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Find the right contacts in your target companies with AI contact sourcing

Let lemlist's AI recommend the best-fit people at each account, ranked by fit score, and add them as contacts by hand or automatically.

AI contact sourcing finds the people to prospect inside each company in your lemlist. The AI reads the people available at the company, keeps the ones who fit your ideal customer profile, and recommends them with a role, a fit score, and the reason each person was picked. You can add the recommended people as contacts yourself, or let lemlist create them automatically and refresh the recommendations over time.

Limitations

  • AI contact sourcing is in beta. It is available only to teams where the beta is enabled.

  • Each run costs 1 credit per company. The cost is the same whether the run finds 0 or 30 people.

  • Only admins can change the contact sourcing settings.

  • Contacts are added without email or phone enrichment.

  • Contacts created automatically sync to your connected CRM, the same way as contacts you add by hand. They are not reviewed first.

  • "Matching conditions" and "When a company is added to a list" are shown in the settings but are not available yet.

Prerequisites

  • Your companies are in the Companies section of lemlist.

  • Your Company Context is set up in the AI Context Center. Without it, contact sourcing does not run and no credits are charged. See "AI Context Center in lemlist: how it works".

Phase 1: Check who the AI will look for

The AI targets people based on your AI Context Center. From your Company Context, lemlist generates the buying committee: the roles you sell to.

  1. Go to Settings → AI Context Center.

  2. Open the Buying committee tab.

  3. Review the roles and edit them if they don't match who you sell to.

Phase 2: Run contact sourcing on your companies

  1. Go to the Companies section.

  2. Find the Contact suggestions column.

  3. Run contact sourcing on one company from its cell, or on all companies at once.

  4. Wait for the run to finish.

✅ Verify: the Contact suggestions cell shows the recommended people for the company.

For each recommended person, the AI shows:

  • a role: decision maker, user, or influencer

  • a fit score

  • a short explanation of why this person was picked

A run recommends up to 7 people per company by default. You can change this number with Max suggestions (Phase 3).

  1. Expand the cell to see all recommended people.

  2. Add the people you want as contacts.

You can also run contact sourcing from a single company: open the company panel and go to the Contacts tab.

Phase 3: Set how many people are recommended and added

  1. Open the Contact suggestions side panel: from the Contact suggestions column menu, or from the gear in the company panel.

  2. In Configuration, set Max suggestions: the limit number of recommendations per company. The default is 7.

  3. To add recommended people as contacts without reviewing them, turn on Create contacts automatically.

  4. Set the limit number of contacts created per company. The default is 3.

  5. Click Save.

✅ Verify: the side panel shows your Max suggestions value and the Create contacts automatically toggle in the state you chose.

With Create contacts automatically on, lemlist adds the best-fit people first, up to the limit. The limit counts the contacts the company already has from contact sourcing, so a new run only fills the remaining room. A person who is already a contact is not duplicated.

Phase 4: Run contact sourcing automatically on new companies

  1. Open the Contact suggestions side panel.

  2. Turn on Auto run.

  3. Select the Company is created trigger.

  4. Read the confirmation. It lists every way a company can be created and shows the credit cost.

  5. Confirm, then click Save.

✅ Verify: Auto run is on and Company is created is selected.

Company is created runs for every company added to lemlist, however it is added:

  • CSV upload

  • the lemlist API

  • import from the People Database

  • company search

  • watch-list signals

  • creating a company manually

  • importing contacts, when the import creates their company

Max companies sourced at once limits how many companies are sourced from a single bulk add. The default is 200. If you raise it, a warning shows under the field.

Phase 5: Refresh the recommendations over time

A refresh runs contact sourcing again on companies whose results are older than the cadence you choose, so new people at the company are picked up.

  1. Open the Contact suggestions side panel.

  2. Choose a refresh cadence: weekly, biweekly, monthly, or quarterly.

  3. Click Save.

  • Refresh is off until you choose a cadence.

  • Each refreshed company costs 1 credit.

  • A refresh replaces the previous suggestions for the company.

  • With Create contacts automatically on, a refresh only adds contacts up to the limit per company.

Phase 6: Use contact sourcing through the API or MCP

Contact sourcing is available through the lemlist API and the lemlist MCP.

  • POST /api/contact-sourcing runs contact sourcing on a list of companies. One company is a list of one.

  • GET /api/contact-sourcing?runId= or ?companyId= returns the results.

  • POST /api/contact-sourcing/contacts adds a result as a contact, with listId and optional enrichment.

The endpoints accept lemlist company IDs only. To find the ID from a domain, use GET /api/companies?idsOrDomains= first.

Two webhook events are available: one when results are ready, and contactSourcingFailed when a run fails.

Practical example

You import 50 target accounts from a CSV. You want 3 people per account in your contacts, and new people picked up every quarter.

  1. In Settings → AI Context Center → Buying committee, check that the roles match who you sell to.

  2. In the Contact suggestions side panel, turn on Create contacts automatically and set the limit number of contacts created per company to 3.

  3. Choose the quarterly refresh cadence and click Save.

  4. Run contact sourcing on all 50 companies.

The run costs 50 credits. Up to 3 people per company become contacts and sync to your CRM if one is connected. Each quarter, lemlist re-sources the companies and fills any remaining room up to 3.

Troubleshooting & pitfalls

Issue: Contacts appeared in my CRM that nobody added

Root cause: Create contacts automatically is on, and contacts created by contact sourcing sync to your connected CRM.

Fix:

  1. Open the Contact suggestions side panel.

  2. Turn off Create contacts automatically.

  3. Click Save. New recommendations now wait for you to add them.

Issue: Credits were used without anyone running contact sourcing

Root cause: Auto run or a refresh cadence is on. Each company created or refreshed costs 1 credit.

Fix:

  1. Open the Contact suggestions side panel.

  2. Turn off Auto run, or remove the refresh cadence.

  3. Click Save.

Issue: A run found no people for a company

Root cause: No one at the company matched your buying committee, or the company has no people data to scan. The run still costs 1 credit.

Fix:

  1. Check the roles in Settings → AI Context Center → Buying committee.

  2. Make sure the company has a domain or LinkedIn URL so it can be matched.

Issue: This lead was not filed under this account, so they were not added here — their profile lists a different current employer

Root cause: The person's profile shows a different current employer, so they belong to another company in lemlist.

Fix: Find the person under their current company, or skip them.

If your case is different

  • If you want to search for people yourself with filters, see "How to find leads from a list of company names".

  • If you need to set up your Company Context, see "AI Context Center in lemlist: how it works".

  • If you want to know how the Companies section works, see "Companies section: overview".

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