Email Scraping: What It Is, How It Works, and Is It Legal?

Email scraping has existed since the beginning of the World Wide Web in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The idea took off in the 21st Century with the introduction of visual web scrapers, which meant anyone could scrape emails — previously, it was limited to programmers.

Fast-forward to today, email scraping is a common practice used for both good and (unfortunately) malicious reasons.

Of course, this blog will tell you how to use email scraping for the power of good. We will cover:

1. The definition, benefits, and risks of email scraping
2. Five reasons to use email scraping for lead generation
3. How Skrapp can help you capture leads

What is Email Scraping?

Email scraping is precisely what the phrasing suggests: scouring various sources on the Internet for email addresses.

These online sources could include:

• Social media platforms
• Online directories
• Websites

A sales team primarily uses email scraping to gather contact information for marketing, sales, or outreach purposes to generate qualified leads.

From there, you can plug each email address scraped into your CRM (or something as simple as Google Sheets) to create their email list before making contact.

Contact could be made for various reasons:

• Promotional content and advertisements to people potentially interested in the company’s products or services.
• Educational content (such as blog posts) to generate brand awareness or to market a specific event the recipient may be interested in.
• Cold email and outreach — sending a direct sales pitch to someone’s inbox.
• Networking. Sometimes, the intention isn’t to sell anything. People want to grow their professional network of industry peers and potentially work together.

The Benefits of Email Scraping

Email scraping (especially done with the help of software) is a powerful tool for finding potential leads. The benefits of email scraping include:

• Companies choose the emails they want to scrap, which is more efficient (and cheaper) than buying an email list, as some contacts in a bought email list may not represent the target audience. As a result, a scraped email list is highly targeted.
• Email scraping done with software is a faster way to find your potential customer compared to manual methods.

The Risk Associated With Email Scraping

There’s a right and wrong way to scrape emails. The wrong way can land a company into legal trouble, especially if you violate the CAN-SPAM Act or GDPR (for EU businesses).

Other risks include:

• Reputational damage if the recipient believes an email is spammy or irrelevant. That’s why companies need to scrape the right email addresses and make an effort to write a personalized email each time — not copy-pasting the same email and just changing the recipient’s name!
• Scraped email addresses may be inaccurate or outdated, leading to a high bounce rate or lack of response.
• Email service providers like Gmail can differentiate between regular and spam emails. If a company doesn’t take the time to write personalized messages, the email could end up in the customer’s spam folder.
• There are ethical concerns associated with email scraping. It’s perfectly legal to email someone whose email address is available on the public Internet (for example, on their social media profile or website’s contact page.) However, they haven’t technically ’agreed’ to hear from you. Once again, the best way to mitigate this risk and avoid reputational damage is to ensure the email is relevant to their lives.

5 Reasons to Use Email Scraping for Lead Generation

When done correctly, email scraping can help your sales team generate consistent warm-to-hot leads. Here are five benefits you don’t want to miss. 

1. Improve Data Accuracy

With advanced scraping tools, you can target websites, social media platforms, and other online sources relevant to your industry or niche. 

As a result, the emails collected are of those potentially interested in your businesses’ products or services, resulting in a higher number of qualified leads generated.

The company (and all other companies) will experience:

• Fewer number of emails marked as spam
• Fewer disgruntled replies
• Fewer bounce backs
• Fewer non-replies

Accurate email addresses also mean a company can start segmenting its email lists based on preferred criteria such as demographics, location, and purchase history. Before they know it, the CRM is brimming with leads ready to nurture.

An added benefit of automation is that it reduces the likelihood of human error in data collection. 

The software can perpetually scan a company’s preferred online sources for emails regularly, meaning the CRM only contains accurate emails.

2. Save Time and Resources

Let’s face it. Manually finding email addresses online is a pain, and it’s not a two-minute process. However, email scrapping software can do all the heavy lifting for you.

A sales and marketing team can use the time saved to focus their efforts on strategic and high-value tasks like:

• Reaching a more extensive customer base with personalized outreach
• Creating email templates with enough room for personalization.
• Nurturing relationships with potential customers 
• Devising marketing strategies
• Creating engaging content

3. Enhanced Outreach

Integrating email scraping tools via API with other outreach and CRM platforms can enhance the lead-generation process.

