How to Craft the Perfect Outreach Email for Influencers (Template)

Statistics say that about 49% of consumers depend on influencer recommendations to make decisions. With these statistics and many others, it is clear how powerful influencers control the choices of consumers with their stories. Knowing this, you should also be leveraging influencer marketing for the growth of your business, or you are already, but not getting desired results. You have followed the advice of marketers and have done the formalities of influencer marketing, but no results. You already compiled a list of targets, screened the list, removed the ones that might not fall into your niche, and you have finally sent every one of them an outreach email. Still, no results... If you’re not getting the desired result, then something is wrong. Your outreach email is probably poor. Yes, that is the major cause of failed influencer outreach campaigns. A lot of marketers and business owners fail in this part more often than not. Writing an outreach email is not the same as writing a formal letter — as we may have been taught in college. Those techniques are now obsolete. When writing formal letters, we have been taught to always start with “Dear Ms” or “Dear Sir,”  and the formalities might irritate your prospect. This is just the tip of the iceberg. In this post, I will be sharing with you tips on crafting the perfect outreach email for influencers and increase your chance of having a high response rate. Let’s get started.

Track Your Influencer Outreach Success With This Template

Before moving on, download this simple spreadsheet template to track which influencers you have contacted and whether they acted upon your request.

Know Your Audience

Do you know your target well enough to know the best way to pitch to them? By saying “audience,” I am referring to your email recipient. Getting to know your audience is not easy because you probably haven’t met with the recipient before. How do you know the target well enough to get a response from your email? All we need to know is if they are the best fit for our outreach campaign. There is no system or formula around knowing your audience, but there are ways you can successfully predict them.

Follow Them on Social Media

This means getting to know them outside their professionalism and what they are passionate about. Following them on Twitter, connecting with them on LinkedIn, and friending them on Facebook will go a long way. Take your time to comment on their post, retweet their tweets, like their posts, and while doing all of these, be genuine.

Contact the Right Person

Not contacting the right person for your outreach is the first step to failure. The right person is not the same as pitching to the right company. You could be pitching to the wrong person in the right company. Don’t get this twisted. Imagine you are looking to write for a particular industry blog, but you reached out to the social media manager of the industry blog instead of the editor. You pitched to the right company but the wrong person. Though the social media manager might be able to pass on your idea to the editor, what if they are busy and forget to mention you, or maybe they are not in good terms with the editor. Just think about this! If you are going to get a high response rate, then you should double-check that you are reaching out to the right person. Now, the problem here is content marketers find it difficult to get a hold of the right email address. There are different methods we can use to find the desired email address.

Check the contact page on their website.

Their contact page should contain their email address. If it does not, then you can use the next method.

Use Hunter.io.

With Hunter.io, all you have to do is type the target website address into the box and search. The software will crawl the site and pick out all the email addresses on the website. You can easily find your target email address regardless of the page it is hidden on within the website. The downside of this software is that it only searches for email addresses with the company domain name as the suffix.

• If these methods still don’t work for you, you can try other platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Skype.

How Busy Are They?

Are your prospects often busy? You need to find out. How do we do this? The truth is, there is no exact way of knowing how busy your desired recipient is. It would not be written on their headshot that they are busy, after all. I asked Ben Sailer what his opinion was on this. Keep in mind that Ben is a busy content marketer who receives a good number of pitches every day and has sent pitches too, so he has seen both sides. According to Ben, “it is better to make an educated guess at how busy a person might be based on their role or job title.” One can expect a content marketer to be busy because of their tight, daily schedule. To be safe, always assume your targets are busy and get straight to the point. If you get a reply, then you can send a more detailed email.

Personalize Your Email

Once you write your email, follow these steps to tailor it to your recipient.

