Sales Strategy

15 Best Lead Generation Tools (2024 Update)

lemlist team
LAST UPDATED
April 4, 2024
READING TIME
7 min.

Your marketing automation software, particularly lead generation tools can increase your qualified leads by 451%.

However, before you start allocating your marketing budget for the quarter, you need to compare and find the right lead-generation tools for your needs.

This article will review 15 tools and outline their pros and cons so you can make an informed decision.

What is a Lead Generation Tool?

A lead generation tool is any software used to automate the process of generating leads.

Popularly referred to as lead generators, these tools help scale the process of acquiring both inbound and outbound leads.

Depending on your business needs, the type of lead generation tool you’ll use will differ from what another company would use. However, their benefits are immense.

Some of the reasons why businesses use these tools are;

  • It reduces the workload: Rather than having your team manually send hundreds of emails each week or track the number of calls and responses, a lead generation tool speeds up the process. This way, your team can focus on other crucial tasks like personalized demos.
  • Improves engagement: Through the personalization and targeting that comes with acquiring these leads, lead generation tools that focus on communication can help improve engagement rates. Your prospects can proceed down the sales funnel while receiving highly targeted content.
  • Provides detailed insights and data: Lead generators often come with an analytics dashboard where you can track the performance of your lead generation strategies. With these metrics, you can understand what works versus what doesn’t and improve it over time.

The Best 15 Lead Generation Tools in 2024

There are different types and categories of lead-generation tools. Here are a few with high reviews and ratings you should consider using in 2024;

The Best Email Finders and Verifiers

If your primary goal is to find emails of prospects you can add to your sales funnel, these are the top email finders and verifiers you can purchase;

1. lemlist

lemlist is an all-in-one lead generation tool that allows you to find high-quality leads with a single search.

In addition to the job title, name and LinkedIn profile, the tool also provides an email address. Simply enter the name of the person and the company name.

It will search through the web, find their company email address and then verify the email so you’re sure of a high email deliverability.

Pricing

The tool has a 14-day free trial that allows you to try out this feature and more for free.

If you’d like to subscribe to a paid plan, the pricing starts at $59/month.

✅ Pros

  • You have more tools like LinkedIn outreach, a cold email generator, a custom landing page, a cold call tool and more in one plan
  • Email addresses are verified and those that can’t be are highlighted so you’re in the loop
  • Email A/B testing and warmup for deliverability
  • Extensive reporting and data analytics for campaign performance
  • Integrations to add the leads to your existing database or Google Sheets
  • A free trial for you to explore

❌ Cons

  • There is no plan exclusive to the email finder alone.

2. Hunter.io

Hunter.io, quite similar to lemlist, allows you to find any company email address with a name and company.

However, you have to streamline the search with the email finder.

If you’d like to find multiple people across different industries, there is also a bulk email finder.

Here, you’d have to upload a CSV with the names and it will reconfigure the file.

Pricing

While it has a free plan, the pricing starts at $34/month.

✅ Pros

  • Email finder for bulk searches
  • A free plan is available
  • Multiple integrations when you need to migrate your database

❌ Cons

  • The paid plan has limited features and there’s no multi-channel outreach
  • No AI assistant to help with cold email templates

3. Rocket Reach

This software tool provides valid email addresses via a Chrome extension.

It does this by scanning over millions of profiles and offering those most relevant to your search. There’s also a bulk email search that allows you to get thousands of prospects in one search.

You can also get other contact information like LinkedIn and phone numbers.

Pricing

The pricing model is different because instead of a free trial or plan, you get five free searches per month. The paid plan starts at $39/month.

✅ Pros

  • Five free searches every month
  • A bulk search option to find a lot of users

❌ Cons

  • Email look-ups are limited - even on a paid plan
  • There is no specific email verifier feature available
  • There are no outreach options like emails or sequence-building

The Best LinkedIn Outreach Tools

If you’re looking to specifically find LinkedIn contacts and reach out to them, some lead generation tools designed specifically for this include:

4. Sales Navigator

LinkedIn has its own lead generation and nurturing tool that provides you with prospects and helps you push them further down your sales funnel.

You can automate messages, send connection requests, run ads and so much more.

