How to Get Email Leads: 10 Strategies to Grow Your List

Sales and marketing teams use email lead information to connect with prospects, combining personalized outreach, segmented email campaigns, and pay-per-click advertising. A lead’s email information is invaluable to help sales reps stay in touch and nurture relationships from discovery to conversion.

In this post, we’ll discuss 10 ways to get email leads and the best practices for improving lead quality. 

10 Ways to get (quality) email leads 

There are plenty of ways to get professional emails, but these ten email lead generation techniques are highly effective, scalable, and, more importantly, generate high-quality contacts. 

1. Email capture tools like Kaspr

LinkedIn scraping tools are an exceptional way to generate B2B email addresses at scale. SDRs can proactively identify potential prospects, capture their email addresses, and begin the outreach cadence immediately—without waiting for a list of contacts that’s likely outdated or for the customer to find them.

Email list-building tools like Kaspr help you capture a prospect’s email address while using LinkedIn or Sales Navigator. The LinkedIn Chrome Extension can even provide access to a potential customer’s email address when viewing their profile on the platform, ensuring accurate and verified data. 

You can give Kaspr’s data a test right now. Sign up to start finding your email leads. ⤵️

Use these new email addresses to build segmented lists and streamline outreach.

💡 Here’s how sales teams use Kaspr.

2. Opt-in pop-ups

Place opt-in forms through pop-ups on your site, especially on pages where users are most likely to take a specific action (like on BOFU content).

These forms should have an offer or call-to-action relevant to the page the user is visiting. 

Examples include:

• Invite users to book a free demo when on high-intent product pages.
• Encourage users to subscribe to your newsletter when visiting your blog.
• Ask users to download an eBook relevant to an article they’re reading (if you still use the traditional lead gen approach). 

Pop-ups are useful tools for building an email list, leveraging existing traffic, and capturing it before visitors leave your site. 🚪

3. Social media contests

Social media contests can generate a lot of attention and hype, increasing your organic visibility and reach. They can also help you capture email lead information.

Examples may include:

• Caption contests.
• “Share a photo” contests. 
• “Subscribe to enter” contests. 

Remember: If you don’t collect a user’s email through a contest landing page, it’s only good for reach and visibility. 

4. Landing page optimization

Landing page conversion optimization tactics improve a landing page’s design and copy to increase functionality and the user experience. It’s an essential part of increasing the quantity of email leads you’re generating through different campaign types.

Common landing page optimization tactics include:

• A/B testing to identify how single variants impact page performance (such as changing the color of a CTA button, or the headline copy) 
• Creating multiple distinct landing pages for individual products, use cases, or audience segments.
• Focus on driving a single action on each landing page.
• Clearly explain your value proposition and why customers should take the desired action.
• Have clickable CTAs that stand out and encourage form completion. 

5. Webinars and events

Webinars and other events (including both in-person and online options) are highly effective lead-capture strategies. They work like lead magnets, offering value in exchange for a lead’s email address. 

But it’s not just about getting email addresses; you must also deliver value. For example, Cognism runs a live cold-calling training session every other week, where attendees can practice their outreach techniques through role-playing. The event provides valuable tips on improving outreach. 

To increase event registration and attendance, you should do the following:

• Create events that will appeal strongly to individual segments of your customer base you want to reach.
• Promote the event thoroughly for at least a month before it happens.
• Remind users to attend the day before to increase event participation.
• Once it’s over, offer access to event recordings or resources to increase sign-ups for those who can’t attend live. 

Remember: Some users may sign up for an event but fail to attend. Your sales team can still contact the leads to start a one-on-one conversation. 

6. Lead magnets

Lead magnets are an inbound marketing technique for capturing email leads and are often part of a larger content marketing campaign. Customers can access free products, information, or services in exchange for their name and email address. 

Lead magnets may include:

• eBooks.
• Checklists.
• Templates.
• Whitepapers.
• Webinar recordings.
• Free basic tools, like a mortgage calculator or a headline generator. 

These resources should directly appeal to your target customer— not just be good for general SEO. If not, they’ll likely attract low-quality leads. Valuable content is key. 

7. Content upgrades

Content upgrades work similarly to lead magnets. You attract readers with free content and then offer free (but gated) content upgrades in exchange for their email addresses. 

These content upgrades typically offer more thorough or advanced information on the topic the user was already reading. 

So, if they were reading a blog post about implementing a social media marketing calendar, the content upgrade may have a list of different post ideas and scheduling recommendations.

DemandCurve, for example, has a ton of free, untagged resources on its website. But it also has UNIGOREABLE, its 34-day group challenge for entrepreneurs. The course teaches participants how to build their personal brands on LinkedIn and X.

(Source: DemandCurve)

Content upgrades should be valuable enough that users are willing to engage with them, but you also need your original, free content to be high enough quality that readers trust the upgrade will be worth it. Focusing on actionable content that teaches readers how to do something is key. 