Address Recipients by Their First Name

Studies show that personalized emails — including the recipient’s first name in the subject line — have higher open rates. The reasons for this are not far-fetched. We appreciate being addressed by our name rather than something generalized. Addressing your target by their first name shows you have taken the time to learn more about them. Here is a simple approach to this:

• Wrong – “Hey webmaster,” “Hey blogger,” “Hey man,” “Hey,” “Hi Sir,” or “Hi Ms”
• Right – “Hi Mark” or “Hello Ben”

Write a Catchy Email Subject Line

A poor email subject can land you into trouble regardless of your beautiful, poetic, and lovely words hidden in your email. Yes, hidden because it doesn’t appear to the recipient until it is opened. The tendency of your email being opened can depend on how attractive your email subject is. You might have successfully taken your time to write the body of the email, but you need to take more time to think about the best subject. According to Convince and Convert, 33.3% of email recipients open emails based on the subject line alone. Considering the number of emails an influencer receives daily, the chances of your email being opened is slim. To get this right from the start, try looking at some emails you have received in the past that you think has an attractive subject. Then mimic the subject for your outreach. You can also test email subject lines with CoSchedule’s Email Subject Line Tester:

Show You Know the Influencer With Your First Line

As simple as this seems, it is an important outreach tip that you should put in mind. Knowing your audience is not enough, you have to let it reflect in your outreach email. For example:

“Hi Mike, I am a fan of your work, and your editorial calendar template has gone a long way in helping me organize my content marketing. I am reaching out to pitch a possible guest post for your blog. [Title - How to Craft a Perfect Outreach Email] Crafting an outreach email has always proven to be a difficult task for content marketers. This post will shine more light on the tips and tricks of increasing the response rate of an outreach email. To get a taste of the quality I can bring to the table, below are links to my previous guest posts. (1 link) (2nd link) Do you think this will resonate well with your audience? I look forward to hearing from you. Best regards, Eniola”

This is a template I have used very well. Take a look at the first paragraph — it shows how well I know my target and how he has helped me.

Flatter Your Target

According to Dale Carnegie in his book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, he emphasizes the need to flatter people. Flattering people does not have to be overly done, or it could make your target feel awkward. Outside of using flattery to win the attention of my outreach target, I have also used it as a tool in winning the hearts of friends. I strongly testify to how well this works. If you have been following all the other tips for outreach emails, then try flattering your target. This works well for cold emails, too. Back to the example above, the template starts off by flattering the target; telling Mike how much his editorial calendar helped me. To do this well,

• Start by flattering your audience with how much you love their work
• Do not go overboard with it
• Be genuine

Get Straight to the Point

Cut off the fluff and get straight to the point with what you want from the influencer. If you spend the whole email flattering your target without getting straight to the point, you will only end up frustrating your recipient. As mentioned earlier, influencers are busy people and prioritize their time. Below, you’ll find proof of this argument. During the course of writing this blog post, I reached out to Lilach Bullock to share a post of mine. Here is an outreach email I sent. Did you notice how I ended the email with a request to prompt a reply?

Format Your Email

Now you have successfully crafted your email and now we hit send. Not so fast. You need to format your email to look professional. Email formatting either encourages the target to respond to your email template or not. You won't want your email to look messy and unattended, so you need to put some time into designing your email. A messy email shows who you are. I am not a designing expert, but design matters a lot in showing your professionalism. Try your best to always look professional when formatting your email. When formatting your email, you need to look at the subject, body, and footer of your outreach email. An influencer that does this perfectly well is Lilach Bullock. Below is a screenshot of what most of her email footers look like. Here is Lilach's reply containing a well-formatted footer. The email footer design shows the recipient of Lilach’s email what she does without her writing anything in the email. This is what a professional email should look like. Here are some email design tips from Visme to get you started with formatting your email to increase your response rate.

• Keep the text short and sweet
• Utilize white space
• Use a well-organized layout
• Frame content with header/footer
• Create a visual hierarchy for easy navigation and reading

Follow Up on Your Email

Not having a reply does not mean your outreach email is bad. Your email could have gotten to the spam box. According to Propellercrm, sending more follow-up emails can triple your response rate. Influencers are busy and might forget to reply to your email. You can do yourself a favor and remind them or ask if they got your previous email.

Find a Template That Works for You

As time goes on, you will get comfortable and also find an outreach email that works best for you. It would be immediate. It took me over 20 to 30 emails to find a template email that works best for me.

Rules Guiding an Effective Outreach Email

Here are some basic best practices for crafting your message.

