When I first dipped my toes in the dynamic world of B2B prospecting, there was one particular question that kept me up all the time: How to get contacts for a cold email campaign? Being a relative beginner, it was quite a task and it took me a long while to figure out the best way to find email addresses for lead generation.
As is clear, B2B email list building is what drives your outreach efforts, and it’s important to be proactive about it if you want to grow your business with cold outreach.
Whether you’re just starting or trying to refine your approach, the subsequent sections will explore how you can get your prospects’ data in an effortless manner. We’ll also cover a few B2B list building tools to bolster your prospecting.
Let’s get started.
What is a prospect email list?
At its core, a prospect email list is nothing but a list of potential individuals and decision-makers you want to work with. These are people who could benefit from using your product or service and usually have the buying power to avail it.
In the context of B2B prospecting, this list includes details such as the company name, position or title of contact alongside their industry and location. Based on the level of details required, you can also source it through various other sources.
This process of creating and maintaining a prospect list is called B2B email list building – and is an essential component of B2B outbound sales.
How to find someone’s email address for free?
In the high-stakes world of B2B prospecting, finding a prospect’s email address can often feel like looking for a needle in a haystack. But what if you could find that needle without spending a dime?
There are multiple free methods to start collecting prospect emails for the purpose of B2B email list building. Some of them we’ve used and found success with are as follows:
Apart from helping you connect with professionals, LinkedIn is also a crucial tool for B2B email list building. Having done LinkedIn outreach for multiple clients at our company, you can simply leverage LinkedIn search to find your prospect’s email address for free.
All you need to do is search their name on LinkedIn. Usually people also add their email address to their LinkedIn account. You can then send them a connection request, and once accepted, copy & paste their email from the ‘Contact Info’ section.
Company Website
Another popular free method for B2B email list building is by using the company website. Many companies provide email addresses of key decision-makers on their website itself. I know this sounds simple, but it’s one of the most effective B2B prospecting methods.
You can find this information on the ‘About Us’ or ‘Team’ section of the prospect’s website.
Google Search
A simple Google search is more powerful than you think. Especially when it comes to B2B email list building. If you’re looking for B2B prospecting data, simply run an advanced Google search in the following combinations:
- [name] + contact (or) contact information (or) contact me
- [name] + email (or) email address
That being said, you can also run a website-wide search by using the following search combinations:
- site: companywebsite.com + [name] + email
- site: companywebsite.com + [name] + contact
Here are some other ways to find B2B prospecting data with a Google search:
a. Adding Personal Information: You can also add the prospect’s personal information to your search for more refined results. This is a useful tactic, especially when you’re searching for prospects with similar names or spellings (as is the case with names in the UK, US & Europe markets).
When using this method, you can add personal information such as their hometown, profession, company name etc.
To do this, simply search using the following combination: [name] + email + hometown, or [name] + email + profession.
b. Adding LinkedIn or ZoomInfo: LinkedIn and ZoomInfo are two of the most popular and widely-used B2B prospecting platforms.
You can simply run a Google search by adding “LinkedIn” or “ZoomInfo” to the prospect’s name in the following manner:
[name] + LinkedIn or [name] + ZoomInfo
WhoIs Search
WhoIs.com is a popular domain search engine which can also be used for the purpose of B2B email list building. This method of B2B prospecting involves entering the domain name of your prospect’s website to find more information about them.
Once through, you can find the prospect’s email under the ‘Registrant Contact’ section.
While useful, this cold list building method isn’t failure-proof. When registering for a domain, people sometimes don’t share their emails publicly.
If this is the case with your prospect, it can lead to a waste of valuable time and resources.
Using a Browser Extension
Another extremely useful way to find contact details of your prospects is to use browser extensions from the likes of Hunter.io, RocketReach and RevDriver (by Salesintel) These tools help you with efficient B2B email list building, scraping contact information from their LinkedIn profiles and even web pages.
Apart from the prospect’s email address, some of these tools also help you source their phone numbers and other firmographic and technographic data.
How to get contacts for a cold email campaign? – Using Email Finder Tools for B2B Email List Building
In the previous section, we discussed how to build a prospect list with free resources. Another highly-efficient method to get started with B2B email list building is to start using email finder tools. While the free resources are useful, they often end up taking a lot of time.
If you’re a B2B marketer looking to save time, a B2B list building tool is the way to go.
While paid, they can easily take up a chunk of your list building work & help you get up to speed with prospecting.
Here’s a list of some commonly used email finder tools:
AeroLeads
AeroLeads is a popular B2B list building tool to find email addresses and phone numbers of prospects. It can easily scrape prospect data from websites like Xing and LinkedIn by simply searching their name. In addition, the tool allows you to access nearly 15 data points including:
- Job title
- Full Name
- Personal or Business Email
- Telephone Number
This B2B prospecting tool also has a Chrome extension that integrates with CRM tools like Hubspot, Salesforce and even Pipedrive or Zapier. It further lets you verify prospect emails to make sure you’re reaching out to the right emails.
Pros:
– You can easily scrape email addresses and enrich them with other details
– AeroLeads has an intuitive interface and easily integrates with most CRM platforms.
– The email verifier functionality is an added bonus – allowing you to check if the prospect’s email is valid or not.
Cons:
– Some users have pointed out the using up of available credits even with wrong lead contact information. This leads to the user having to purchase extra credits later.
