Reaching out to influencers is always a little bit overwhelming. That’s why you need someone like us on your team — we’ve sent more than 10 million outreach emails so far and closed thousands of them (trust me, we know how to get an influencer’s attention).
And to remove the hassle of figuring out influencer outreach from scratch, we’ve compiled this complete guide for you. Here’s what you’ll learn:
- How to find the right influencers
- How to craft the perfect outreach email
- When and how to follow up
What is influencer outreach?
Influencer outreach is about forging genuine connections with individuals who have a significant digital footprint in your industry or niche. It’s not about paying for a shoutout or a sponsored post. It’s about building relationships that can amplify your brand’s message authentically.
Over the past decade, influencer marketing evolved from high-cost celebrity endorsements to collaborations with content creators, bloggers, and industry experts. These individuals, also known as influencers, have dedicated audiences that trust their opinions and recommendations.
How to find the most relevant influencers to reach out
Finding influencers that are the right fit for your campaign and business can be a bit challenging. You want to make sure your brand values align with theirs, and they will help you reach your target audience.
Here are three ways you can find influencers:
1. Influencer database
With a 200M+ influencer database, Influencers Club lets you find the right influencers across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. You can add 40 parameters like bio keywords, hashtags, and engagement metrics and continue to refine your search as you go along till you find influencers that fit exactly who you’re looking for.
By combining the location, language, audience size, and interest filters, you can find local influencers that are operating in your niche.
Once you have a list of your ideal influencers, you can export all the data, complete with activity metrics across platforms and verified email addresses. Having their emails give you a chance to start your outreach right away.
If you’re looking for influencers on Instagram, check out our free search tool of 200M influencers that gives you a list of relevant influencers to reach out to as soon as you add filters. I added the following filters to help me find skincare influencers on Instagram with a follower range of 5K to 15K.
2. Search on social media
You can directly search on social media to find the relevant influencers through the following ways:
- Hashtags: Identify the most relevant hashtags for your brand or campaign and start from there. Although searching through hashtags is laborious, you will definitely find some great influencers to reach out to.
- Bio Keywords: Search for the particular keyword you’re looking for, and Instagram will give you influencers with that keyword in their bio or username.
3. Find influencers from your customer base
Influencers.Club
One of the most overlooked ways to find influencers is your email list of customers and subscribers. Most brands are not aware that it’s possible to identify creators in their list without spending a ton of time doing manual research and trying to find a social media profile based on an email.
The Influencers Club Enrichment tool helps you connect your customer list with our database of 100M influencers.
How does it work? Pretty simple!
Using Influencers.Club dashboard you upload a list of usernames or emails and we will match them with our data. The average match rate for brands that are targeting a US audience is 3.4%.
Now, most of these are going to be micro-influencers, but don’t be surprised if you spot a few big fish in there, especially if your brand has been making some noise.
Just a heads-up, we need at least 5,000 emails to get the ball rolling.
Here are the biggest benefits of this approach:
- They already know you! These influencers have heard of you, know what you’re about, and can talk about you like they mean it.
- They are more authentic. There’s nothing like promoting something you’ve tried and loved. It’s authentic, it’s real, and their followers can feel it.
- They are cheaper. Since there’s already a connection, many of these influencers are cool with getting compensated with your products or services. It’s a win-win.
If you’re interested in checking out how many influencers there are in your email list, feel free to book a call with our sales team!
Crafting the Perfect Email: 4 Tips To Follow
The first impression is crucial. Your outreach message is often the first interaction an influencer has with your brand, so it needs to hit the right notes.
Here are some general guidelines that will help you get in the mindset of crafting a message that will get a reply from the influencer you’re contacting:
- Research First: Go through the influencer’s recent content, engagement levels, and audience feedback. Tailor your message to show that you’ve done your homework.
- Personal Touch: Always address the influencer by their name. Generic messages are easy to spot and are often ignored.
- Clear Value Proposition: Highlight what’s in it for them. Whether it’s a product they can review, a service they can experience, or monetary compensation, be upfront about it.
- Mutual Benefits: Emphasize how the collaboration can benefit both parties. Perhaps they get exclusive access to your product launch, or your platform can offer them additional visibility.
Kiril Dameski, Head of Marketing at Influencers Club, emphasizes transparency in outreach emails. He says, “Trust is built on being transparent. Always be clear and honest about the campaign details, rules, and budget to build trust.”
