If you ever approached an influencer for a collaboration, you know that getting a reply is not as easy as it seems. After doing influencer outreach for 5 years, we know how demotivating it can be doing everything you can and still not getting a reply.
But, as 60% of marketers say that influencer marketing is more effective than traditional marketing in many aspects, we never gave up.
We tested different approaches to find what works and what doesn’t and find out how to approach influencers so they can’t say no. Now we approach 800K+ influencers per month, with an average 36% positive reply rate.
In this article, we explain the full strategy, plus some bonus tips that will help you effectively contact influencers. So, keep reading to find out:
- How to find the right influencers
- How to approach influencers in 6 steps
- Overview of good and bad influencer outreach messages
- Get free and ready-to-use influencer outreach email templates
Let’s dive in.
Before you approach an influencer to promote your product
The two initial steps you must do before you approach an influencer are:
- Proper research for influencers that share the same business values as your brand
- Engagement with them before the outreach
Let’s see below why these two steps are so crucial.
Analyze influencer content and audience compatibility
To get a reply or productive collaboration, you must target the right influencers. That means you need to do research and find out more about their audience, past collaboration, etc.
When analyzing influencers for collaboration, here’s what you should focus on:
- Target audience: Their target audience must have the same interests as your brand. Otherwise, they will find the promotion irrelevant.
- Performance: For a successful collaboration you need numbers and rates. An influencer may have 100K followers, but a poor engagement rate in their content.
- Past collaborations: Research your competitors to find out more about their past collaborations and how they performed.
- Geolocation: The influencers you approach may have all of the above, but if their audience doesn’t match your target location, they are not suitable influencers for you.
Although you can do it manually, searching and analyzing influencers takes a lot of time if you need a larger list of influencers. You need to open the profiles of all influencers that seem suitable for your brand.
Next, scroll down their feed to see their interests, the kind of content they are posting, whether they have engagement with their audience or not, etc.
Once you learn as much as you can about them if you want to approach them, you need to find their email or send a DM. Here’s how can you find their email address for free:
Open their profile and search for ‘Contact’ or ‘Email Address’ button below their bio.
Although this is an effective approach if you need hundreds or thousands of super-targeted creators, you need to use the tool that will help you do that fast (and most accurate).
Аt influencers.club we have a database of 80M+ influencers and 40+ filters you can use to precisely filter influencers in a few minutes.
As you can see in this picture, you can further customize your preferences to suit your needs. Choose filters to select criteria and use the Creator Deep Dive filters if you want to narrow down the list.
Once you finish with the filters, you can export your custom influencer list with a validated email address for each influencer.
Engage with influencer’s content
Once you have a list of influencers that are ideal for your brand, you can proceed to the next step – establishing a connection. A rookie mistake when approaching influencers is approaching influencers out of the blue.
To increase the chances of getting a reply, you should establish a relationship with the targeted influencers. Go to their profile, explore their content, and engage with them by liking and commenting on their posts.
Sharing their content increases the chances of getting noticed by the influencer. Take some time to establish a genuine connection, and only then approach the influencer with your proposal.
The age-old question: social media or email for outreach?
Although many marketers are still between minds to choose the better option, more than half experts choose emails instead of DMs because according to most recent surveys. Here’s why:
- Emails are more professional
- There are no tight character limits
- Allows you to send bigger attachments
- Respects influencer’s privacy and boundaries
However, although emails have a higher open rate compared to DMs, they are also often dismissed or end up in spam.
Yet, we found a way to successfully approach influencers, so keep reading to learn how to get positive results from our outreach.
6 Steps to Approach Influencers for Collaboration
Below we share our best practices for approaching influencers. From writing a catchy subject line that will entice them to open your email, to tips for personalizing your outreach, writing a clear collaboration proposal, etc.
1. Write a catchy subject line
Subject lines carry a lot of pressure in the email proposal. If they’re well written, they increase the CTR chances. An effective subject line must be engaging, on-point, and realistic.
However, we understand that writing catchy subject lines is easier said than done, but we’ve accepted that challenge and had lots of positive results. From our experience, the general guidelines you must follow are:
- Prioritize the benefits: To interest the influencer put the benefits of the collaboration in the subject line. However, it’s important to be realistic.
- Mind the email spam filters: Email providers have spam filters to reduce the online scam rate. Words like “Free cash”, “100% Free”, and “Satisfaction guarantee” are recognized as spam. Overpuncuating like “$$$”, and “!!!” increases the chances of getting into spam immediately.