Oftentimes, you don’t even need to search because it recommends leads to you.

Source: Martech

Pricing

The pricing isn’t disclosed. However, all plans have a free trial you can explore.

✅ Pros

  • There is an indicator to show you when a message has been read or not
  • You get the full picture of what your prospects do
  • Recommendations for new prospects that fit your search criteria
  • A free trial on each plan

❌ Cons

  • There is no lead-capturing form when running ads
  • Results can be incorrect especially when searching by topics
  • It is relatively expensive

5. Snov.io

Snov.io is a lead generation tool that scans the web and compiles hundreds of LinkedIn leads for you along with their business email address.

All you have to do is install the Chrome extension and you can collect these leads. It also verifies the LinkedIn profile and email addresses it collects.

While it is very efficient especially when paired with a sales navigator, this tool can get quite expensive. This is because each LinkedIn search costs you credits.

Pricing

There’s a trial plan and the paid plan starts at $30/month.

✅ Pros

  • Simple interface
  • You can find emails and build email sequences

❌ Cons

  • You can only acquire LinkedIn addresses, you can’t send them a message
  • It is quite expensive

We recommend, especially when on a budget, to use lemlist because, while you can find emails and LinkedIn profiles for the same price, there’s also an option to send automated LinkedIn messages directly from the tool.

Best Cold Email and Cold Call Outreach Tools

When you need to send out cold emails directly to your prospects, you need an email marketing and outreach tool.

Our top recommendations include:

6. Close

While it is more of a CRM tool, Close is one of the best options available for sending out cold emails and calls.

This is why many sales teams incorporate it in their strategy.

You have access to store your leads and contact them. There are email templates you can take advantage of and you can make calls directly from the platform.

The tool also allows you to set up multiple concurrent workflows.

Pricing

While the pricing plan starts at $49/month for each user, there is a free trial so you can see if it really works for you.

✅ Pros

  • Automatic email sync so all communications from the platform are tracked
  • You can get detailed reports and customize to see the data you need
  • Integrate it with your other in-house applications and software

❌ Cons

  • It can get relatively expensive, especially for teams on a budget
  • There is no warmup or deliverability booster like Lemlist
  • You cannot include custom images or attachment
  • No A/B testing

7. Overloop

Overloop is another outreach platform that allows you to carry out multi-channel campaigns like LinkedIn automation, cold emails, cold calls and more.

It also has an email finder but unlike lemlist, there is no email verifier.

You can set up three running campaigns at the same time and track their progress.

Pricing

There is a free trial to try out and the paid plan starts at $49/month per user.

✅ Pros

  • You can set up multi-channel campaigns from this service
  • It integrates seamlessly with sales automation tools
  • It has an email finder and a custom tracking domain to improve your email deliverability

❌ Cons

  • The call feature is very limited
  • There’s a learning curve you have to overcome at first
  • Support can be slow compared to other services

8. Outreach

Outreach is a sales engagement tool that automates lead generation and nurturing workflows.

So whether you’re prospecting or just about to close a deal, this tool is quite handy. You can create different types of campaigns and get detailed analytics on how well they are doing.

It’s particularly good for teams because the manager can have a full admin view of every activity and progress you’re making towards lead generation.

Pricing

Unfortunately, there is no free trial or free plan. Even the paid strategy is only available on request making it non-transparent.

✅ Pros

  • Detailed analytics and dashboards for reporting
  • Multiple campaign options
  • A/B testing is available and there are helpful email templates

❌ Cons

  • Integration issues especially with non-popular CRMs
  • No free trial or free plan
  • No transparent pricing

9. Hubspot

Being a very popular CRM, Hubspot helps its users generate new leads via landing pages, custom forms, a dashboard for tracking sales and lead-scoring projects as well as a contact management system.

It also has a very powerful marketing and sales automation system where you can create several workflows.

While it is the perfect tool for businesses who want to scale on one platform, it gets expensive fast.

Pricing

The pricing for small teams starts at $20/month and it can go as high as $3000/month.

