How to Do an Effective Influencer Outreach

build an effective influencer outreach

Influencer outreach is definitely something you’ve heard about if you’ve considered working with creators. However, the process goes beyond just sending product samples to them and hoping they spread the word about them. Creating a successful influencer collaboration requires an effective influencer outreach strategy and fostering trust between your business and the creator.

Initially, this seems tedious and time-consuming, since you don’t know the creator personally, but still, you have to grab their attention. How would you know which approach is right? How should you contact influencers to promote your product?

Fortunately, HypeAuditor has got you covered! We interviewed 1,674 influencers as part of our Influencer Outreach Survey. Creators revealed what messages they expected from businesses and why they declined specific collaboration requests. Hence, if you’d like to learn how to communicate with influencers and build a good working relationship with them, then read on.

A Brief Overview of Influencer Outreach and Why It’s Important

Influencer outreach is a significant milestone in your marketing workflow. It encompasses creator research, contacting and communicating with them productively. As part of your influencer marketing strategy, influencer outreach enables you to work with individuals considered more credible and trusted sources than traditional brand commercials.

Plenty of articles highlight the importance of selecting relevant influencers, but why should you care about beginning a relationship with them? Because they have vast experience in a field and can build and address successfully a community of like-minded people. A large volume of users respect and consider them trustworthy, thus they can promote your product effectively and convince their audience of its worth.

Plus, you’ll also save time if you turn to creators with whom you've already collaborated successfully in the past. Investing your efforts in an efficient influencer outreach strategy will pay off when your campaign will be a success.

How Can You Identify the Right Influencers for Your Brand or Product?

Influencers will be the backbone of your influencer marketing campaign. It’s best to begin your influencer outreach by identifying the right influencers for your brand.

First, you need to specify your target audience.
After that, you can start your search for influencers in your niche and on your preferred channels.
Once you put together a list of prospects, check their engagement and reach.
Look for influencers who create original and engaging content.

1. Determining your target audience enables you to find influencers whose audience matches yours

By defining your target market, you can easily identify the right influencers for collaborations. Here’s how you can do it:

Consider your product’s unique selling points and find your brand’s characteristics that differentiate it from your competitors. This allows you to specify your target market, including their demographics and interests that match your product or service.
You can evaluate your buyers by using social media analytics, looking at customer surveys, and market research studies. This will help you get an idea of who your audience is and what they like.
Now that you understand who you’re targeting, segment your target market based on their preferences and needs. This enables you to tailor your influencer outreach and easily reach various buyer personas through your marketing campaign.
Once you start looking for creators, keep your target audience in mind and longlist influencers who create content in your niche and have authentic and active followers that fit your brand.

2. Look for relevant influencers on social networks

As a next step, pinpoint creators whose audience matches yours, create in your niche, and have an engaged following.

A lot of creators built an engaged and large following on several social media platforms, like YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter. Find those who have a dedicated audience and whose content aligns with your brand or product.
With influencer marketing platforms, you can quickly discover and identify influencers that match your brand. Many platforms have an immense database of influencers and provide you with numerous filters. You can narrow your search by using filters, including age and gender, location, follower size, and interest.
Conduct industry- and product-related hashtag research on social media. For instance, if you’re a running shoe brand, search for hashtags like #running, #runningshoe, or #marathon.

3. Analyze the influencer’s reach and engagement before outreaching them

Don’t let yourself be fooled by a large audience. Check engagement together with the number of followers and reach. Be sure to choose creators who are present on several social media outlets and have a large number of devoted followers.

Consider the influencer’s follower number on Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. Select influencers who built a large following and whose audience regularly interacts with their content.
Engagement is one of the most prominent performance metrics. It shows the percentage of followers who engage with an influencer’s content. A creator with high engagement publishes captivating content that gets a lot of attention from users.
Go beyond the most popular social media platforms and examine the creator’s reach on other platforms, like blogs, podcasts, or YouTube.
In addition to assessing an influencer’s engagement, reach and audience size, check their level of influence and reputation. Identify creators who are thought leaders and experts in their fields and have a greater effect on users.

4. Find influencers who publish authentic and engaging content

Search for creators who have authority in your field and can add value to your brand.

