How to Use the Sales Navigator Search to Emails

*For a workflow targeting 10–20 LinkedIn leads, the full process typically takes around 5–10 minutes total, including exporting search results and finding professional emails, plus a few extra seconds for the workflow to process.

Before you start

• Awareness of platform and safety limits:
  • Sales Navigator displays only the first 2,500 results per people search.
  • If you enable email discovery, cut this number in half, since the automation will perform additional page visits.

If you want to export from LinkedIn searches, use the LinkedIn Search to Emails instead.

Step 1: Connect your Sales Navigator account

To let the automation act on your behalf:

1. Install the PhantomBuster browser extension and connect your Sales Navigator session in one click.
2. If you’re not using Chrome or Firefox, you can retrieve your session cookie manually (see our cookie guide).

Check your browser user agent
Make sure your browser is up to date before connecting your account. 
→ If your Chrome or Firefox version is outdated, your session cookie may expire much more quickly, and you’ll need to reconnect often.

Step 2: Add your searches or lists URLs and set extracting limits

You can provide your searches in three ways:

1. A single Sales Navigator people search URL or list URL: Paste the URL.
2. Provide a Google Sheet with Sales Navigator people search URLs (make sure it’s shared with “Anyone with the link”).
   → If you’re using a spreadsheet, the automation defaults to the first column (A). To use a different column, enter the column’s header name in the field “Name of column containing searches or lists.”
3. Upload a CSV file with Sales Navigator people search URLs (CSV upload is only available on paid plans).

Advanced settings (dropdown in setup)

1. Number of results to scrape per search or list (optional): 
   → Default = scrape up to the Sales Navigator cap: 2500.
2. Number of email discovery credits to use per day (optional):
   → Define how many credits should be consumed daily. Default is 10.
3. Use your second Sales Navigator team (optional):
   → If you belong to more than one Sales Navigator team, check this box to pull data from your second team instead of the default one.

Result file settings (dropdown in setup)

• Fields to keep (optional):
  • Export only the fields you care about by listing them (comma-separated).
    Example: profileUrl, jobTitle.
  • This generates a second CSV file with just those fields.
  • Learn more in our guide: Customize how your Phantom results files are saved.

Step 3: Enrich your leads with professional emails (optional)

You can choose to add verified professional email addresses to each LinkedIn profile.

Not every profile will return an email address. The match rate depends on the data available, so the number of verified emails may be lower than your credits used.

1. Click on the “Select your email discovery service” dropdown.
2. Choose one of the following options:
   • PhantomBuster credits (default option)
     • This option is powered by BetterContact's waterfall enrichment, which queries 20+ data sources and runs multi-layer email verification to deliver higher match rates and more valid emails.
     • Each plan includes monthly email discovery credits.
     • 1 credit = 1 attempt to find and verify an email for one profile.
     • Credits reset monthly.
   • Third-party services
     • Connect your own account by entering your API key for:
       • Dropcontact.io
       • Hunter.io

Enabling email discovery means the automation will spend more time on each profile, since it needs to process both the message and the email lookup. This increases execution time per launch.

Tip for safe use
When using email discovery, process about half of the default daily recommendation for your automation. This reduces the risk of hitting LinkedIn’s rate limits.
Example: with the LinkedIn Profile Visitor Phantom, aim for ~40 profiles per day instead of the default 80.

Step 4 (Optional): Advanced settings

Advanced settings are available if you want to fine-tune how your Workflow runs, but by default they’re already optimized for most use cases.

We recommend leaving them as they are unless a guide specifically instructs you to change something.

→ For a detailed overview of all advanced options (like execution limits, retries, email notifications, proxies, webhooks, and file management), see our Advanced settings guide.

Launch and results

When you’re ready:

• Toggle the ON/OFF switch to start your Workflow.

This automation runs automatically on a fixed schedule using two workers:

1. Sales Navigator Search Export → Runs once per hour to extract leads from your searches or lists (up to your configured results per search).
2. Professional Email Finder → Runs once per hour to enrich those leads with verified emails (up to your daily email credit limit).

You cannot change this schedule: it’s designed to run hourly in the background until your configured limits are reached.

Once it finishes:

1. Open the Results tab in the Workflow console to see the data collected.
2. Download your results as a CSV or JSON file.

→ To learn how to export your data to Google Sheets, integrate with other tools, or reuse it in more automations, check our Access and Export your Phantom Results guide.

Export and input limits on the Free plan
If you’re on the Free plan or Free trial, some features are limited:
- CSV exports include only the first 10 rows of results.
- CSV download links (for dynamic viewing in Google Sheets or integrations) are not available.
- JSON exports are not available.
- CSV upload as an input method is not supported.
To unlock all features, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.

What you give (Input) and What you get (Output)

This section gives you a detailed breakdown of everything you need to provide to run this Workflow, and everything you’ll receive once it completes.

What you give (Input)

What you get (Output)

Tips and troubleshooting

Common pitfalls

• Expecting emails right away → Email discovery happens after profiles are extracted, and not every profile will return an email.
• Not enough email credits → You’ll need PhantomBuster email discovery credits (powered by BetterContact) or a third-party API key (Dropcontact, Hunter, Snov) to enrich profiles.
• Using a private Google Sheet → make sure it’s shared with “Anyone with the link.”
• Only 2500 results per Sales Navigator search → Use multiple variations if needed.
• Fixed schedule only → You can’t adjust when the automation runs. It’s set to launch automatically once per hour: first extracting results, then enriching them with emails, until your daily limits are reached.

If you run into issues

• Browse the Fix Issues & Troubleshoot Errors section for solutions to common problems.
• Review our Automation Rate Limits by Platform guide.
• Check our Best Practices for Social Media Automation guide.

Suggested automations

After extracting emails, you can:

• Follow up with outreach → Use the Sales Navigator Message Sender or Sales Navigator Auto Connect to engage.
• Expand into accounts → Run the Sales Navigator Account Employees Export to pull entire teams from your enriched accounts.
• Analyze and segment → Use the AI LinkedIn Profile Enricher to group leads by industry, job function, or location.