remember when LinkedIn used to point
blank tell you what people's email
addresses were
those were the days welcome or welcome
back to my channel my name is Megan
Grant and I'm your best freelancing
friend here to help you grow your
business not all that long ago LinkedIn
allowed you to export your contacts
email addresses and this was a really
nice feature because we Freelancers
could then use that contact information
to cold email our leads and try to pitch
our freelancing services and then
LinkedIn took that feature away these
days there are tools that you can use to
try to find or guess people's email
addresses so in this video we're going
to talk about what some of those tools
are how they work and whether or not
it's really worth your time relying on
them now from my experience LinkedIn
email finder tools generally work one of
two ways the first way is that the tool
basically scans the person's LinkedIn
profile trying to find if there are any
email addresses hidden on that page so
that could mean that it returns their
current work email address or or it
could give you an email address from a
previous employer or even their personal
email address which we definitely don't
want never email your leads at their
personal email address this is a big
No-No sometimes these tools get it right
and sometimes they come up with no
results other times the second way these
tools work is they basically guess what
the email address is that's how
hunter.io works and I actually have a
video on that tool specifically
basically what you do is you give the
tool that company's URL so
www.whatever.com then the tool kind of
scans the internet to collect as many
email addresses as it possibly can with
that domain name so it's going to give
you the results not just for the person
that you're looking for but for all of
the email addresses that it found that
match that website and what you want to
pay attention to here is the format of
the email addresses so is it first name
dot last name at companyname.com is it
first initial last name at
companyname.com that's what I mean by
format if you can determine the format
then you can just plug in the
information for the specific person that
you're trying to reach and there you are
you have their email address okay so
those are the two main ways that I've
seen these email finder tools work and
hunter.io is just one option there are
tons of these tools and more are coming
out all the time I've tried rocket reach
in the past there's also one called
finder dot IO you've got lots of options
now some of these are their own isolated
tools so you have to go to their website
in order to use them others have a
browser extension so that you can use
them when you are on somebody's LinkedIn
profile and you're trying to determine
their email address so you're on their
profile you click on the extension in
your browser and that extension will try
to figure out what the address is if you
want to test out different tools to see
which one really catches your attention
just go into Google and type email
finder tools lots to play around with
but should you are these tools reliable
are they safe
yeah there are a few things I want to
point out here that I feel are important
first are these tools accurate you don't
really know until you try them I used to
use email finder tools on LinkedIn a lot
more and I stopped too often they either
can't find the email address or they
give me the wrong email address so let's
say at best it does give you an email
address you send the cold email and just
hope that it gets to the right person
but very often the email would bounce
back so then I would have to try another
email if you're going to try one of
these tools you have to be prepared to
have to send multiple emails because the
odds of getting the correct address on
the first attempt aren't always in your
favor if that doesn't bother you then
great personally I wanted a process that
was more efficient and involved less
guessing and less trial and error so
that's why I gravitated away from these
tools second we do need to talk about
the Safety and Security of email finder
tools the best piece of advice I can
give you is to never use any tools that
require you to log in with your LinkedIn
credentials meaning your username and
password so that you can connect
LinkedIn to the tool I talk about this
in this video on LinkedIn automation
LinkedIn like most of the networking
platforms has very strict rules around
giving third-party tools and software
access to your LinkedIn profile this
means that you cannot use tools to
automate tasks like sending direct
messages sending invites leaving
comments on people's posts and scraping
data like email addresses also falls
under that heading these rules are baked
right into their terms and conditions
which you agreed to when you created a
profile so if you stumble upon a
LinkedIn email finder tool and it's
telling you that in order to use it you
have to connect it to your LinkedIn
account I would run in the opposite
direction LinkedIn very easily spots
this Behavior you are not going to pull
a fast one on them once you connect
those two accounts that's it they're
going to give you a friendly warning
then they're going to temporarily lock
