Four steps, in this order. Check the person's LinkedIn contact info. Look on the company's website and in old emails. Guess the company's email pattern. Verify the guess before you send anything. The last step is the one that keeps your Gmail account out of trouble, and it is the one most guides leave out.

Most people on LinkedIn don't show an email address to strangers, so a profile alone rarely gives you one. What it gives you is a name, a role and a company, and those three are enough to find the address by other means. Below is the order that works, how long each step takes, and what to do when it fails.

What LinkedIn shows, and what it does not

The Contact info panel on a profile shows an email only if the person added one and their settings let you see it. For first-degree connections it often does. For strangers it usually doesn't. A few people put an email in their headline, About section or banner image, because they want to be contacted. Read those before anything else.

Be careful with tools that claim to pull emails out of LinkedIn automatically. LinkedIn's terms prohibit scraping and automated access, and accounts that use such tools get restricted. Work by hand, or use a data source that doesn't depend on logging in to your own account. Use the address only for a business reason related to the person's role, send to their work email rather than a personal one, and honor opt-outs. In the US, CAN-SPAM requires an accurate From line, your physical address and a working opt-out. If the person is in the EU or UK, privacy rules differ, so get advice before you email.

Step 1: LinkedIn's own contact info (2 minutes)

Open the profile, click Contact info, and read it. Then read the headline, About and Featured sections. If you are already connected, the email may be there. If not and you still want to connect first, our guide on getting clients on LinkedIn covers a respectful way to do it. If nothing shows, go to step two. Don't send a message asking for the address as your first contact; it works rarely and costs you the first impression.

Step 2: the company website and old signatures (5 minutes)

Go to the company's site and look at the Team, Contact, About and Press pages, and at press releases and blog posts, which often end with a contact line. Search the site for the person's name. If you have ever received an email from anyone at that company, open it: the signature and the sender's address show the pattern. Our guide to finding emails from a website covers the five places to look in order, and finding a business owner's email address adds the owner-specific tricks.

Step 3: guess the pattern (3 minutes)

Companies use a consistent format. To find it, you need one real address at that company for any employee. The three common patterns:

  • first.last@company, for example hector.villanueva@larkspurlinen.example
  • first initial and last name, for example hvillanueva@larkspurlinen.example
  • first name only, for example hector@larkspurlinen.example, common at small firms

Suppose you want Hector Villanueva, operations manager at Larkspur Linen Service, a laundry supplier. The site's contact page lists info@larkspurlinen.example, which is no help. A press release lists "Maria Okoye, maria.okoye@larkspurlinen.example," so the pattern is first.last. Your guess is hector.villanueva@larkspurlinen.example. It's a guess until step four.

Patterns break in predictable places. Nicknames: the profile says Bob, but the company's addresses use the legal name, so try robert. Hyphenated surnames, which some companies join and others cut. Duplicates at larger firms, where a second Hector Villanueva gets hvillanueva2 or a middle initial. And a pattern that changed after an acquisition, which is why one real address is evidence and two is better. If your first guess fails verification, try the next pattern, not five at once.

Step 4: verify before you send (2 minutes)

Run the address through an email verification tool, many of which let you check a few at no charge. A good result says valid. Be careful with "catch-all," which means the company's mail server accepts any address, so the tool can't tell whether a person exists. Treat catch-all addresses as risky: send only a small batch and watch for bounces. Never send a test message to unverified guesses in bulk from your own Gmail. Bounces damage your sender reputation, and a bounce rate of more than a couple of percent can hurt deliverability. See verifying addresses before sending and cold email bounce rates for the numbers and the fixes.

The whole lookup takes about 12 minutes for one person if you do it by hand.

When a tool is worth the money

Do the multiplication. If you need 30 addresses a week and each takes about 8 minutes, that is 4 hours. If your hour is worth $40, it is $160 a week in time. Tools that find and verify addresses for a per-address fee can beat that, as long as they verify and charge only for what they find. Check any tool's accuracy yourself on twenty people you already know the address of before you trust it. Rocketship's lead search works that way: it finds buyers by name, adding a person costs 1 lead-enrichment credit, and a verified phone and email costs 5, charged only when found. The entry plan includes 100 credits a month, about 20 fully verified contacts, and that allowance is separate from its 50 leads a month.

What to do when you cannot find one

Try the company's main phone number and ask politely: "I'd like to send some information to Hector Villanueva in operations. What's the best way to reach him?" Receptionists often share an email or route you. Try a role address as a fallback, such as operations@ or office@, with a note addressed to the right person. Connect on LinkedIn and wait for the connection to accept, then ask. Ask a mutual contact for an introduction. If none of that works within 15 minutes, move on. The list is long and the next name might be easy. For finding the right person in the first place, see finding B2B leads on LinkedIn without Sales Navigator.

Keeping the address in your list

Save the address with where you found it, the date, and whether it verified. Addresses go stale as people change jobs, so mark when you last checked. Remove anyone who opts out and anyone who bounces. A list with a note beside each address stays useful for months.

Rocketship finds the buyers, emails them from your own Gmail, follows up, and books the meeting on its own. Plans that get you customers start at $24.99 a month (Launch), and every monthly plan starts with a 7-day free trial, card required.