Look for prospects who are transparent in their content and nurture a close relationship with their followers. These creators produce genuine and appealing posts that resonate with users of like mind.
Sharing the same values is as significant for influencers as it is for brands. To run an effective influencer marketing campaign, you must choose influencers whose style and voice match your brand and who can identify with your business’s ideas.
Identify industry experts who post interesting, visually attractive, and informative content in your field.
Shortlist influencers whose posts have received a lot of shares, likes, and comments in your niche.
Select creators who actively and consistently publish content on social media platforms. Their dedication is key to your brand’s future marketing efforts.
Find influencers who can stand out from the crowd with a fresh and unique view and voice to their content.

Taking a strategic approach and following our tips can help you discover suitable influencers for your brand and product.

Common Mistakes Brands Commit When Outreaching Influencers

Many businesses fail to build a good relationship with influencers for several reasons. If you avoid these common mistakes when you contact influencers, you can increase your chances of a successful collaboration:

They don’t examine the creator

A typical mistake is the lack of thorough research of the creator before contacting them. You can craft a personalized outreach message easily if you analyze the influencer’s audience, interest, and content beforehand.

Sending spammy and cookie-cutter messages

Impersonal or spammy messages won’t grab the influencer’s attention. It’s crucial to tailor your first outreach email to the influencer and explain the benefits of a potential collaboration.

They don’t offer any value for the influencer’s work

Influencers worked hard to gain authority on a topic and deserve fair compensation for their job. Secure a mutually beneficial partnership by determining what you’ll offer for them, such as access to certain services or products, or other compensation that is of value to them.

The lack of following up after the first message

If an influencer doesn’t respond to your initial message, that doesn’t mean they are disinterested. Send a short and professional follow-up email or direct message or try to organize a call with them.

Disregarding the influencer’s schedule

Respect influencers’ time and evade sending them multiple emails and messages because that may come off as rude. Authentic creators partner with businesses they like and who clearly explain why an influencer and their audience would profit from a possible collaboration.

Be professional and respectful in your outreach efforts, and avoid the mistakes mentioned above. Establishing long-term relationships with influencers will help you lead your campaign to success and reach your marketing goals.

5 Tips for a Successful Influencer Outreach

With an efficient influencer outreach strategy, you can connect and team up with the right influencers who can establish your brand’s credibility and deepen trust. So how do you approach influencers for a collaboration? Check out our five tips for successful influencer outreach.

1. Send tailored outreach messages to influencers

Customize your messages to the influencer by using their names, and mentioning their interests or some of the content you liked. Personalized messages have a higher response rate than impersonal, general emails. Furthermore, it also demonstrates that you took the time to get to know the influencer and their work better.

Our survey revealed that only 25.6% of the surveyed influencers receive mostly personalized messages from brands

2. Determine what the influencer will gain for collaborating with your brand

Make sure you establish what compensation you can offer to the influencer. By doing so, you’ll demonstrate that you value their work. You can agree on a fixed fee or give exclusive access to events or products.

3. Communicate respectfully and professionally

Be transparent, concise, and professional in your communication. Refrain from being too pushy and spammy. Show a genuine interest in their work and focus on developing a partnership with them.

4. Always follow up and keep in touch with influencers

In case you don’t hear back from a creator, follow up on your first message with a short and efficient email. Keep on following through with the whole negotiation and stay in touch during and after the campaign.

5. Use influencer outreach tools to make your outreach more effective

Influencer outreach tools, like HypeAuditor, can help you automate and streamline your outreach efforts. Opt for those that provide features for influencer search and analysis, influencer outreach, and campaign management.

Want to improve your outreach endeavors even more? Do you need inspiration for how to write your initial outreach message? Read our tips on how to create a successful influencer outreach strategy and access templates to nail your first influencer outreach email.

How to Contact Influencers?

Businesses can approach influencers in several ways, but the most preferred ones are email and direct messages.

Connect with influencers by email

Emails are the most professional means of communication and have a high conversion rate. It provides you ample opportunity to customize your messages and introduce your brand and product. 52.1% of the surveyed influencers prefer being contacted via email.

Approach them on social media

Various social media platforms, like Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube allow you to connect with creators via direct messages. 40.3% opted for direct messages on social media platforms as a means of contact. Alternatively, you can leave a comment on their post as well.

Based on our survey, email and DMs are the most preferred communication channels for influencers

Find and reach creators on influencer marketing platforms

Influencer marketing platforms and tools offer numerous features and data that enhance your efficiency. Yet, only the most advanced platforms, like HypeAuditor, Upfluence, or Traackr have influencer outreach and discovery solutions that help you manage your influencer collaboration in one place.

