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As an entrepreneur, you often send out emails to influential members of your industry. Maybe with the intention of getting a backlink from their blog, or maybe collaborating with them for marketing purposes.
In an ideal scenario, you hear back from them, work together on something, and there’s a surge in the attention you get. But things are never that easy. We’ve seen it all too often before. Your email gets ignored. No matter how brilliant you think your pitch is, you don’t hear back from influencers.
So, what gives? Influencers get hundreds of emails a day. And you’re not getting heard above the noise. The only way to get their attention is to make your email stand out. With that in mind, we’re going to discuss some reasons why influencers might be ignoring you. And more importantly, what can you do about it.
1. Bulk-Emailing
I understand that you have to reach out to a lot of people to get even a few responses. But taking this shortcut and blasting emails out to scores of influencers isn’t the way to go. Influencers know their worth, and won’t give you a second’s attention if your email is canned.
Influencers are a perceptive bunch of people and will pick up on whether you’ve copy-pasted any part of your message. Their inbox is stuffed with hundreds of spam messages, and if your email is even tad generic, they’ll ignore it.
Like this one I received a while back. You can clearly see that I wasn’t the only recipient of this particular email.
Take your time and research the influencers you want to contact. Getting to know them a little better will make it easier for you to customize your messages for them. Influencers share a lot about themselves online, so it won’t be a difficult task to find out something about them.
Mention some content of theirs you found interesting, and tell them you appreciate their contribution the industry. Offer them some content of yours that you think fits their branding profile. By personalizing your email content, you’re showing them that you’ve taken the time to get to know them. This makes them feel important.
Influencer marketing is all about engaging people organically. It applies to influencer outreach as much as it does to audience outreach. This way, they’ll be more receptive to opening up a dialogue with you.
2. You’re Reaching Out to the Wrong Influencers
This is the culprit most of the time when brands reach out to influencers. If you aren’t reaching out to the right people, there’s an infinitesimally small chance of them responding to your email. This is probably because:
- They aren’t relevant to your industry
- You don’t align with their brand
- Your brand goes against their ethics
To put it rather bluntly, pitching a steak to a vegan isn’t going to get you anywhere. Most influencers take their partnerships with brands rather seriously. If you’re reaching out to influencers simply because they are popular, all you’re doing is showing you haven’t researched them. It sends the wrong message. The message that you don’t care enough. And as a result, they won’t either.
This is precisely why you should be using proper tools to research influencers who belong to your nice. For instance, BuzzStream can help you to narrow down your search for influencers to collaborate with. You can use parameters like the number of followers, category, last activity and location to focus your search.
Here is what I found when looking for travel influencers:
If you want to narrow down your search further, you can use other influencer marketing software, like Grin. It allows to filter the influencers based on other social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube. You can track their content and get verified contact information without digging deeper into Google .
Take a look at this email I received from someone looking to collaborate. Considering his niche is a little out of my wheelhouse, I humbly declined.
If you are emailing someone outside your domain, consider an approach like, “I understand that this may not align with your interests but I thought I’d let know you either way.”
This might get you a better response. Even if they do politely turn down your offer, you’ll preserve your relationship with them.
Beyond that, ensure you get to know the influencers before contacting them. Identify suitable influencers by researching their area of expertise, their influence, and their preferred platform for communicating.
3. Nothing in it for them
What most brands and marketers fail to understand is that how they ask for favors from influencers isn’t right. You shouldn’t be soliciting favors from influencers. Instead, you should offer to give them something of value in return.
Everybody has a busy life, and influencers are no exception. If you’re asking them to take time to help you in some regard, make it worth their time and effort. Consider the time and effort they’ll need to invest in creating content for you. You’ll realize why your offer has to be enticing for them to even think about it.
Do not hesitate in stating your offers such as a give-out or an invite before you ask them for a favor. It doesn’t have to be something tangible, you can even give them some recognition by mentioning them in your blog.
They aren’t going to give your email any importance if they think there’s nothing for them to gain by collaborating with you. A simple spin to make the deal sound more favorable to the influencer can do the trick.
There are a few things I appreciate about this email I received from a blogger.
Firstly, they’ve clearly taken the time out to research about me and my work. They talk about an article of theirs I might be interested in. Following that up with insights about one I’d previously written. Clearly, they are trying to engage with me and I must say it’s working.
To try to open up a dialogue, they ask me for my take on their work. Quite casually, they slip in wanting to collaborate with me. But the icing on the cake for me is when they offer to lend me a helping hand if I ever need it. This is a perfect example of what outreach emails should be like.
4. Bad Email Pitch
Sometimes even if you’re reaching out to the right people and offering a good value proposition, you don’t get a response. It’s probably because your pitch or email just isn’t as good as you think. Any number of things could be wrong with it – from structure to lack of comprehensibility.
Typical email etiquette applies here too. Influencers rarely have the time or patience to read through messages that go on forever before coming to the point. Keep your emails short, well structured, easy to understand, and I can’t stress this enough – to the point.
The success of your email counts on the quality of the email content. You need to gain their attention from the get-go. Beating around the bush is only going to cause them to skip your email. Maybe start off with some valuable information in the initial line (like the previous example) and then cut to the chase.
Another issue could be that your email is too short and doesn’t really have any value addition like this one below. An email like this isn’t going to grab any eyeballs or a moment’s worth of consideration from influencers.
Conclusion
Research is crucial when it comes to outreach. Reaching out to and working with influencers who align with your brand and vice versa is the way to go about influencer marketing. You run the risk of alienating yourself from influencers if you don’t do your homework.
It is only with the right influencers and strategies that can you achieve sustained business growth. All the while building valuable professional relationships with key social leaders. But to establish those relationships, you need to get read. Be mindful of the things we’ve discussed above and your outreach efforts won’t be in vain.
If you have any opinions on the matter, feel free to add them in the comment section. We’d love to hear from you.
Shane Barker
Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant, named the #1 social media consultant in the nation by PROskore Power Rankings. He has expertise in business development, online marketing and is an SEO specialist who has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and a number of A-list celebrities.Disclaimer: The author's views are entirely their own, and don't necessarily reflect the opinions of BuzzStream.
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