Hi, there is a list of contact details (business name, owner name, email address) for an industry I serve available online publicly. The listing has 20 contacts per page and the rest are opened via pagination. There are between 4 and 5 thousand, I want to take the list and add it to a spreadsheet to upload to an email marketing platform. Would I need to manually copy and paste every one or is there some automated way of doing it?
The fastest way to accomplish this is probably to use Fiverr.com and hire someone to scrape the email addresses and send them to you in a spreadsheet. Or post an ad on Craigslist with a description of what you want and you will get a ton of responses. On Fiverr perform a search for "scrape emails from a website" and you shouldn't pay more than $5-$10 for the work. For DIY, you can use something like Import.io or Parsehub. The general term for this type of task is "website scraping." From a business perspective, I think it's better to pay someone else to do it because it costs nothing and will be faster than doing it yourself. Lots of websites block web scraping these days but people who sell scraping as a service will know how to get around that type of barrier.
Totally agree with Jeffrey on this. Also most no code parsing tools do not really work as expected most of the time. And websites change from time to time, rendering a one-of solution useless after a change in the code.
Plus you only pay for results and can determine the format you need for further processing.
Agree with others that, if you really want to do this, hire someone via a freelancing site.
But I'd ask first whether you really want or need to do this. Emailing people who haven't raised their hand to hear from you will almost definitely result in low opens, little engagement, and a problematic sender score.
You're better off attracting leads to you rather than landing in their inbox uninvited.
This can be so hard when you're a new business and you don't yet have a list. You might have to rely on paid tactics (ads and social posts) more at first than on organic. But, with the right strategy and content, eventually your organic will overtake your paid and you'll have an engaged list that actually turns into leads and customers. Not unsubscribes.