8. Referral programs

Referral programs often drive valuable leads that may be more likely to convert and retain than those who find you through other means. Your current customers likely have peers with similar needs and are vouching for you by sending that referral code. 

To be effective, your customers need to know about the referral program. You can increase participation by doing the following:

• Sending an email campaign alerting them to the program and how it works.
• Reaching out to clients directly.
• Detailing your program in a defined place on your site, and ensure that program details can be found through a site search. 
• Offering clear incentives that motivate customers to refer other users. 

9. Blog subscriptions

If you’re interested in growing email subscribers, blog subscriptions are a reliable option— especially if you already use content marketing for inbound lead generation.

Blog subscriptions may include:

• Newsletters featuring a compilation of recent blog posts and links to other high-value content.
• Emails sharing key takeaways from high-interest blog posts.
• Emails letting readers know when new posts are published. 

Have CTAs to sign up for blog subscriptions on each blog post and your blog’s homepage.

10. Product demos

Product demos are typically a more bottom-funnel offering. Potential leads will typically only consider them when they’re actually interested in your product or service and want to see how it works.

But now, with tools like Storylane and Navattic, it’s possible to give users a preview of your product before committing to a demo with a salesperson. Here’s an example of what they look like. 👇

If you don’t offer an extensive free trial, or if you offer select features for advanced plans that customers may want to see before committing, product demos are key.

You can generate sign-ups by doing the following:

• Offer flexible scheduling options at different times.
• Use calendar software like Calendly, which makes it easy for leads to book and reschedule demo appointments. 
• It would be best to have product demo sign-ups in different places on your site, including high-intent product pages, relevant blog posts, and your homepage. 

What are email leads?

Email leads are the email addresses of potential customers collected through various inbound marketing, outbound marketing, and prospecting techniques. 

Obtaining professional email addresses provides a direct contact line to new potential customers. You can use email to send personalized messages to each lead to establish rapport and appeal to their unique pain points. Unlike LinkedIn InMail messages, you can follow up even if they don’t accept an initial message request. 

As a result, these leads play a vital role in email marketing and sales funnel conversion. SDRs typically build segmented email lists for prospects based on intent, industry, tech stack, and likely product use case, which they can then use to distribute personalized outreach campaigns at scale. 

Many marketing teams also email addresses in pay-per-click marketing campaigns to show relevant ads to users across different platforms they’re already using. These campaigns can increase brand awareness and provide product education, making leads more receptive to direct outreach.

Ultimately, email plays a vital role in nurturing and eventually converting leads. It often becomes a primary point of contact between a sales rep and a potential client throughout the sales process. 

Email lead generation best practices

While we’ve already discussed effective strategies for capturing email leads, there are steps you can take to improve lead quality and quantity.

Use these best practices to attract qualified leads:

👉 Choose scalable lead gen strategies.
Choose email generation strategies that your team can scale well; teams with limited marketing resources, for example, may struggle to offer regular webinars. However, leveraging low-cost email capture tools can be budget-efficient and highly scalable. 

👉  Build segmented lead lists.
As you generate new email addresses, build lists according to traits like prospect industry, company size, job title, and intent. This will help you create relevant outreach campaigns and increase their efficacy.  

👉  Use reliable email capture tools.
Tools like Kaspr can help you capture the email addresses of high-value prospects, allowing you to reach out without waiting for them to find you. Choose tools that have accurate and up-to-date data and exceptional ease of use.  

👉  Focus on value.
When running inbound marketing campaigns for lead generation, stress the value you can offer leads. Explain how your content can provide the solution or information they need and bolster the value with email marketing campaigns. 

👉  Prioritize lead relevance.
Use strategies designed to appeal to your target ICP; it’s better to have an eBook generate 100 high-quality leads than 1,000 leads that never convert. Create content, resources, and offerings that resonate with specific audience niches. 

👉  Create user-friendly sign-ups.
Each landing page and opt-in form should be user-friendly. They should be fully accessible, easy to fill out, and mobile-friendly. Ensure you ask for enough information to qualify a lead but not so much that it deters people from completing the form. 

👉  Ensure compliance with privacy laws.
Not all email scraping tools— and many email list providers— are not compliant with privacy laws. Make sure that you’re following all privacy regulations relevant to your business, including the GDPR and CCPA.

👉  Create effective CTAs.
Call-to-action buttons and copy should make users want to act quickly. Use short, concise language that includes action words like “download” or “access.” When possible, create a sense of urgency that drives users to take action now. 

👉  Follow up quickly.
Strike while the iron is hot, sending the first outreach message soon after collecting a lead’s email address. To stay in touch, send subsequent follow-up emails quickly after leads respond. You can use our tips on writing a good sales email. 

Conclusion

Effective email lead generation can increase the quality and quantity of prospects, and the right tools, strategies, and best practices are key. Sales teams can use tools like Kaspr to identify and capture accurate email addresses for high-quality leads, speeding up the prospecting and lead-generation process. 

Boost your sales pipeline with Kaspr’s accurate B2B data. Sign up to give it a whirl now.👇