– The Chrome extension can sometimes lead to problems while browsing LinkedIn. There currently is no way to turn it off when not required.
– Only finds business telephone numbers and emails – which might not be relevant in some cases.
AnyMail Finder
AnyMail Finder is another extremely popular tool for B2B email list building. The tool is used extensively by industry peers and can whip up 100% verified email lists in just a few minutes. The tool follows pattern matching, with a 70% matching rate.
Thanks to its API, AnyMail lets you look up the prospect’s email using their name and domain, or simply find emails with the URL or company name.
Pros:
– Similar to AeroLeads, AnyMail Finder also lets you verify unlimited email addresses before sending emails.
– This B2B email list building tool uncovers email addresses that other tools can’t. This is a massive advantage for any B2B marketer while prospecting.
– You can easily export your cold list in a CSV format. It also allows bulk domain search.
Cons:
– AnyMail’s email finder tool is priced higher compared to other similar tools.
– The usage credits don’t get carried over to the next month, implying that in order to keep using that data, you need to pay even when it might not be required.
– It doesn’t offer recent data (in case someone has changed jobs or companies). This can lead to inaccurate data or personalization while running campaigns.
Snov.io
Snov.io is the third tool on our list of recommendations for B2B email list building tools. The tool offers email verification and enrichment, in addition to helping users find prospect emails. It is ideal for use by SDRs, BDRs, B2B marketers and freelancers looking to reach out to their ideal customers via email.
Their suite of B2B prospecting tools is quite robust, allowing you to look up the prospect’s LinkedIn and tech stack-related information alongside the email finder.
Pros:
– You can export the cold list of prospects in the form of CSV files or save it to Google Sheets.
– Full-suite of tools and Chrome extensions for sales engagement and revenue growth. The tool also allows you to find 260+ million email addresses by simply entering the company’s domain name or even company name.
– The tool’s UI is quite intuitive, which helps in efficient management of prospect data.
Cons:
– Doesn’t offer direct integration with some main tools. You might have to set those up using Zapier – which frankly is an added expense.
– Even when Snov.io checks the email, sometimes it isn’t considered valid. And hence, isn’t updated.
– Unused credits don’t get rolled over to the next month – which could be expensive for some users.
VoilaNorbert
VoilaNorbert is another renowned B2B email list building tool and email finder. It allows users to find emails based on criteria like first and last name alongside the domain.
When running a search, its B2B list building tool pings mail hosts to check the accuracy of the email. In case you already have prospect emails, you can even put them into the tool and verify its authenticity.
The best part? – VoilaNorbert integrates directly with Gmail thanks to its Chrome extension.
Pros:
– The tool has 92% success rate, as per a study published by Ahrefs in 2021
– Unlike some other tools on the market, VoilaNorbert requires very little setup.
– You can organize the search lists in an easy to use and intuitive manner.
Cons:
– The tool doesn’t offer clarity on the criteria used for email validation – which can be a problem for some users.
– Customer service can be a problem. Sometimes getting an error fixed can take multiple days.
– The VoilaNorbert B2B email list building tool isn’t integrated with LinkedIn, which takes multichannel outreach and email finding capabilities out of the equation.
GetProspect
GetProspect is yet another email finder and B2B list building tool that helps you find authentic email IDs of prospects in bulk. The tool has several advanced, human-readable filters to gather your prospect’s data.
You simply need to upload the prospect’s company name or that of the decision-maker – and boom, you’ll instantly have the email IDs of your prospects.
Pros:
– You can easily export the cold list of prospects in the XLS format. You can easily segment the emails based on the needs of your target market.
– Easy to implement and returns accurate results, especially if you’re seeking out contact details on LinkedIn.
– Offers multiple advanced search options, and can also easily verify prospect emails.
Cons:
– The source of information is LinkedIn only – which might lead to situations where you might not always have the correct (or active) email.
– Some of the data extracted is outdated or incomplete.
– Loading time when extracting data can be an issue sometimes. You might need to reload the page several times.
Get Your Data Intelligence Up to Speed With Cleverviral!
We hope that you now have a better understanding of how to get contacts for a cold email campaign. Based on the insights here, you can leverage these tools and free resources to build your prospect list from scratch.
Now while it’s fairly easy to get started with these tools, it’s important to leverage the right data to launch your cold email campaigns. This is exactly where Cleverviral’s data intelligence offering could help.
We leverage prospect data based on sales triggers & intent to scrape unique insights from the public web. The difference? – All of this data has zero bounces and highly-relevant messaging timed accordingly with the prospect’s buying intent.
If you’re looking to scale your outreach with well-timed, high-quality data, book a call and our team will connect with you soon.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is B2B list building?
B2B email list building is the process of creating or sourcing a list of potential business leads who you know might be interested in the product or service you offer. Usually, these lists contain contact information of important decision-makers at these companies who you can reach out to.
How do I create a B2B prospect list?
You can either use LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator to build your prospect lists for outreach, or seek outside help for sourcing high-quality, active leads. There are other methods as well, such as using email finder tools and even a simple Google search that can be used for B2B email list building.
How do I find outreach email?
You can use free resources like the company’s website, LinkedIn account of prospects or even Google to find contact information for B2B outreach. In addition, you can even use paid tools like AeroLeads, AnyMail Finder and Voila Norbert if you have the budget.
