Influencer marketing is not new to anyone in this digital age. And the fact that it is derived from emotional marketing is also long standing. However, there are several misconceptions about how this goldmine can be leveraged.
For starters, you need to find a perfect influencer and get in touch with them.
Those who know how to email an influencer can easily embrace the power of genuine connections. At the same time, others are still waiting to hear the replies to their outreach cold email.
Sending cold emails sometimes feels overwhelming. It makes us nervous about whether it will turn into a collaboration or not.
As per the recent study conducted by HubSpot, the average response rate of cold emails is only 1%.
But you can turn this over to more than 30% with effective and genuine personalization.
Personalization is a spell that has the potential to turn the black magic of unresponsive cold emails into a collaboration. To hit the right spot and get the expected replies, there are several elements to include in your email portion.
Want to know them? Then, stick around.
We are here to help you unravel the secret ways how to contact influencers & compel them to say YES to your enchanting proposal.
So, let’s get started with the basics.
What Exactly Is Influencer Marketing?
Influencer Marketing is a strategic method with which businesses collaborate with individuals having strong online presence in their particular niche. This gives them more power to reach their target audience with their product and services.
The process of influencer marketing is a gamble that can work wonders when played right. And it can also make you bankrupt if you are not careful. With the more than 15 billion worth of this industry and increasing, working in the right direction is getting more challenging.
From approaching to negotiation, from collaboration to conversions, influencer marketing requires immense patience and smart strategy.
So, let’s decode the vital stage of influencer marketing, i.e., “Approaching,” which begins with a question: How to email an influencer?
Why Are Cold Emails Important for Influencer Outreach?
Influencer-driven marketing is one of the long-term approaches. However, establishing a two-way conversation with the influencer is still a challenge.
To begin this affair, cold email marketing is most followed. It helps us reach the individual with a proper disclaimer about the possible collaboration. But, often, these emails don’t get their deserving replies.
You too must be waiting for an influencer to reply to your mail!
Approaching an influencer with a cold email is an art that requires strategic finesse. And, preparing a funnel that actually turns into a collaboration is a skill.
So, let’s get this skill embedded in you, too.
How to Email An Influencer?
Influencers that you are targeting are also targeted by many other brands. They are getting several outreach emails every day. You don’t want your email to end up unanswered among those, right?
Prominent influencers don’t work with everyone. The average collaboration acceptance rate of an influencer is 14% to 23%, as per the MailChimp and ConstantContact data.
The real difference is always made by the uniqueness of your approach.
Want to learn how to email an influencer and shine this uniqueness?
Here we go!
Researching and Identifying the Right Influencers
Not getting the expected response for your recent influencer marketing campaign? Maybe you haven’t picked the right influencer.
A thorough research and identification of the perfect influencer is as vital as approaching them. Can you imagine your money, time, and efforts getting wasted on a campaign that didn’t get you the ROI?
It is important to find someone with a similar audience base as your niche. You should be the answer to all the questions their audience has. Visit their channels and confirm that their vibe matches yours. Observe that their visibility is all real and not bought, which many influencers do.
Search your niche hashtags and approach the ones that have the most relevant base to you. To avoid making a mistake during the influencer hunt, you can also refer to the SocialPilot blog “How to Identify Right Influencers?”.
Once you have collected the list of influencers with optimum online presence, you can use an email finder tool such as Findymail to get their contact information and start approaching.
Keeping Your Approach Personalized
There is a very thin line between personalization and too much personalization. You need to stay on the correct side of the line. In influencer marketing, it is necessary to create a trusted relationship.
The same goes for the world of influencer marketing. An influencer is able to generate conversion because their followers trust them. They built their followers based on their mutual share of values. When an influencer shares any product or service, it works like a heartfelt suggestion by a friend.
This connection is beyond their online presence, which is why you need to give them strong reasons with personalization to direct their audience’s support to your product and services.
Influencers are fed up with feeling like just another recipient of a mail that several others have also received. Make them feel special to stand out from the crowd so they take your proposal exclusively.
The answer to your question, How to email an influencer?, is Personalisation. It is the best way to turn any cold email into an exclusive. Rather than copying and pasting the mail, try going beyond that.
Give it a personal touch by stating why you find them relevant to your brand and make it specific and not generic.
Demonstrating Genuine Interest and Value
Every influencer understands that authenticity is the foundation of any positive relationship because they have been working all their life to build it.
Conveying that your trust in them is as strong as their followers will be a good ice-breaker. Show belief in their messaging style and how that relates to your brand.
They should be able to imagine the irresistible positive result of collaborating with your brand. Develop genuine connections on relevant and mutual grounds and praise their hard work.