Fortunately, there is a free plan

✅ Pros

  • It comes with a content management system
  • Simple user experience
  • Has multiple features you can use to generate leads
  • There is a free plan

❌ Cons

  • It only has annual subscriptions - so you have to commit for a whole year
  • There are very limited features on the lower plans. For example, no A/B testing on small team plans
  • It can get expensive very quickly - the more features you need, the more you’ll pay

The Best PPC Lead Generation Tools

To run PPC tripwires and ads, you need certain outbound lead generation tools designed for this purpose alone.

Usually, they offer you keywords along with a myriad of other tools.

Some of them include;

10. SEMRush

SEMRush is a software designed to improve your lead generation through PPC, SEO and content marketing.

There is an agency directory that you get listed on to receive new leads. You can also manage projects, create workflows and organize the data you get on the app itself.

The software provides keywords for your PPC campaigns based on searches, tips on how to improve your website for inbound SEO as well as competitor insights so you stay on top of the market.

Pricing

There’s a free plan but if you’d want to upgrade, the paid plan starts at $109 per month.

✅ Pros

  • Daily tracker for your rankings
  • You get opportunities to improve PPC campaigns and SEO too
  • A free forever plan with limited searches
  • Competitor analysis especially in over-saturated markets

❌ Cons

  • The paid plan is very expensive
  • Might not be ideal for small businesses

11. Google Ads

Designed specifically to drive traffic to your website, Google Ads is an efficient lead-generation tool for awareness and acquisition.

It helps you get your product to the right audience with high-precision targeting.

Simply bid for certain keywords on the tool and if you’re the winning bid, when anyone searches for that keyword on Google, your ad is displayed as the first result.

Pricing

Pay per click model

✅ Pros

  • The results are very fast
  • You’re guaranteed to show up in front of the right people
  • There’s no fixed budget like software services - you bid what you can afford

❌ Cons

  • Whenever someone clicks on your ad, you have to pay
  • It is very competitive as other companies can outbid you
  • You need to compliment it with a very high-quality landing page

12. Leadpages

Since you need a landing page and forms for your PPC campaigns, lead magnets and other lead generation strategies, lead pages are a tool that helps you take care of that.

It is easy to use as you don’t need any knowledge of coding to set it up.

Pricing

There’s a 14-day free trial and the paid plan starts at $37 per month.

✅ Pros

  • Extensive template library for forms and landing pages
  • A very flexible builder that requires no code
  • Detailed analytics for decision-making

❌ Cons

  • Not a lot of customisation
  • Limited customer support

13. HootSuite

For social media PPC campaigns, Hootsuite is a tool that allows you to manage these ads because they help you generate leads from your social media.

You can set up Facebook, Instagram, and even Google Ads.

These could be story ads, video ads, messenger ads or even a display ad.

Choose to push out these campaigns in bulk or send them out individually.

✅ Pros

  • Seamlessly integrates with design tools like Canva
  • Schedule and publish ads directly from the app
  • Cross-post content across multiple social media profiles
  • 30-day free trial

❌ Cons

  • No free plan
  • You need a credit card for the free trial
  • Support can be very slow to respond

14. Turnstile by Wistia

Generating leads through your videos is a unique way to switch up the game. This app allows you to collect emails from the videos you embed on your website.

Think webinars, podcasts and other resources you’ve offered for free.

Pricing

To access this new product by Wistia, you need to be on the Plus plan which is priced at $19/month.

✅ Pros

  • You can edit how and when you want the form to display
  • Connect your email marketing platforms for seamless follow-up
  • Analytics to give insights on best-performing videos

❌ Cons

  • There is no free plan or free trial for this product

15. Calendly

If your sales team needs to book several calls, streamline the process by allowing them to send a link with their availability.

This tool helps teams reduce hours spent in call bookings and even has a workflow for automated reminders to both parties.

Pricing: You can enjoy the free plan for basic bookings and if you prefer a more sophisticated option, the paid plan starts at $10 per month.

✅ Pros

  • Excellent calendar integrations
  • Detailed workflows
  • Work across multiple time zones
  • Pre-meeting notes and pointers
  • Free plan

❌ Cons

  • The mobile app is limited compared to the web version
  • Group scheduling is limited

Wrapping Up

When choosing a lead generation tool, you need to compare features and find one within your budget.