- Add visuals: According to some, visuals are the best hooks in the subject line. But we would say not necessarily in every case. We have plenty of subject line examples without any emojis that had above the average open rate. Our tactic is we first test the subject line without emojis. If the open rate is low, we add emojis that are not too generic. You should avoid emojis like “💸💰🤑” as they seem like a scam and will decrease the open rate. Instead, choose something more appropriate such as 🙌🏼 or 💼.
- Don’t make the subject line too long: Your subject line must not exceed 40-60 characters or 6-7 words. Double-check the length before sending the email.
Here are some of our most successful subject lines:
- Paid Collaboration with [influencer’s name] [insert suitable emoji] by [your brand]
- [influencer’s name] host an online course w/ [your brand]!
- [influencer’s name] <> Paid Partnership with [your brand]
Bonus tip from our creator sales experts: If not sure about your subject line, ask yourself if you would open it. If it doesn’t interest you, edit until it looks clickable. This is how our team knows whether the subject line is effective or not.
Personalize your outreach message
When it comes to the body of the email the key is to personalize the proposal. Address the influencer by name for a start, and then mention a specific post that caught your attention and got you to email them and propose a collaboration. Make sure to mention why you think they are a good fit for your business.
This method allows you to transition to the offer part smoothly and at the same time establish trust and a connection with the influencer, underline the relevance of the proposal, and increase the reply rates.
However, personalization is often perceived as praising or complimenting the influencer instead of specifying. Here’s an example of bad and good personalization.
Bad example of personalization:
The reason this email doesn’t work is that it doesn’t specify how they would be a fit for promoting your brand. There are compliments, but not concrete examples of marketing values. Instead, here’s how you should do it.
Good example of personalization:
In this email, you introduced your brand that aligns with the values of the influencer, and you mentioned a marketing value: product review or describing the product. This allows you to explain what you want from the influencer and briefly conceptualizes the purpose of the email.
2. Be clear about what you’re offering
The offer must be open and precise. Anna-Maria Klappenbach, the leader of influencer marketing at Aumio, mentions a significant situation when personalization becomes inferior in an email. She says, “Our target creators are busy moms. We think they would prefer us to get to the point rather than read through a long & wordy email (even if it’s lovely).”
Before writing the email, research more about the target influencers and adjust your approach to their circumstances. You may personalize the offer briefly. Relate to them as Anna would mention that she’s also a mom.
But, instead of writing long cute messages, clearly explain the purpose of the collaboration. Insert your campaign plan, explain what you expect from the collaboration, and be clear about the deadlines. Mention that you are open to negotiations and compensation terms.
3. Highlight the mutual benefits of collaboration
When writing the offer make sure to emphasize that it’s mutually beneficial and explain how both of you benefit from the offer. To support your statements, you may add some statistics related to optimistic outcomes like success rates, or expected rates based on specific plans.
Visualizing the collaboration is important, but so is addressing the potential challenges you may encounter. Be open about them because this method will prepare you in case you have to overcome them. Make sure to mention that you are flexible and open to discussion.
Ultimately, express commitment to the collaboration by demonstrating enthusiasm and genuine interest.
4. Make it concise
Creating a skimmable proposal is as important as the context of the email. Brevity is crucial in email outreach because it enhances engagement and improves readability.
Therefore, make sure you use paragraphs instead of block texts. This will help you separate the introduction from the offer and the other components of the email.
Highlight or bold the key elements such as the benefits, statistics, success rates, etc, and use bullet points where applicable.
Double-check the proposal in the end for grammatical errors, repetitive words, or complex language. Ultimately, make sure you use standard fonts like Arial or Times New Roman. The proposal should be readable from both desktop and mobile devices.
5. Add a clear CTA
The final step of the proposal is the CTA. Implementing CTA in your emails encourages an action as it guides the influencer on what to do next, and what step to take. Some of the positive CTAs to add at the end of the proposal are:
- Can I send you some more info?: This is a soft CTA that directs the influencers on the next, and at the same time, it’s not pushy.
- Schedule a meeting here: You can link your calendar so they can book the meeting. This facilitates the communication.
- Check our proposal here: Link the proposal in detail and allow them to make suggestions or leave comments where it is suitable.
- Discuss compensation: Allow them to express themselves with the compensation, but ask them to be as specific as possible.
Apart from finding creators, we have a partnership program that handles outreach at scale and helps you connect with influencers. Our team of 40+ creator sales experts handles the whole outreach strategy – from finding suitable influencers for your brand to sending the most convincing email copy and handling the replies.
We send up to 800K emails with an average 36% positive reply rate (according to other experts in the field 10% is the average rate). We can create a connection with the influencer, and you can proceed from there.
What to do after approaching influencers to promote your brand?
