Social Media Marketing for Business

There are numerous Email Marketing Tips out there. But do you know what not to write in your outreach email? Lets start from the beginning.

Internet marketing is an extremely dynamic field, which is evident by the number of different tools, strategies, and trends which are experiencing constant changes. Today, however, there is one type of marketing that is making huge waves. That honor belongs to influencer marketing. Influencer marketing is one of the most organic, and at the same time, most efficient ways of spreading word about your brand, driving traffic to your blog or website, boosting your conversion rates, and increasing your income as a result of all that.

Influencers can bring some much needed exposure to your brand, as they can have millions of followers which value their opinion, so it’s important to reach out to them. In order to get on their radar, apart from liking their posts, leaving comments and following their social media accounts, you also need to reach out to them by sending them an email.

It might not sound too hard, but remember, influencers probably receive thousands of these, so in order to make sure that your email is read, you need to make it stand out. This time, we are going to discuss 5 things you are NOT to do if you want your outreach email to gain traction with the influencers in your niche.

Using Bombastic Email Subject Lines

Click-bait subject lines, such as “Open Now”, “Must Open”, “Once in a Lifetime Chance”, “Unique Offer” are just about as efficient as those infomercials you see on TV. In fact, nothing will make a webmaster discard your email quicker than such subject lines, even if the content inside the message is top-notch. While there are no hard and fast rules about what works as far as subject lines are concerned, always make sure they indicate what is inside your message. Don’t just give them a vague description.

I’ve managed to score more than 50 guest posts during my time with a writing service EduGeeksClub. I was able to do that by sending influencers an email with subject lines as simple as “I’d love to feature you in my post!”. 87.5% of the people I contacted responded. Nearly as effective were the subject lines which followed this template: “Headline [Guest Post]”, for which I received 81.8% response rate.

Addressing the Influencer with “Dear Admin/Editor/Webmaster”

Reaching out to a webmaster, and not using their name is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. Not only is it incredibly impersonal and generic, but it also indicates that you haven’t bothered to look for their name in the first place. Influencers receive canned emails all the time, because the majority of marketers just write one email which they then send to a bunch of different influencers.

Take the time and put in the effort to treat each influencer as a separate individual they are. Create a custom email each and every time. Even if you don’t have their name, starting with a simple “Hi” or “Hello” is still miles better. Below is one of the responses I received when I just started reaching out to webmasters with “Dear Editor”. I was lucky enough and my post was published, but that was a close call.

Going on About Yourself

In an attempt to persuade the influencer to provide a comment or a quote for their articles, marketers will often start talking about their work, their credentials, and their skills. And in 99% of the cases, they will overdo it. While you should definitely introduce yourself, an influencer will not waste their time to read about you and your accomplishments. Your goal should be to provide them with something of value in your email, something they might be interested in reading or viewing.

The reason why you contacted them in the first place was to establish a collaboration and benefit from it. An influencer feels exactly the same way. Once they open your email, they will immediately start to think of ways how collaborating with you will benefit them. If you are simply going on about yourself, you are not going to be able to give them many reasons for collaboration, are you?

Demanding an Answer from the Influencer

Because influencers are extremely busy, you need to respect their time. When you are writing an outreach email, try to avoid inserting clichéd sentences like “I am looking forward to your response”, “Waiting for your answer”, “Respond ASAP” which demand an answer to your email.

First of all, they already know that you are reaching out because you need something from them, not because you want to pay them a compliment. Second, it’s best to leave it up to them to decide whether or not they should respond to your email. Pressuring them into answering your messages will just demonstrate that you don’t value their time. Keep up with that approach – if you had asked for just 5 minutes of their time, make sure it’s really 5 minutes.

Asking Them to Share/Link to Your Content

Your outreach email should not contain phrases like “Please link to my content”, “Share this link” and so on. Again, as I have pointed out in the previous paragraph, influencers, or their editors/assistants are already aware that you are contacting them for the purpose of establishing some sort of collaboration, so there is no need to point it out yourself.

Leave it up to them to inform their audience about your work. Of course, what you should do is share a link to your content, which influencers might find useful and interesting, but that is as far as you need to take it. Ultimately, it is their decision, and insisting on it is not going to help your case.

In the end, sending out outreach emails boils down to three basic principles. The first one would be to always write a unique email and amp up the personal aspect. The second would be to offer something of value for the influencers, so that your potential collaboration is not just a one-way street. Finally, show them that you understand how busy they are and that you respect the time they have set aside to hear you out.

Stick to these guidelines and tips, and you will have no problem developing long and fruitful relationships with influencers in your industry.

This post was originally written for the NinjaOutreach Blog

Meet Antonio Tooley

Antonio is a hopeless optimist who enjoys basking in the world's brightest colors. He loves biking to distant places and occasionally he gets lost. When not doing that he's blogging about marketing, content writing and education. He will be happy to meet you on Facebook and Twitter.