Chat with creators via video or voice call

Video and voice calls enable you for more personal communication. Once you’ve made the first contact, you can switch to video or voice calls and discuss campaign details and answer questions.

How to Compose Your Initial Outreach Email?

So what should be included in the first outreach email? It must contain relevant information about your brand and collaboration and be persuasive enough to pique the influencer’s interest.

Subject line: Influencers receive a lot of messages from fans and proposals from brands. With an eye-catching subject line, you will stick out from the plethora of requests.
Introduction: In your first message, introduce yourself, your brand, and the product so that they know why you’re approaching them. 61.2% of influencers who participated in the survey would like to learn more about the product or services. 51.6% would like to get information about the business that reached out to them.
Benefits of working together: Explain how the influencer and their audience can profit from a possible collaboration, like access to exclusive products and services or other perks.
Details of the collaborations: Share essential elements of the collaboration, including the content you envisioned, compensation, and campaign length. According to our survey, 58.7% of the creators would like to know more about the budget and deliverables and 51.1% would like to get insights into the campaign format.
CTA: End your email with a call-to-action, like scheduling a video call or providing a link to the brand’s website for more information.

Overall, be friendly and personal with your message and tell them what makes them the right candidate. Authentic influencers maintain credibility with their audiences, they only promote products that align with their values and ideas. It’s crucial to avoid withholding details at the start of a conversation. Instead, describe clearly and concisely the collaboration opportunity and how both of you can profit from a partnership.

How to Scale and Automate Influencer Outreach?

Managing the entire influencer outreach cycle can be overwhelming if you don't automate certain tasks. Luckily, various solutions help you scale and automate your influencer outreach. Let’s examine some of the options:

Use templates for influencer outreach

Writing tailored and impressive outreach messages might prove to be tedious and time-consuming. By using email templates, you can save a lot of time and still send informative and relevant emails to influencers.

Automate your messaging

Plan your email communications and use automation tools or email marketing platforms for following up on previous messages. By doing so, you can eliminate manual follow-up errors and unprofessional, impulsive messages.

Segment your influencers

Break up your prospects based on the advantages of a potential collaboration. Prioritize your influencer outreach according to your influencer segmentation.

Utilize influencer outreach tools

Advanced outreach tools, like HypeAuditor, provide you with all the above features and enable you to optimize your outreach process. Through our influencer outreach tool, you can send personalized messages to creators or use our outreach email templates. Keep in touch with your influencers at every phase of the discussion. By using our solution, you’ll be able to streamline the outreach procedure and build partnerships with creators.

You can successfully scale and automate your outreach processes using a combination of the first three approaches or by leaning on an outreach tool.

Tools for Influencer Outreach

Comprehensive influencer marketing platforms offer numerous features that facilitate and automate your workflow. Take a look at some of the most popular tools on the market:

HypeAuditor: HypeAuditor is an end-to-end influencer marketing platform that helps brands and agencies at every step of their influencer marketing campaign from influencer discovery and analysis to campaign planning and management. HypeAuditor’s innovative influencer outreach tool allows brands to connect with previously selected social media creators and manage influencer relations.
HypeAuditor’s Influencer Outreach tool
Upfluence: Upfluence is a comprehensive influencer marketing platform that offers influencer search and outreach tools and enables businesses to plan and manage campaigns.
Traackr: Traackr’s platform provides solutions for identifying creators, contacting influencers, and building and measuring campaigns.
Aspire: Aspire’s tools help e-commerce companies build an influencer network of affiliates and ambassadors.
Klear: Klear’s features include influencer search and vetting, relationship management, and campaign measurement.

Influencer outreach tools help you boost your outreach strategy, automate manual tasks, and focus on developing beneficial partnerships with creators.

Key Takeaways

Look for influencers in your niche and research their audience.
Before you approach an influencer, establish a relationship by interacting with their posts.
Contact influencers by email if they provide an email address on social media.
Introduce your product and brand.
Determine the type of compensation and collaboration in the first email.
Keep the balance between being too verbose and being too tight-lipped.
Don’t send messages that lack individuality! Tailor your proposal to the prospects.
Give influencers creative freedom.
Don’t stop communicating once the campaign has started! Keep in touch during and after the campaign.

Wrapping Up

There you have it! As a result of our survey, you now have an idea of how to get an influencer to accept your request. Know the influencer's work before contacting them and tailor your message accordingly. Communicate clearly, balance long and short messages, and follow up with the creators after the campaign. Ultimately, influencer outreach comes down to building partnerships with creators who have built authority in your niche.