Additionally, integrating these systems allows you to synchronize scraped data with your CRM systems. It provides a unified view of customer interactions and optimizes the follow-up processes. 

This sophisticated approach improves the effectiveness of your lead-generation efforts and supports more targeted and efficient marketing strategies.

4. Outperform Competition

These platforms allow you to automate email campaigns, ensuring personalized messages are sent to suitable leads at optimal times, thus increasing engagement rates.

Additionally, using native messaging apps such as LinkedIn Messenger allows you to reach your audience more personally and immediately, increasing the likelihood of engagement.

Personalized messaging creates a sense of individual attention, creating stronger connections and trust between the business and the potential customer.

The quickness of the entire process and the time savings used to create a high-volume and personalized outreach approach allow your company to reach its target audience before the competition, giving it a competitive edge.

5. Scalability

An automated email extractor tool can quickly handle vast amounts of data, allowing businesses to gather extensive lists of potential leads without a proportional increase in time or resources. 

This scalability means that as your company grows, it can continuously expand its outreach efforts without being hindered by manual data collection limitations.

How Skrapp Can Help You Capture Leads

Skrapp is a B2B lead generation tool that helps companies find and verify business email addresses to ensure their contact lists only contain accurate and relevant emails.

Skrapp offers LinkedIn and Sales Navigator integration to streamline the building of accurate email lists, making it easier to connect with key decision-makers.

Here’s how you can use Skrapp to capture leads.

Browser Extension

Skrapp’s Chrome extension features a LinkedIn and website email finder, enabling users to quickly extract and verify email addresses directly from LinkedIn profiles and company websites. 

This extension offers the convenience of painless integration with everyday browsing, making it more efficient and accessible for on-the-go prospecting.

Email Finder

Skrapp’s Email Finder tool allows users to find verified business email addresses by searching with names and company domains. The tool is designed for high deliverability rates, making it easier to connect with potential clients.

Bulk Email Search

Skrapp’s Bulk Finder lets users upload lists of names and domains to find and verify multiple email addresses simultaneously.

This tool streamlines large-scale email prospecting, saving time and ensuring accuracy in generating extensive, verified contact lists for efficient lead generation. 

Database Search

Skrapp’s Database Search tool lets users discover professionals and companies that match their ideal customer profile (ICP). Users can set parameters like company type, industry, employee count, and more for instant results. 

The tool provides vital information about leads, enabling targeted outreach. Users can bulk enrich emails, pick top prospects, export lead lists in various formats, or transfer them to CRM systems like HubSpot, Salesforce, Outreach, Pipedrive, or Zoho.

Company Search

Skrapp’s Company Search feature helps users find employees and their professional email addresses by simply entering a company name. This tool grants instant access to millions of professional profiles and emails, which can be saved in the Skrapp dashboard or exported to your preferred CRM or email service provider.

Email Verification

Skrapp’s Email Verifier tool is designed to ensure the accuracy and validity of email addresses, a crucial step in maintaining a high-quality contact database. By verifying emails, businesses can significantly reduce bounce rates and improve deliverability, leading to more successful email campaigns.

Users can upload lists of email addresses for bulk verification, ensuring that each address is checked for accuracy. This process helps maintain clean, reliable contact lists, enhancing communication efforts’ effectiveness. 

Skrapp offers a variety of pricing plans tailored to meet different business needs, from individual users to large enterprises. 

These plans are designed to provide access to the lead generation and email verification tools, with features scaling according to the plan level. Each plan offers a balance of monthly credits and features to suit varying requirements and budgets. 

Time to Capture More (and Better) Leads

Email scrapping is a powerful tool to gather a highly targeted email list in the blink of an eye. Of course, capturing relevant emails is only the first part. The second part is devising personalized outreach approaches that ensure the priceless emails weren’t collected in vain.

Skrapp can perform email extraction for you, saving you time along the way — time that can be allocated to creating and executing targeted marketing campaigns.

FAQs: Email Scraping