here’s how it can help uncover LinkedIn emails:
- Install Rapportive extension in Chrome
- Go to LinkedIn profile and hover over “Contact info”
- Rapportive will display any found email addresses
- Works for about 20-30% of profiles
The emails show up because Rapportive scans Gmail contacts and other sources to find associated email accounts.
5. LinkedIn Sales Navigator Email Search
If you have access to LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator premium tool, this unlocks an “Email Search” to find address for LinkedIn members.
You can enter a name, company, title, school, etc. and it will return profiles with matching email addresses.
6. Use Email Format Guessing
For common names, you may have to guess email formats until you uncover the correct one. Try variations like:
You can automate testing different formats using online email verifier tools or custom scripts. This becomes trial and error but can determine hard to find addresses.
7. Check Website Contact Pages
Many company websites provide contact email formats on their team, About Us, or Contact Us pages. You can search “[company name] email format” to find relevant pages. If you discover the convention they use, apply that to your LinkedIn connections at the company.
8. Email Discovery Tools
There are advanced email discovery services like VoilaNorbert and RocketReach that combine data sources, AI, and email verification to find hard to reach emails. They can take LinkedIn URLs as input and output higher match rates. However, these tools require paid subscriptions.
Example Workflow
Here is an example workflow for extracting emails from your LinkedIn connections:
- Export LinkedIn connections to CSV file
- Check name, company, title fields are complete
- Remove rows missing key data
- Standardize company name spellings
- Apply email verification tool to automatically detect formats
- Filter for contacts at known companies
- Construct likely email patterns like [email protected]
- Use Rapportive to uncover hidden addresses
- Check company sites for conventions
- Guess formats for common names
Follow this process to extract the low hanging fruit. Then use more advanced techniques for tougher email addresses.
Tips for Effective LinkedIn Email Extraction
Here are some tips to improve your results extracting LinkedIn connection emails:
- Maintain accurate profile data – Complete your name, headline, experience to get full access
- Personalize connection requests – People more likely to accept if you include message
- Connect only with relevant contacts – Prioritize those in your industry or target companies
- Wait before extracting emails – Build some trust before extracting contacts from connections
- Use extracted emails responsibly – Respect their privacy and preferences
Being thoughtful in how you grow and utilize your LinkedIn network will make people more willing to engage on and off the platform.
Is Extracting Emails from LinkedIn Legal?
The short answer is yes, it is legal to extract email addresses from LinkedIn in most countries.
LinkedIn’s terms do not explicitly prohibit researching and gathering connection email addresses for personal non-commercial use. However, they do prohibit automated scraping of their website content.
So manual searching and recording of information from individual profiles is generally allowed under most laws. Just be sure to respect the privacy of contacts and not spam or sell their information.
LinkedIn Email Extraction Tools
Here are some of the top software tools for extracting emails from LinkedIn:
Free Tools
- Rapportive Chrome Extension
- Mail Tester
- Hunter (limited searches)
Paid Tools
- VoilaNorbert
- RocketReach
- Lusha
- LeadIQ
- Phantombuster
- Data.com Prospector
- Mettle CRM
Paid tools give higher match rates but can cost from $30 to over $100/month for more searches. Evaluate your use case to determine if the cost justifies the higher return.
Should I Buy an Email List Instead?
Some providers sell lists of LinkedIn extracted emails. However buying LinkedIn email lists is not recommended in most cases.
Here are some downsides to purchasing LinkedIn email lists:
- Very low accuracy/high invalid rates
- Contacts did not opt-in to receive communication
- Risk of spam complaints and blocks
- No transparency on extraction methods
- No custom targeting options
- Can quickly become outdated
For customized outreach, it is better to extract your own targeted emails from connections and verified sources. This results in higher engagement from contacts that know and trust you.
How to Use Extracted Emails
Once you have harvested email addresses from LinkedIn profiles, here are some recommended uses:
- One-to-one communication and relationship building
- Personalized outreach and introductions
- Targeted sales prospecting in small batches
- Recruiting contacts for open positions
- Following up after meeting at events
- Segmented email marketing campaigns
Avoid spamming by communicating thoughtfully and allowing recipients to opt out. Also be transparent by including your LinkedIn profile link in messages.
Conclusion
Extracting email addresses from LinkedIn is possible using the right tools and techniques. Focus on quality over quantity by engaging with verified contacts. Combine automated extraction with manual searching for the best results. Use the emails responsibly to forge real relationships.
With some effort, uncovering LinkedIn connection emails can strengthen your professional network and open new opportunities. Just be mindful of privacy and consent when contacting connections outside of LinkedIn.