Now that you know the basics I’d like to continue with the framework we’re using for all our influencer emails at Influencers Club. Here it is in a nutshell:
- Personalize the subject line: Go beyond adding the name and make the subject line enticing to open
- Personalize the opening line: Compliments go a long way. Tell them which content or post made you reach out to them and be specific.
- Add some details: Talk a bit about the collaboration you’ve in mind. Add concise information about the campaign and the benefits they’ll get from the partnership.
- Add social proof: Testimonials go a long way and are a sure fire way of persuading people to work with you.
Here’s how that looks in action.
Subject: Loved Your [Specific Topic] Post!
Hi [Influencer Name],
Loved your [Platform] post on [Specific Topic]. Your perspective stood out.
We’re launching a campaign at [Your Brand] that aligns with your themes. We’ve collaborated with [Notable Influencer/Brand], seeing a [Specific Positive Outcome, e.g., “20% engagement boost”]. We believe partnering with you could bring similar success.
Open to discussing a collaboration?
Best,
[Your Name]
If you need to see some more examples definitely check out our free resource with 100 influencer outreach email templates. They are segmented by use cases so you can definitely find one no matter if you want to do product seeding or brand ambassador outreach.
To Follow Up or Not To Follow Up?
If you’re wondering whether you should send a follow-up email, the answer is always a big yes.
Your influencer outreach strategy shouldn’t end at sending the initial message. Here’s how to ensure you’re on the right track:
Timing is key: Nikola Sokolov, CEO of Influencers.Club, emphasizes the importance of timing in outreach efforts. After analyzing data from over 10 million sent emails at Influencers Club, our team found a pattern — mid-weekdays, especially Tuesdays and Thursdays, bring the best open and reply rates.
Follow-ups are a must: If you haven’t received a response within a week, send a polite follow-up. It’s possible your initial message got buried or overlooked. You can also set a deadline in the copy to create scarcity and urgency.
Beyond the Collaboration: When it comes to building influencer relationships, always think long-term. Once you’ve collaborated with an influencer, keep the lines of communication open. Engage with their content, offer feedback, and explore opportunities for future partnerships.
Remember to spread out your follow-up emails over a month to ensure your emails don’t get marked as spam. Here is a schedule you can follow:
- Day 1: Send your outreach email
- Day 3: Send a reminder as a followup
- Day 10: Share the central message of your outreach again
- Day 20: Send another follow-up and acknowledge that they might be busy and you are still open to collaborating
- Day 30: Send a final follow-up email
By spreading out your follow-up emails over the course of a month, you give creators ample time to respond to you if they miss your initial emails and time to research your company.
What are the best influencer outreach tools?
Here are some of the most popular tools that can streamline your influencer outreach:
1. Influencer outreach agency
If you want to upscale your influencer outreach without getting into the nitty-gritty of it all, opt for an agency that provides a complete influencer outreach service like Influencers Club. With a highly-motivated team of 36+ experts, we send out 800K outreach emails every month for our clients, and our open rate is a whopping 36% (industry benchmark is 21.5%).
At Influencers Club, we take everything off your plate and give the influencer outreach process an expert touch. And when the previous Head of Partnerships at Patreon, Avi Gandhi, say we are the best in business when it comes to influencer outreach, it means we are.
Schedule a demo today and outsource all your outreach!
2. Bulk email tool
If you have an existing list of influencers, there are multiple tools available that let you send bulk emails and personalize them, like Gmass. It’s an efficient outreach tool with features like automatic follow-ups and open-rate analytics.
Note: For regular Gmail accounts, the sending limit is 500 emails per day, while G Suite users can send up to 2K emails per day.
3. DM automation tool
You can reach out to influencers directly on social media, and to make things easier, you can automate the entire process. Trengo is a tool that lets you automate Instagram direct messages. When automating DMs, you can also set up rule-based responses for common queries so you make sure to provide timely replies.
You can also consider integrating Trengo with your CRM or customer support tools to provide more personalized responses based on user history. Always monitor the effectiveness of your automated messages and adjust based on feedback to maintain authenticity in your interactions.
If you want to learn more about what we do, check out the case study below.
Collaborate with influencers through the perfect outreach email!
So, that’s our step-by-step guide for effectively launching an influencer outreach campaign. Focus on influencers that are right for your brand. Remember that you’re reaching out to highly creative people, so make sure to personalize your message using the tips we shared.
If you’re interested in doing outreach at scale, feel free to get in touch with our team and learn more about how we can scale the whole process with our team of 35+ experts. Talk to us today!