Wouldn’t you love to receive admiration from someone who has been keeping a watch on your presence and wishes to collaborate?
Talk about a recent campaign or activity they have done and connect it to your vision. This will show you actually value their work and have real interest. An interest that can benefit both the parties immensely.
Effective Communication
Along with personalization, clear communication is another vital scheme in influencer marketing. Several cold emails are left unanswered because the recipient is not clear with the sender’s agenda.
Even if you have made yourself clear, there are times when the influencer is not convinced. So, being clear isn’t enough; you need to be convincing with your proposal.
To whom will you reply faster?
An email with a boring and monotonous agenda or one that is filled with excitement and eagerness to work with you.
The latter one will make the influencer look forward to the opportunity they don’t want to miss. Something irresistible and fresh will compel them to picture the benefits.
The best tip on how to email an influencer is to be clear and concise. By the time they are done going through your email, they should be clear with what you expect. If you are clear and enthusiastic, your cold email will get a faster response than others.
Following-Up Strategically
Several amateur brands make the mistake of either bombarding an influencer’s inbox with follow-up emails or not following up at all.
Following up on your email, especially cold ones, is not just a job to be ticked off; rather, it is a strategy to get the desired response. Sending reminder mail is a good technique if you haven’t got a reply to your first mail within 24 hours.
Timing for follow-ups is different for various industries and purposes. You should try and test yours and see what works for you.
A general follow-up time is advised to be on weekdays and during decent working hours. Try to keep necessary gaps between your follow-ups to prevent from spamming the recipient inbox. You can do this automatically with an email outreach tool such as Instantly or Hunter.
It is because every influencer has a few brands they are unable to resonate with. This is due to their method of dealing with collaboration. Don’t make the mistake of being that brand. Limit your follow-up and keep them as respectful and professional as possible.
Learning with Experimenting
Still wondering what’s going wrong with your influencer outreach emails?
Maybe you need to stop following the same old strategy that you have found or read about, and start experimenting. If you want to collaborate with the best influencers of your niche, it won’t work unless you give them something fresh.
Carry out something out-of-the-box. Align your brand values with them in a way that no one has ever done. This can only happen with every possible hit and trial practice.
Even the guide on how to email an influencer will advise you to analyze your approach. In your past five cold email outreach to influencers, 2 got positive replies, so find out what went right in those 2. Similarly, discover the reason behind the no response on the other 3 emails.
Humans learn from experimenting.
So just go out there and give it your best shot. Cold email marketing, in the world of influencers, often thrives with practical work. And it brings you closer to your influencer marketing triumphs.
8 Steps to Write Cold Emails for Influencer Outreach
Finding the right influencer is one side of the story, and reaching them is another. A successful campaign lies in the hands of one of the most important questions, i.e., how to email an influencer?
Leveraging the power of influencer outreach is a long, step-by-step process. To shorten that, here we are providing you with the eight most effective steps to write influencer outreach emails that will guarantee you a positive response.
Grab your keyboard, and it’s time to learn the secret of writing an email that leaves a supercool first impression.
1. Craft Intriguing Subject Line
Did you know? 64% of recipients open emails based on how intriguing their subject line is (Barillance, 2021). And 69% of recipients mark an email as spam based on their subject line (Invesp, 2021).
This is what difference a good subject line can do to your business. So, if you are looking for “How to email influencers?” start by learning about the subject line.
Some of the best tips are as follows:
- Keep your email subject line accurate and within 45 characters or less.
- Personalize it by adding an influencer’s name, industry, or niche.
- Avoid unnecessary punctuation and capitalization.
Examples:
- [FirstName] + [YourCompany] = Collaboration?
- [FirstName], Let’s Collab & Make the Internet Jealous!
2. Personalize Beyond the Name
Imagine getting a collaboration from someone who is your fan. Won’t you go out of the way to work on it?
Similarly, when you show an influencer that they are your favorite, they will surely reply. Personalizing names in subject lines and other parts of the email is fine, but leaving a personal impact is more important.
Going beyond their name and expressing your true admiration can work wonders.
Examples:
- Hi [InfluencerName], I’ve been following your incredible journey, especially your recent [specific achievement].
- Dear [InfluencerName], I’ve admired your work for years, particularly how you [mention something unique about their content style].
3. Start with a Hook to Capture Interest
Once your subject line has done its job and convinced the recipient to open the mail, now the responsibility lies in the hands of the hook.
The way you start your mail can convey a strong message to the influencer. It can make or break the connection created between you and the recipient. To grab attention from the first sentence, make them excited for what’s coming next.