A tool like Lemlist combines multiple features like LinkedIn outreach, cold calls, cold emails, automated sequences and email finders for a fixed price.

Signup for the free trial to see how it works! 😉

Get weekly outreach tips
SHARE THIS ARTICLE
Thanks! You've successfully subscribed to lemlist newsletter
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
G2 Rating
Price
Best for
Standout feature
Con
4.9
star
star
star
star
star
$30/mo
$75/mo
$2,999/mo
Large, distributed sales teams
AI evaluation precision, gamified KPIs
Lack of tracking system
4.6
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Sales operations and finance teams
Powerful configurability
Limited training resources and complex to navigate
4.4
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Mid-market and enterprise businesses
Comprehensive incentive management
Potentially high cost and steep learning curve
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
$15/user/mo
$40/user/mo
Enterprise: custom price
Complex sales structures and businesses of all sizes
Complex sales structures and businesses of all sizes
Steep learning curve
4.6
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Collaborative teams
Connected planning
Complexity and steep learning curve
4.6
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Companies with complex sales structures
Complex incentive compensation management (ICM) with high efficiency and accuracy
Complexity for smaller teams and potentially high costs
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Companies who want to automate commission calculations and payouts
Simplicity and ease of use
Lack of features like redirection
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
$30/user/mo
$35/user/mo
Custom: upon request
Businesses that need a comprehensive and user-friendly sales compensation management software
Ease of use and adoption
Lack of ability to configure the product based on user needs
4.8
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Companies with modern sales culture and businesses who want real-time insights
A built-in dispute management and real-time visibility
Users say it works slowly, customer support is slow
4.9
star
star
star
star
star
$30/user/mo
$50/user/mo
Smaller sales teams
Powerful automation
Lesser user base and average user interface
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
Not publicly available
Companies with scalable needs
Automated Commission Calculations
Lack of filtering by date, no mobile app
ERP vs. CRM
ERP
CRM
Summary
Backbone of a business's internal operations.
Backbone of customer-centric interactions and operations.
Goal
To centralize and streamline core business processes in a company.
To increase customer experience, satisfaction and loyalty, and boost sales.
Focus
Internal operations and processes across departments (finance, accounting, inventory, supply chain, HR, and sales).
All interactions with leads and customers.
Manages
Internal business data like financial data, inventory levels, production details, supply chain, HR info.
All customer data like contact info, purchase history, communication history, customer preferences and more.
Users
Finance, accounting, operations, supply chain, and HR departments.
Customer-facing teams like sales, marketing, and customer service.
Benefits
Streamlines operations, improves data accuracy, enhances decision-making, boosts collaboration, increases productivity.
Improves customer relationships, increases sales, strengthens customer service, personalizes marketing campaigns, provides insights.
Price
$150 per user per year on average.
$10 to $30 per user per month on average.
PRM Tool
Rating
Feature
Pro
Con
Mobile App
Integrations
Free Plan
Pricing
4.65
star
star
star
star
star-half
Org-wide alignment
User-friendly layout and database
Suboptimal as a personal CRM
square-check
Lack of tracking system
square-check
Team: $20/month
Business: $45/month
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
Social Media Integration
Easy contact data collection
No marketing/sales features
square-check
Lack of tracking system
square-xmark
7-day trial
$12/month
4.75
star
star
star
star
star-half
Block Functions
High customization capability
Not a dedicated CRM
square-check
Limited
square-check
Plus: €7.50/month
Business: €14/month
N/A
Open-source
Open-source flexibility
Requires extensive manual input
square-xmark
Limited
square-check
Self-hosted
$9/month or
$90/year
3.1
star
star
star
Simple iOS app
Ideal for non-tech-savvy users
iPhone only
square-check
iOS only
Limited
square-xmark
1-month trial
$1.49/month or
$14.99/month
3.6
star
star
star
star-half
Smart Contact Management
Feature-rich and flexible
Reported bugs
