If you’ve landed on this article, then I’m guessing that you have some sort of interest in influencer marketing. If you’re new to the industry or are yet to jump in, then you’re already on the right path. Although the concept has been around for a while, influencers marketing has only really boomed over recent years.
Getting in contact with influencers takes a little more time than you may have initially thought. With the amount of proposals that influencers receive every day, you want to make yours stand out from the crowd.
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Why influencer marketing?
Brands are seeing the amazing results that can be brought about by investing in influencer marketing. The greatest thing is that you don’t have to invest a lot in order to have success. Influencer marketing is an affordable strategy for brands with all different budgets.
No matter what your business goals are, influencers are going to be able to help. Typically, brands will commence an influencer campaign with the aim of increasing brand awareness, boosting their social media presence, driving website traffic and sales, and improving their content strategies. But, whatever your goals – it’s worth exploring how influencers can help.
Whether you’re new to the industry or not, knowing the most effective way to get in touch with influencers is sometimes difficult. But don’t worry, because we will go over the best tips for contacting influencers in this article.
Channel to contacting influencers
The first step is to decide the best channel to contact influencers. Depending on the influencers that you have decided to work with, this step will be totally tailored to your brand’s interests.
Typically, influencer outreach will either be conducted through email, or directly on the social media platform you aim to publish your campaign on. For example, if you have decided to work with Instagram influencers, then you could contact them directly on Instagram.
Direct Message
Contacting Instagram influencers through Direct Message is a frequent choice for brands. This totally depends on each individual scenario. If you are only going to be working with one or two influencers, then this may be the best method for you. However, if you aim to work with many, then this method can be time-consuming.
If you cannot find the email address for an influencer, then DM may be the path you need to choose. You should also think about if your message is more likely to be picked up by the influencer here. Sometimes, bigger influencers will have managers who control their email accounts, so the DM can bypass their manager. Although, sometimes they will have management for Instagram too.
If you choose to DM, keep your message short and to-the-point. It’s a good idea to briefly cover your intentions in the message, requesting an email address where you can send further details to.
Typically, brands will choose to contact influencers by email for their campaigns, as usually they will be trying to get in touch with a lot at once. For contacting just a few influencers, you can write each email individually and keep track of them yourself. But for this type of outreach, brands will use tools to automate their emails to many influencers, but we’ll cover that in a moment.
Emailing is a great way to present a proposal to influencers, being able to give them all of the relevant information and campaign details. Influencers tend to check their emails regularly or have managers that will be keeping on top of it. So, for business conversations about a collaboration, this way is sometimes best.
Method of contact
If you choose to contact influencers by email, then as mentioned above, you could do this manually or through an automated outreach tool. Let’s briefly go over both options.
Manual
Manual outreach is a perfectly suitable option for some brands. It is not recommended for contacting many influencers, but for a few, you’ll be fine. For example, if a brand knows of one specific influencer that they want to get in touch with, then an individual email is perfect.
If this is the method you choose, then be sure to follow our tips below. Also, remember to look out in your inbox and your junk mail for a response. You don’t want to miss it.
Automated
Automated outreach via email is the most common way for brands to get in touch with influencers. The most popular tool to use for automated email outreach, beyond just influencer marketing, is YAMM. This is Google’s add-on, short for ‘Yet Another Mail Merge’. The best thing about YAMM is that it’s free, so there’s absolutely no harm in giving it a try!
Automated email outreach is your most time-effective and efficient contact option. For most brands, even if they only intend to work with a few influencers, they will be contacting a lot in order to increase their chances of a reply.
With YAMM, you can create template emails which can then be personalized to each individual influencer. Additionally, you can track the results of your outreach, seeing who has opened the email, clicked on links, those that have bounced, or the ones that responded. You’ll just need to have a Google Sheets page ready first, with all the names and email addresses of the influencers.
Best practices for contact
When contacting influencers, it can be a complete hit or a miss with the number of replies that you’ll get. Influencers will have busy schedules, sometimes not even opening your emails. Or, if the proposal isn’t attractive enough, they often won’t even bother replying. However, there’s a few tips that we can give in order to improve your chances of receiving a successful response, as well as making outreach as smooth as possible.
Templates
Firstly, preparing email templates will make your job a whole lot easier down the line. Creating a template in Gmail is pretty simple really. You’ll need to enable Templates in your account’s Advanced Settings first.
Open up an empty email and start writing your content. Once a draft email has been written, click on the button on the bottom left with three dots. Here there will be an option called ‘templates’ to select. After that, click ‘save draft as template’. In this section, you can choose to add a new template, or to override another. This is the same place where you will find the template when you are ready to come back and use it.
Personalizing
One of the most important tips that I can give you, is to remember to personalise every email you send. Influencers receive so many proposals, every day for some. There’s nothing worse than receiving an email that has clearly been sent to several other people, with no real thought behind it.
Personalizing an email will encourage the influencer to feel as if you really want them specifically.
Content to include
As you begin writing your messages and emails, consider including the following content:
- a personalized hello
- an introduction to you and your brand
- a brief overview of the campaign
- the incentive that you will be offering
- your expectations and type of publication you are interested in
- any guidelines to be followed
It’s important that within your first message, you are both brief and friendly too. You want the influencer to read this email, so make it exciting and concise, so that they don’t skip it as spam.
Remember to be friendly and approachable too. Let them know that you are open to questions and doubts, at any time.
Response rates
Finally, it’s important that you are aware of the typical response rates within the influencer industry. Influencers have busy schedules, so won’t always be available for your campaign. As well as this, their inboxes are going to be full of brand proposals, so they often won’t even respond. Maybe they missed your email, or they saw it but didn’t bother replying.
Generally, around 30-40% of emails get answered and about 70-80% are opened. So, it’s a good idea to get in touch with more than double the number of influencers that you actually intend on working with.
Conclusion
Hopefully, you will now have a better idea of the methods available for contacting influencers. Although the response rates may seem a little discouraging, don’t let that put you off. Follow these helpful tips and you’ll be acing influencer outreach in no time!
To contact Tiktok influencers and Instagram influencers you can use 2 different strategies, via DMs and via emails. Remember that emails can be longer and more detailed than DMs. Use emails to give a more in-depth explanation of your brand, products, the campaign you are running and why you think the influencer would be a good fit. However, with Youtube influencers the only way to contact them is through emails if you don’t use the comment section, but this is not recommended.
Remember, if you’re looking to find influencers for your next campaign, then head on over to Heepsy.
