LinkedIn is overtaking as the world’s largest professional networking site. As a network of over a billion professionals around the world, recruiters, business developers, and marketers find one another on the network. But there’s still one problem: how do you reach out to someone from outside your network when you don’t have their available email?
It can feel limiting to depend solely on LinkedIn messages. InMail is costly, and not every professional looks regularly at their LinkedIn inbox, even if they have credit. This is the reason people want to find a way to get emails from LinkedIn—legally, ethically, and effectively.
This guide includes a few methods, all of which can be done manually, tools that are premium-only, and finally, third-party options. We’ll explain the advantages and disadvantages, as well as what can make you compliant or put you at risk.
Why Extracting Emails from LinkedIn Matters
Once you have a person’s email address, you gain the ability to communicate directly with them. If you’re a recruiter hunting for candidates, a sales rep prospecting for leads, or a founder forging a new partnership, email is still the best channel.
The benefits of an email include:
- Higher response rates: Emails will be read more reliably than LinkedIn messages.
- Scalability: Whether you are campaigning for dozens or hundreds of people, an email gets your message out there to everyone.
- Flexibility: Integrating email into CRM systems, tracking open rates and automating follow ups.
- No connecting: You don’t need to be friends with someone to message them.
For these reasons, many professionals rely on LinkedIn for research, but email for their actual outreach.
Manual Ways to Find Emails on LinkedIn
The most basic methods require no extra tools, though they are limited.
1. Checking the “Contact Info” Section
Some LinkedIn users list their email addresses directly under their profile’s contact information. This is the easiest way but depends entirely on what the person chooses to share.
2. Exporting Your Connections
LinkedIn allows you to export data from your first-degree connections. This includes emails if those contacts made them visible. To do this:
- Go to Settings & Privacy → Data Privacy → Get a copy of your data.
- Request an export of your “Connections.”
- Download the file and check which emails are available.
This method works only with existing contacts and will not reveal information about second- or third-degree connections.
3. Guessing Company Email Formats
If you know where a person works, you can sometimes deduce their email address. Many companies use standard formats like firstname.lastname@company.com. Tools such as Hunter.io provide company email patterns and verification checks.
LinkedIn’s Own Premium Options
There are premium paid features.
InMail: Premium or Sales Navigator feature only. You can message people who aren’t in your network, but there is a finite number of credits, and they are costly.
LinkedIn Recruiter: Perfect for an HR team with it all in one place. It also has Connectifier, which claims to scour the public web for contact information.
Although these are helpful alternatives. Recruiter licenses may run into the thousands of dollars per year, which is out of reach for small businesses or individual recruiters.
Using Email Finder Tools
While manual methods work, they can be slow. Platforms exist that help map company-wide email patterns instantly. For example, if you need BCG email data, SignalHire shows the formats used at Boston Consulting Group and lets you verify addresses. The same method works to find employees across different industries, saving time compared to guessing or trial-and-error approaches.
Popular email finders include:
- Lusha – widely used in sales for quick lookups.
- ContactOut – strong in tech recruiting, often integrated with GitHub.
- Apollo.io – provides both contact discovery and email sequencing features.
These tools differ in pricing, accuracy, and integrations, but all help bypass LinkedIn’s built-in limitations.
Example: Extracting Emails with SignalHire
One example of a professional email finder is SignalHire, a platform that provides verified personal and work emails as well as phone numbers. It works through a browser extension and can pull data directly from LinkedIn, GitHub, Facebook, and other networks.
Here’s how it works:
- Register for a free trial on the website.
- Install the browser extension from Chrome or Firefox.
- Open a LinkedIn profile and click the extension icon.
- Reveal the available email or phone number.
SignalHire also allows bulk extraction and integrations with CRMs like Salesforce and HubSpot. While it is not the only tool on the market, it is often praised for accuracy and ease of use.
Legal and Ethical Considerations
Emails must be responsibly culled. There are some important things to remember:
- GDPR and privacy laws compliance: Always complying with local laws before storing or using personal data is a must.
- Transparency in outreach: If you’re reaching out to someone, be straightforward about why you’re reaching out. No more deceptive subject lines, no buried agendas.
- Honor Unsubscribe Requests: If someone wants to be taken off your list, do so immediately.
- Don’t spam: Mass emailing recipients you don’t know reaches no one and is actually harmful to your reputation.
LinkedIn actually discourages scraping and automatic collection of data. That’s why it is so crucial to use reliable tools that follow privacy rules and ensure ethical, verifiable access to data.
Benefits and Risks of Email Extraction
Like any strategy, extracting emails has advantages and drawbacks.
Benefits
- Faster access to decision-makers.
- More reliable communication than LinkedIn messaging.
- Ability to scale outreach campaigns.
- Better tracking and integration with marketing systems.
Risks
- Potential violation of privacy regulations if misused.
- Some people may see unsolicited emails as intrusive.
- Using unreliable tools can lead to high bounce rates and damage sender reputation.
The key is to balance efficiency with respect for privacy. Quality outreach matters more than sheer quantity.
Best Practices for Responsible Outreach
Now that you have the email addresses, it’s time to get to work. A successful outreach involves a professional and respectful approach:
- Personalize your emails: Mention the recipients job, company, or accomplishments.
- Be brief: No one, especially a busy professional, has time for long, rambling emails.
- Provide value: Whether it’s a job, partnership, or product, show them how it’s doing something for them.
- Follow up graciously: A gentle reminder can work, but don’t overdo the messaging.
- Segment your lists: It’s not a one-size-fits-all email out there. Target your industry or function.
In its best form, email outreach forges real connections instead of coming across as spam.
Conclusion
Email finding on LinkedIn can be a great help for recruiting, sales, networking, etc. Although manual techniques (manually reviewing the “Contact Info” section or exporting connections) perform well in a few cases, most professionals use specialized tools for accurate and scalable retrieval.
LinkedIn’s own offerings, such as InMail and Recruiter, can also work, but these options can be costly. A more flexible and accessible alternative is provided by third-party email finders, which can be in the form of solutions like SignalHire, Lusha, or ContactOut.
Whatever your approach, remember that compliance and ethics are important. Focus on personalized, respectful communication. That its email extractions are on the up-and-up can indeed prove validating: It’s harder to regard as grifty that which is harmless and easy, and now your magic email-extraction trick isn’t just a hacky shortcut to contact details — it’s a gateway to gettin’ you the contacts that count!