If you feel that your business’s social media posts are lost among the abundance of content, then it’s time to develop a successful influencer outreach strategy. Teaming up with influential individuals can significantly boost your brand’s digital marketing pursuits and help you reach your goals.
Effective influencer outreach goes beyond finding the right prospects and sending them your brand collaboration request. It also focuses on establishing relationships with creators and maintaining them long-term.
Influencers have a large and interested audience on several social media channels and other platforms. They act as the bridge between your brand or product and your future customers.
Influencer outreach is a critical part of your influencer marketing workflow. Thus, it’s worth the dedication and effort to create an outreach strategy that helps you build rapport with creators.
In this post, we’ll share tips and tactics that help you prepare a winning strategy on where and how to contact influencers, why tailored messages are essential, and how you should develop and maintain a beneficial partnership with them.
Let’s get started!
What Are the Best Channels to Communicate with Influencers?
Naturally, you can choose from numerous ways of communication, but before you approach influencers, consider the platforms they are active on.
Contact influencers on social networks
Do they post on Facebook and Instagram? Be sure to follow their account and get to know their content before you reach out to them. If you like what they publish, you can comment on one of their posts or send a direct message.
Connect with influencers on their websites
Creators with their websites might have a contact form for inquiries and requests. In the absence of this, they will provide their email address, where businesses can reach out to them.
Write an email
Many influencers have an email address for collaboration requests provided in their bios or about pages. Emails enable you to send a customized and compelling proposal, introducing your brand and campaign ideas.
Book a call or video chat with them
Once you’ve started a conversation with a creator, you may switch to a video or voice call. Video calls are more personal and are ideal to discuss collaboration details and get to know the other party.
How Do You Craft a Successful Influencer Outreach Strategy?
Alright, now let’s get down to the nitty-gritty of planning and learn how you should build an efficient influencer outreach approach:
1. Start building a relationship with the influencer before contacting them
You’ve come up with a list of prospects, and you’re eager to send your first pitch to them, right? If you want to pique their interest and increase the chances of cooperation, get them familiar with your brand first.
Spare no effort and make your brand visible to creators! As a major component of your influencer outreach approach, engage with creators’ posts. Show them with shares, likes, and comments that you’re interested in their content!
2. What can you offer in exchange for their collaboration?
In your first message, highlight the values and benefits influencers can gain from partnering with your business. Is it access to limited products or specific events? Or is it a great opportunity to share your knowledge and experience on a topic? You may offer them a commission from product sales or agree on a fee. Overall, offering fair compensation proves to them that you appreciate their hard work and don’t want to use them only for your brand’s profit.
3. Tailored messages result in a higher response rate
You may think that personalization is time-consuming, but for creators, your effort means that you’re serious about a possible collaboration. Thus, they are more likely to listen to your proposal.
Introduce yourself and your brand and share why they are the right individuals for your campaign. Refer to one of their posts that you liked and show them that you genuinely are interested in working with them. Use a friendly tone and be relatable and concise.
Go the extra mile, get to know the influencers before your first outreach, and personalize your emails and messages! We encourage you to communicate clearly and professionally. In the end, you’ll be guaranteed to develop a good working relationship with them.
Want to dig deeper into how to customize your outreach messages to influencers? Don’t fret! We’ll cover it in the next chapter.
4. Be persistent but not pushy
Influencers have gained authority in a niche because they dedicated a lot of time to produce quality content for their audiences. This isn’t a passing fad, this is their job. And if they’re good at it, you can bet they receive multiple fan messages and business proposals. So, don’t get upset if they don’t respond within a couple of hours. Stay professional by following up on your initial offer after 4-5 days.
5. Keep up the communication
Once you have several influencers on board, ensure that they understand the purpose, goals, and ideas of your campaign. The entire process, from product sampling and shipping to content review and compensation, should be communicated. Keep them informed of any changes or advancements in your marketing efforts. Simply put, transparency in communication is the key.
Influencer outreach doesn’t end with the launch of a campaign. During this time, you should monitor your creators’ activities and resolve any issues that arise. Thank them for their collaboration and expertise after the campaign is over. If a campaign is successful and working with particular influencers went smoothly, mention a possible future collaboration with them.
You can make a successful influencer marketing strategy and collaborate effectively with creators if you consider the above suggestions.
Tips on How to Write a Personalized Outreach Message
As promised earlier, we’ll go into more detail about customized influencer outreach messages in this chapter. You might ask yourself why we keep on mentioning the importance of crafting tailored emails and messages. Because it determines whether the selected influencer will read your brand collaboration offer or ignore it. Here are our 7 tips for composing a personalized outreach message that converts.
1. Come up with an impressive subject line
This is a great chance to make a good impression and stick out from the large volume of messages influencers get. Craft an eye-catching but not too salesy subject line.
2. Start your message by introducing yourself and your brand
Influencers will get a better understanding of your brand and product if you begin your proposal with a short introduction. Outline briefly what you do and why they are the right fit to promote your product.
3. Add a personal touch to your message
Using the creator’s name and mentioning their account name will set a friendly tone. Enhance your chances of establishing a winning partnership and acknowledge their previous posts or share with them why you like their content.