you out of your account and then they're
going to ban your account completely now
if the tool that you're considering
doesn't require you to log in with
LinkedIn and doesn't gain access to your
profile and it's just a Chrome extension
that either guesses what the email
address is or scans the already
available information on someone's
profile to see if there's an email
address in there then you're probably
okay there's still no guarantees about
accuracy but in terms of Safety and
Security you should be fine like I
mentioned earlier I used to use these
tools a lot more back when my main
method for landing clients was cold
emailing you have to have a way to find
people's email addresses so that's where
these tools come in but then I started
using LinkedIn to connect with my leads
and I would just strike up a
conversation with them in the direct
message and I would get their email
address that way by asking who would
have thought and it worked pretty well
still even when I transition to the
process that I use now with LinkedIn I
did revisit these email finder tools to
compare the results that those gave me
with the results that I get from
LinkedIn in terms of ultimately closing
more deals and honestly the LinkedIn
email finder tools or email finder Tools
in general really didn't make a
difference well they did make a
difference they slowed my growth the
best results that I've gotten by far
have come from messaging my leads on
LinkedIn directly telling them about you
know who I am I'm a writer and saying is
this something you'd be interested in
talking about more and then I asked them
for their email address does it take
longer yes is it more manual yes are the
results way better also yes other people
talking about this on LinkedIn are going
to kind of lure you in with the promise
of saving tons of time by using email
finder tools can they work can they help
yes but in my experience they were not
even close to Reliable and these days I
treat these these tools as an absolute
Last Resort so for those reasons I would
caution you against relying on them too
much nothing nothing nothing nothing
beats connecting with another human
being
having a conversation and saying hey can
we move this to email with the internet
today there are so many tools out there
that promise to save us time without
hampering results and do those tools
exist sure but in terms of uh you know
being able to connect with leads as a
freelancer I can tell you that out of
everything I've tested today there is
nothing that replaces relationships and
conversations there are no shortcuts to
that that's why the approach that I've
been using for the last several years to
land clients work so well my students
and I we are doing something that a lot
of other Freelancers aren't we are
slowing down and while we know that
Landing clients is partly a numbers game
we never sacrifice quality for quantity
we never sacrifice the quality of our
relationships and conversations and
that's why we're so good at Landing
clients when it comes to using these
tools or tools like this I also
encourage you to look at not just the
logistics of your business but how
running your business makes you feel and
I know that sounds really flowery so
bear with me on this let's say you
decide okay I'm gonna go all in with
these email finder tools and I'm going
to switch to cold emailing and I'm gonna
hit it hard you could and you're going
to spend a good chunk of your time
sending multiple emails to the same
person and most of them are going to
bounce back or disappear into the black
hole of the interwebs wherever emails go
when they have an invalid address I've
been there and personally that
experience for me felt exhausting and
kind of cheap like superficial it didn't
feel good I didn't want to spend all my
time churning out emails and and using
these tools trying to find the right
addresses I wanted to spend my time
meeting people and connecting with
people and having fun conversations and
as an added bonus the latter approach
ended up working better I'm not saying
cold emailing is bad that's how I landed
my first few clients as a freelancer but
I was doing it in a very manual way I
never scaled it to that point where I
was sending out thousands of cold emails
a week from 10 different email addresses
some people do that personally it's not
my style I don't enjoy it LinkedIn
allows you to pull back on quality focus
a little more on quantity and the
results are
so good it feels more genuine and
authentic and it's just the cherry on
top that this approach has landed me
more clients than cold emailing ever did
it's a win-win if you're interested in
learning more about my Approach then I'm
leaving the link in the description
below to my program Revenue spark if you
think you might be interested in joining
my community then the next step is to
book a call and speak with me and we'll
see if we're a good fit for each other
and I would love it if you would join my
email list I promise never to span you I
just like to reach out every now and
then when I have something special to
say or sometimes I just like to say
hello and see how you're doing that link
is also below alright that's it for
today if you have any questions drop me
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