After the hook, it’s the best time to introduce the brand, who you are, and what you do. This opening should be personal and will make them want to continue.
Examples:
- Congratulations on hitting [Milestone Followers Reached] followers on [PlatformName]– your efforts and hard work are visible on your feed.
- We absolutely loved your post about [ProductName], and we think it’s amazing because [things you love about their content].
4. Highlight Mutual Benefits
While there are endless things to make your email engaging and advanced, the real deal actually lies in the mutual benefit of collaboration. This is your answer when you are looking for “How to email an influencer and get faster results?”
What will the influencer get out of this deal, and how can it be turned into a win-win collaboration? When talking about the benefit, you can also refer them to their or your recent collaboration.
Don’t go into too much detail; try to stick to the point and give them a brief idea of your proposal. Focus on how it can add value to their status and capitalize on your brand.
Some brands prefer not to disclose the collaboration deal in the first cold email to the influencers; they ask them to reply if they wish to discuss it. This increases their chance to start a conversation with the influencer.
Examples:
- This collaboration could help both of us to reach new audiences and grow our online presence.
- We’d love to provide more details. Please let us know if you are interested so we can discuss next steps.
5. Create a Connection to Evoke Empathy
Influencer outreach is all about relationship-building. In order to leverage their relationship with their audience, you need to build a connection with them. This is where you can showcase your research on them.
Don’t expect them to find value for their audience in this collaboration; rather, you prove how it is beneficial for them. Instead of making everything transactional, incline towards the sense of empathy.
Connecting with them with a personal and social impact will make influencers eager to work with you.
While discussing the proposal, give them the liberty to work on the content of the collaboration. Don’t be forceful; instead, prove that you are in it to generate sustainable relationships more than conversions.
Examples:
- Your passion for [shared interest] aligns perfectly with our vision. Together, we can inspire real change.
- We deeply resonate with your recent post about [Specify Post]. Let’s channel that connection into a collaboration that goes beyond transactions.
6. Clear and Actionable Call-to-Action
When you come to the end of your email, remember that your recipient is busy. Influencers have designated time sets for different activities.
No one likes to scroll through the mail to find the most critical information.
Unlike other cold emails that never get response, you must not leave the influencer guessing. Be crystal clear about the next step of the collaboration.
Ask them if they will be comfortable scheduling calls or need more details, etc. Even if the recipient opens your email, only a few of them will read to the point of CTA. So, you might want to make it count.
Examples:
- Let’s discuss the exciting details! Please click the link below to schedule a convenient time for our initial chat.
- Interested in having a quick conversation about working together? Provide us with a suitable time and date for a discussion.
7. Close with Politeness and Excitement
You must have heard many incidents when a powerful influencer dragged down a brand with negative publicity. It is of the brand’s miscommunication with the influencer.
This is a clear example of how an influencer can make or break your name. Being polite is necessary to avoid any such miscommunication, especially when the discussion doesn’t end with the collaboration.
Remember, you are representing your brand, and your professionalism is going to speak for it. Even while you are conveying excitement and enthusiasm, make sure it is not misinterpreted with an informal attitude.
Always leave them feeling appreciated that you got a chance to connect with them.
Examples:
- Your time is greatly appreciated. I’m eagerly anticipating the possibility of working with such an inspiring influencer.
- Thank you for exploring this collaboration with us. While it may not be the right time for us to join forces, we sincerely wish you all the best for the future.
8. Include Contact Information
If you wish to seize this opportunity, you must think 360 degrees. Being available and reachable is important to add a professional touch to the mail.
The best way to share contact information professionally is to attach an email signature. Make sure this final piece of information contains every possible detail like the official link, email address, designation, name, etc.
This will increase the possibility of getting a response for the cold email outreach to the influencer.
Examples:
- To start the conversation, you can contact me via email [your email] or call me at [your phone number].
- Feel free to reach out to me at [your email] or [your phone number] if you have any questions or would like to discuss further.
3 Best Examples of Cold Email to Get “YES” from Influencers
As you are well-versed with What, Why, and When about how to email an influencer, let’s dive into a few cold email templates. These examples have the potential to get you instant collaborations.
Example 1: Collaboration Proposal
Example 2: A Friendly Follow-Up
Example 3: Product Review Mail
You can use these examples for your influencer outreach email. But feel free to personalize these templates as per your convenience and niche. Try and test different styles and concepts to find out the approach that gets you the highest influencer responses.
While looking for results on how to email an influencer, don’t get lost in the monotonous methods found online. Remember that influencer outreach marketing is unpredictable, and creating a strong relationship can go a long way.