square-check
Rich
square-xmark
7-day trial
Premium: $13.99/month
Teams: $17.99/month
4.4
star
star
star
star
star-half
Customizable Interface
Customizable for teamwork
Pricey for personal use
square-check
Rich
square-xmark
Standard: $24/member
Premium: $39/member
4.7
star
star
star
star
star-half
Integrated Calling
Integrated Calling
Too sales-oriented & pricey
square-check
Rich
square-xmark
14-day trial
Startup: $59/user/month
Professional: $329/user/month
4.8
star
star
star
star
star
Business Card Scanning
Business Card Scanning
Mobile only
square-check
Limited
square-check
$9.99/month
4.45
star
star
star
star
star-half
160+ app integrations
Comprehensive integrations
No free app version
square-check
Rich
square-xmark
14-day trial
$29.90/month or
$24.90/month (billed annually)
Capterra Rating
Free Trial
Free Plan
Starting Price (excluding the free plan)
Maximum Price (for the most expensive plan)
Best for
4.5
star
star
star
star
star-half
square-check
14-day
square-check
€15/month/seat billed annually
€792/month/3 seats billed annually + €45/month for each extra seat
Versatility and free plan
4.2
star
star
star
star
square-check
30-day
square-xmark
But it offers reduced price to authorised nonprofit organisations
€25/user/month
€500/user/month billed annually (includes Einstein AI)
Best overall operational CRM
4.3
star
star
star
star
star-half
square-xmark
square-check
Limited to 3 users
Comprehensive incentive management
€52/user/month billed annually
Small-medium businesses and automation
4.5
star
star
star
star
star-half
square-check
14-day
square-xmark
€14/seat/month billed annually
€99/seat/month billed annually
Sales teams and ease of use
4.1
star
star
star
star
square-xmark
square-check
Limited 10 users
$9.99/user/month billed annually
$64.99/user/month billed annually
Free plan for very small teams up to 10
CRM goal
Increase the sales conversion rate for qualified leads from marketing automation campaigns by 10% in the next 6 months.
SMART Breakdown
1. Specific: It targets a specific area (conversion rate) for a defined segment (qualified leads from marketing automation).
2. Measurable: The desired increase (10%) is a clear metric, and the timeframe (6 months) allows for progress tracking.
3. Achievable: A 10% increase is possible based on historical data and potential improvements.
4. Relevant: Boosting sales from marketing efforts aligns with overall business objectives.
5. Time-bound: The 6-month timeframe creates urgency and a clear target date.
Actions
Step 1: Refine lead qualification criteria to ensure high-quality leads are nurtured through marketing automation.
Step 2: Personalize marketing automation campaigns based on lead demographics, interests, and behavior.
Step 3: Develop targeted landing pages with clear calls to action for qualified leads.
Step 4: Implement lead scoring to prioritize high-potential leads for sales follow-up.
Step 5: Track and analyze campaign performance to identify areas for optimization.
Outcomes
Increased sales and revenue
Improved marketing automation ROI
Marketing and sales alignment
Data-driven marketing optimization
Table
CDP Software
CRM Software
Approach
Data-centric
Customer-centric
Focus
Interactions across various channels and touchpoints, both online and offline.
Sales, marketing, and customer service interactions.
Functionality
Automatically collects, organizes, tags, and makes data available in real-time.
Helps businesses track customer interactions, sales pipelines, prospects, and service requests.
Goals
Personalized customer experiences across all channels.
Better customer relationships, streamlined processes, and improved profitability.
Benefits
Data integration, management, and accessibility, allowing for detailed analysis and segmentation.
Better communication within teams and with customers by organizing information about customer interactions and history.
Data Handling
Handles both identified and anonymous data, stitches together various data points.
Deals primarily with identified customer data.
Use Cases
Personalized marketing campaigns, targeted advertising, content customization across multiple channels.
Managing campaigns and leads, enhancing customer service, providing better customer support, increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Examples
Insider, Bloomreach, Salesforce Marketing Cloud CDP
HubSpot, Salesforce Sales Cloud Lightning Professional, and Zoho CRM

What you should look at next

Receive weekly outreach tips in your inbox, sent to 210 000+ salespeople, marketers, founders, and entrepreneurs worldwide!

Subscribe to the lemlist newsletter
You've successfully subscribed to the lemlist newsletter!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.