How to Build a Contractor Email List for Free

This list is for businesses that sell to the trades: software makers, marketers, supply houses, insurers, lenders and recruiters. A contractor looking for homeowners to work for needs a different kind of list.

What you sell decides which rows matter. If you build these lists for others, lead lists for a client covers delivering them city by city.

Three searches in one chat conversation become one table, with a column saying which trade's search found each company. A hundred companies per trade is under what one Maps search lists, so each trade is a single search.

1. 1

   Step 1: Ask for the first trade

   Open the side panel, choose Chat and type "Find 100 plumbers in Denver, CO with emails". With the number in the request, chat starts straight away.

2. 2

   Step 2: Ask for the other two in the same conversation

   When the plumbers are in, type "Find 100 HVAC contractors in Denver, CO with emails", and after that "Find 100 roofing contractors in Denver, CO with emails".

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   Step 3: Combine the three searches

   Under the third reply, click Combine the 3 searches into one table. A new list opens with every company once, and the reply says how many were in more than one search.

   • The first column is Search, holding each search's words and place, such as "plumbers in Denver, CO".
   • It's Search rather than Location because all three searches named the same city.
   • The three original lists stay in History as they were.
4. 4

   Step 4: Check it and download it

   The combined list opens on the results page, where chat can filter it and you can download it as Excel, CSV or JSON.

Each company's emails come from its own website, read during the run, as the email extractor describes. A firm that takes jobs only by phone has no address to find; it keeps its row with an empty Emails cell.

Each company picks its own Maps category, so one trade's search comes back with several. A plumbers search can hold Plumber beside drain cleaning and water heater specialists, and an HVAC search can mix HVAC contractor with air conditioning and heating firms.

Open one search's list from History and ask chat "count by Category": it names the five most common categories with a count for each, and how many others there are. Asked of the combined table, the same question shows how the three trades add up.

Some companies turn up under another trade's search: a roofer that also fits gutters, or a plumber that installs furnaces. The Category column says what a company calls itself, and the Search column says which search found it.

One combined table can become three files, or stay as one. Filter it, download what the page shows, then change the filter for the next trade.

• "Only rows where Search contains roofing" keeps the companies the roofing search found.
• "Only rows where Category contains HVAC" keeps companies that list themselves as HVAC firms, whichever search found them.
• "Download this as CSV" gives a file with only the rows the filter kept.
• The Reset the view card under chat's reply brings every row back.

A company two searches found appears once, under the first search that found it. So search first for the trade you care about most: its companies keep that trade's label even when a later search finds them again.

To see the overlap, compare Search with Category. A row from the HVAC search whose Category says Plumber is a company that does both, and it may be worth a different pitch.

Four columns say more about a contractor than its name does.

• Operating Hours: a company that lists round-the-clock service says so here. Search the column for "24 hours" if you sell an answering service or after-hours dispatch.
• Address: a company that works at customers' homes may show no street address on Maps, so the cell can be empty while the phone and website are there.
• Website: an empty cell, or a Facebook page in its place, marks a company with no site of its own, the starting point for finding businesses without a website.
• Review Count: a number in the file, so you can put established firms at the top or find the ones with few reviews.

Skip businesses you can't reach, in Settings → Results, leaves out companies with no phone, email or website when a list is saved. It's off by default, so a list keeps every company unless you turn it on.

Combining takes up to 10 searches from one conversation, and its first column depends on what the searches have in common. For longer lists of places, Bulk works from the searches' links instead.

Bulk collects each search to the end of its list and saves them as one list, with no column naming the search, and a company in two searches can appear twice. Bulk's own page shows how to give it the links.

Building the list gives you exactly the trades you search for, with the emails each company publishes. Buying one gives you the seller's categories and the seller's sources.

Note: A company's published address is still covered by email law: check the rules before you write to it.