Timing matters

The time you send an outreach email matters a lot. The best day to send an outreach email is Tuesday. Weekends are not the best time to send an outreach email — you can spend your weekends doing research. Check out this study on the best time to send emails.

Don't Misspell the Name

Do not misspell the name of your target, and address them by their first name.

Be Genuine

You do not need to tell a lie in order to get the attention of your target. If your target is a lover of football, you do not need to fool around by saying you also love football. No matter how different you are, there will be something that connects the two of you.

Don't Beg

I have done this a lot of times, and it has only made things worse. Be professional, provide value, and you will see the result.

Provide Value

There is a need to emphasize on providing value. If you are not providing any value to your target, then stay away from them. Value could be in the sense of promoting their product, offering to fix some minor issues on their website, linking to them in your posts, and a lot more.

Stop the “We,” and Use the “I”

Funny enough, you might already be keeping to this rule when writing a blog post but never thought it was needed for an outreach email. Yes, it is. I know you are outreaching for a company. You do not need to use the “we” to show everyone that you work alongside a team to do this. No one cares about this. Take responsibility for everything to make the influencer feel more comfortable with your emails. Rather than,”we are a big fan of your works and would love to work with you.” Use “I am a big fan of your works and it would be great to connect with you.” Let your tone sound more like a win-win, not a company-contractor kind of relationship; more like a brand-brand collaboration.

Don't Go Overboard With Your Request

Do not inconvenience your target with your request. Ask something that you know your influencer can do without it inconveniencing them.

Email Outreach Template to Help You Get Started

Finally, here are some simple copy-and-paste templates to help you write your outreach.

Template #1: Reply to emails from influencers

This email template works when you reply to an email from an influencer. Getting an email from an influencer requires you sign up to the influencer’s email list.

Hi [Name], Thanks a lot for your helpful emails on [Topic]. I have been implementing your tips on [ Topic], and I have noticed a good improvement. I am reaching out to pitch a possible guest post for [blog name]. TOPIC - [Write few lines of what the topic will cover and who it is meant for]. Do you think this will resonate well with you? I look forward to hearing from you. Best wishes, [Your Name]

Template #2: Asking Them to Share Your Post or Link to It

This involves a two-step process. You need to first prepare their mind to get what you really want.

Hi [Name] I had a great time reading your post on [ Post topic], and it was full of great insight that I plan to implement as soon as possible. I have a quick question. [Ask a deep and brainy question relating to the post]. I just published a post on [Post topic], and I also linked your guide on [Post you linked to]. Here is the link of the post. [Post link] You can check it out and maybe share it with your readers. Anyways, thanks for being part of my digital life and keep up the great work. Best wishes, [Your Name]

Template #3: Guest Post Outreach

This is a guest post template outreach I got from my friend, Bamidele, at writers in charge.

Hello, [Name]! How are you? My name is [Name], and I am an editor of [Site Name]. I am a passionate writer myself, and I am getting in contact to ask if you would be interested in publishing the article of mine, written for your blog in particular. I’ve read all your guest post guidelines carefully, and I was thinking of the following idea to offer to your audience: Topic: [Insert your topic] Number of words: [Give an estimated figure] Would you be so kind as to check the attached document and let me know if this post fits your blog well? If some changes are still needed for this article to look and sound better for your readers, I am ready to make them. Here are some samples of my previously published works for you to see my writing style better: [link 1] [link 2] [link 3] I look forward to hearing from you! Kind regards, [Your name]

Making Your Outreach Email Great and What Comes Next

Creating an outreach email for influencers outreach is no different than trying to get the attention of a celebrity in a big event. Think about the number of people and guards you will bypass just to get the attention of the celebrity, including the bouncers. This relates to influencer marketing very well. Your outreach email must be good enough to pass the spam test and also gain the attention of the influencer among other emails in their inbox. To make your outreach email great, personalization is the key and providing value is the way into the heart of an influencer. Hopefully, you learned a lot from this post, including an outreach email template to get started with. Before leaving, I have a few questions for you. What is the most difficult aspect of writing an outreach email? What has worked and what hasn’t worked in getting the attention of an influencer?