4. Describe how the influencer will profit from the collaboration
Think over and establish what influencers will get from endorsing your product. You can give them a product sample, invite them to an exclusive event, or request a podcast guest appearance. Either way, they will have ample opportunity to gain valuable insights and post high-quality content for their audiences.
5. Elaborate on the campaign details
Explain the main idea and particular details of your collaboration. You can specify:
the campaign type,
dates and publishing schedules,
preferred channels,
content ideas,
and payment methods and terms.
The more specific you are, the better the creator understands whether their followers are a good match for your brand. Be transparent and informative so that the influencer knows what you expect from them, making it easier for them to come to a decision.
6. Make sure to close your proposal with a call to action
At the end of your email, ensure that the influencer replies to your request. Share your contact data so they can turn to you if they have questions or request a video call with them.
7. Use a friendly tone but remain professional
Even if you’re relatable and personal, remember that you’re pitching them your business proposal. Find a balance between being too wordy and digressive and too close-lipped.
Utilize Influencer Outreach Email Templates
Reach influencers with pre-written messages that can be quickly customized. Using outreach templates will save you time, improve your productivity, ensure brand consistency, and minimize errors.
Initial email template: How to reach out to influencers?
Here’s a general "first contact" influencer outreach template to describe the potential collaboration.
Subject: Hi [Influencer’s Name], we’d love to work with you!
Hi [Influencer’s Name],
My name is [Name] from [Company]. I’ve had a look at your profile and really like what I’m seeing from your content!
I think that our product, [Product], would be of great interest to your audience and as such, I’d love to offer you a collaboration. A bit more about [Company] and [Product]:
Your company
Your product
Anything you want to add
If you’d be interested in collaborating with us, please share your details and accept our proposal via the link: [Link]
Let me know if you have any questions so we can discuss further details!
Warm regards,
[Name]
Or tailor your influencer outreach template to the type of campaign you intend to run:
Subject: Hi [Influencer’s Name], we’d love to have you join us
Hello [Influencer's Name]!
I’m [Name] from [Company], a [Details about the company]. I’ve been following your content for some time now and really enjoy your posts on [@Account name].
Based on your overall vibe, I’d love to have you on board as a brand ambassador for [Company]. We think you’d be the perfect fit for us and vice versa!
As a brand ambassador, we would offer you access to our all newest products as well as give you an affiliate code to earn commissions for sales. I think your audience would really enjoy this collaboration.
If you’d be interested in this, it would be great to chat this week. We can discuss further details about the brand partnership and go over any questions you may have. To kick things off, I’d also be happy to send you a kit with some of our best products for you to try out.
Let me know – I’m really looking forward to hearing from you!
Warm regards,
[Name]
With these examples, you can design as many templates as you like to contact influencers. You can adjust their tone and word usage to fit your brand guidelines.
Follow-up Email
Follow up with a second email if you don't receive a reply after 3-5 days. Send your message on a different channel or use our template below to increase response rates.
Subject: Hi [Influencer’s Name], just checking in!
Hello [Influencer’s Name],
This is [Name] from [Company] again.
I just wanted to check in and see if you received my previous email about [Topic]. If not, let me know so I can share the details with you!
Alternatively, if you have any further questions, please let me know by replying to this email and I’d be happy to go over them.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Kind regards,
[Name]
Use these email templates as helpful start-offs for preparing your influencer outreach messages. Take into account our tips in the previous chapter and personalize them to develop and maintain good work relationships with influencers.
How to Automate Your Influencer Outreach
So, the core of influencer outreach is professional and effective communication. And if you have read the article so far, you probably started thinking about any means that can accelerate your procedure. Luckily, there are several solutions to automate monotonous and time-consuming tasks.
Automate your communication with email marketing platforms
The strength of these tools is that you can manage your complete messaging process with them, even across multiple channels. They offer hundreds of email templates and provide data on conversion. Through these platforms, you can send many emails at once and set up email sequences with several follow-up emails.
Still, we recommend you tailor your requests to each influencer’s interest to grow your chances of a higher response rate.
Cover your full outreach workflow with influencer outreach tools
Several influencer marketing platforms, like HypeAuditor, provide influencer outreach and relationship management tools. You can automate and optimize your communication with our Outreach Sequences. Plan and schedule email series that align with your brand’s tone and your marketing campaign.
On top of that, our suite offers solutions for discovering and vetting influencers besides reaching out to them. You can handle all your influencer outreach tasks on the same platform.
With advanced influencer outreach tools, you can automate many aspects of your outreach. They allow you to contact multiple influencers at the same time and schedule your messages. You can customize your emails with personal details or send ready-made templates. Additionally, they help you follow through with your communication and manage influencer relationships.
Make influencer outreach effortless
Use email personalization, pre-made templates, automated sequences, and email analytics to efficiently communicate with influencers. Keep all conversations in one place and take advantage of bulk outreach capabilities.
Book your free demo now
Conclusion
We hope you have a better understanding of how influencer outreach is an important element of your influencer marketing workflow and your campaign’s success. By following our tips, you can build a successful influencer outreach strategy and win relevant influencers for your next collaboration.
