- More sales (through direct contact with your target customers)
- More backlinks (through blogger and journalistic outreach)
- More collaboration and co-marketing opportunities (through getting in touch with niche influencers and neighboring businesses owners who can be your perspective partners)
Your outreach email pitch is crucial. Without your email reaching the actual recipient, no deal is possible. It all starts with the successfully received email.
The first step in getting your email delivered is to avoid spam filters. While the spam algorithm is mostly tricky and hard to predict, there are some workable tips to making them easier to pass:
- Keep your email short;
- Keep formatting to a minimum (no bold, no or few links);
- Keep your email personalized
The last point is crucial for one more reason: your email must be read.
You may have heard a lot about the need to personalize your email, and this post will take you one step further: let your email recipient know you do care about building a long-term relationship with them (I know it sounds like dating advice by the way).
1. Do Your Homework First
The first step is making your email look professional:
- Set up a professional email address. I recommend setting up your emailing service on a separate domain, so that it is different from your main site. This way there will be no red flags associated with your site even if any of your recipients decide to mark your email as spam. Namify is a nice way to find a cheap domain for that.
- Work on your email signature for your email to give more background information on who you are and where your leads can find you.
If you have a sales management or a CRM solution, you can use those to send emails and track your (or your team’s) email campaign.s
Once that is done, make sure you are making the most of every person you come across.
2. Get Serious about Finding the Person’s Name
The most obvious place to look: “the About” page but even there some people may avoid mentioning their names. Here are a few more ideas to look further:
- See how they sign their content. A lot of WordPress templates include the “Author Name” at the bottom of the article or below the title
- Check the Twitter profile or other social profile linked from their article or site
- Search Google for “[Blog Name] interview”: bloggers love interviewing each other (within a niche) and get very personal answering the interview questions.
3. Mention the Blog *Name* in the Subject and in The Body
If you have ever received a (semi-)automatic pitch, you know that if your blog is even mentioned, that’s probably its URL (because it is easy to source and paste automatically using variables).
If you want your pitch to stand out, include the *name* of the blog instead – this is most likely to be appreciated as well:
For example, from both the title and the logo, it becomes obvious that the owners prefer to call the blog “Broadsuite Media Group” (versus broadsuite.com or “broadsuite”).
4. Use the Words the Blogger Prefers: Speak His/Her Language!
Don’t make your lead wonder: use the blogger’s way to express it and reflect it in your pitch. Depending on pitch, it can be:
- I would like to contribute a tip…:
- I would like to interview you on…;
- I would like to take part in your design idea contest on…;
- I would like to contribute an article on…;
- I’d like to feature in my list here…
- etc.
5. Mention at Least One Tiny Personal Detail
This always works amazingly well! If you are a regular reader, this won’t be a problem. If you have just started following the blog, look for some tiny personal news shared a few days ago (or search for the details in the interviews).
Starting your email pitch with something like this will ensure you’ll get a reply:
- Congrats on your recent blogging anniversary;
- Have a great time during your vacation;
- I’ve read about your health issues. I hope you feel better now!
Now, don’t get me wrong! It’s not enough to pretend you care here. You really need to start caring!
6. Drop Some Familiar Names (Optional but Effective)
Getting connected through a common contact always works best. If you and your lead are in the same niche, you are almost sure to have common (blogging) friends.
You can discover them on LinkedIn (if you are both lucky enough to be well-networked there).
While LinkedIn works best for that, other social networks would do as well. For example, Facebook pages will also show you the common connections, so always check the blogger’s presence on Facebook.
Looking at your lead’s backlinks is another great idea to discover common connections and more context for your relationship. SE Ranking’s competitive research feature includes a robust backlink research option that will help you identify your lead’s priorities, promoters and your common connections.
Let’s Sum Up
Conclusion
Now, don’t get desperate. It only seems hard. In reality, after a few highly personalized pitches, things will get much quicker.
On the plus side, using the steps above, you’ll be amazed at how much higher the response rate is and better results from your email outreach campaign.. Good luck!