Sending the email is not the end of the influencer outreach. Here are the final steps:
Follow-up
Influencers have crammed inboxes, especially micro, mid-size, or macro influencers. Sending a follow-up email encourages an open rate, shows persistence, and dedication to the collaboration, and respect for their time. You can add three follow-up emails.
However, keep in mind that timing is key when following up. Therefore, here’s when and what to write in the follow-up message.
First follow-up
Give the influencer 3 business days to read your email. It is a realistic time to respond to your email. If you don’t get a reply, then send this email.
Hey {first_name} –
It’s {rep_name} from {brand_name}.
{{personalization based on content}}
With our project kicking off soon, I wanted to chat about dates and schedules. It’s super important that our timelines sync up for this collab to work out. Could you let me know when you’re free so we can get things rolling?
Can I send you some more info?
{rep_name}
With this email, you show understanding of their tight schedule, and you subtly urge the influencer to check the first email.
Second follow-up
If you don’t hear from the influencer again, go to social media and see what they’re up to. If the influencer is free or in the usual location, wait for 7 more days after the first follow-up. If they’re out of the country or spending some days off, wait until they get back and send your email. Otherwise, you can use this sample as a second follow-up:
Hey {first_name} –
It’s {rep_name} over at {brand_name}.
{{personalization based on content}}
Just a small reminder about that earlier email. We’re ready to get things rolling, and hearing from you would really help get us on the right track. Whenever you can, drop me a line with your thoughts.
Can I send you some more info?
{rep_name}
Personalize this email, and add more information about the collaboration and campaign plan, but leave some of the details for the next email. This method positively urges the influencer to respond to the email as they can see the benefits. Click send and wait.
Third follow-Up
This is the final follow-up and your last chance to get your initial offer back on the radar. Just go for something casual like the message below:
Hey [insert name], I just wanted to check if you had some time to think over my proposal. We’ve got some new followers and have more eyes on our products, so this would be a perfect time for us to collaborate.
Hope to hear from you soon!
If you still don’t get a reply, you should move on to the next influencer, because sending more follow-ups appears intrusive.
Continue refining your outreach strategy
After the outreach, you evaluate your campaign performance by examining KPIs and determine what social media platforms or channels showed the best results for your campaign. Analyze the performance after the collaboration with the influencer. How did it affect your brand, what does their audience find appealing in your brand, what are their shopping habit, etc.
On the other hand, you should involve the influencer’s opinion on the campaign. Write them an email about their experience, what they liked most, how it helped them grow, and suggestions for improvement if any.
Need more influencers outreach email templates? Find more here!
Keep the relationship alive
Bonding with an influencer you worked with builds trust and sets grounds for long-term collaboration. You never know if they will be your future brand ambassadors.
Therefore, send them a thank you email, and collaborate with them on future campaigns. You can share the collaboration results on social media to celebrate the influencer’s milestone.
Conclusion
When approaching influencers you must always think about the best ways to catch their attention so you can get them to promote your product or service.
Keep in mind that effective influencer outreach is 99% about two things: email copy and target audience.
Lastly, using influencers.club dashboard you can search for influencers across all social media platforms and find your ideal influencers and their email addresses within a few minutes. Or, we can take care of the entire outreach for you and you can spend your time where is most valuable – running your business.
Let us reach out to influencers on your behalf
FAQs
The best way to choose the right compensation for influencers is to research the industry standards, consider the influencer’s experience, and evaluate the potential ROI for your brand.
To get a reply you need to focus on 2 key things: find the right influencers for your campaign and personalize the email to stand out in the influencer’s inbox.
The best way to find out whether an influencer is right for you or not is to analyze influencer data. Find influencers that post specific types of content, have interests related to your products/services, etc.
Next, learn as much as possible about the influencers you are about to approach. This way you can personalize the email and better connect.
Lastly, highlight the benefits of the collaboration and be clear about what they get from it.
Or, you can hire an expert team to approach influencers on your behalf. We can dedicate a team to take over the entire process from finding the right influencer to sending emails and negotiating until they say yes. If you want to learn more about this – get in touch with us.
To establish long-term collaboration with influencers keep them posted, show them that they are a valuable part of the team, and stay in touch with them. Engage with their content and share exclusive updates and offers.
Measure the engagement rates, website traffic performance, conversion rates, and overall sales generated from the campaign. To do so it’s best to use UTM tags.
Next, adjust your campaign based on these stats to optimize the performance.
Yes, it’s okay to DM an influencer on Instagram for a collaboration, but this approach may not be the best option because:
- Influencers often receive many DMs, and they may overlook yours.
- Instagram has a limit of 1000 characters on DMs.
But, you can still approach influencers on Instagram. Just be sure your profile is open and clearly represents your brand. Start by briefly pitching the idea for collaboration to see if they are interested in hearing more about the offer.
