Reaching out to influencers or businesses can be a difficult task to deal with. Even more, writing a catchy email that draws attention requires knowledge on what strategies work the best.
That’s why today we talk about outreach: outreach of influencers, businesses, what are creative ways to do it and which subject lines convert the best.
Our guests Paulina Masson, the founder of Shopkeeper and Amazon seller, Tobias Fischer, the founder of Sermondo, Kristina Mertens, the business development manager at Sermondo, and Augustas Kligys, the founder of Orange Klik, have lots of tips to share on what tactics to use.
Focus on what value you can offer
One year ago Tobias started reaching out to different businesses and influencers to promote Sermondo. However, it was extremely hard to get their interest since Sermondo didn’t have any traffic yet.
He tells that the hardest part was the first two service providers but in that kind of situations you learn the craftsmanship of reaching out to people.
So what Tobias realized is that when writing an outreach email, it is hard to keep it short and describe what you’re doing and at the same time explaining what benefits you are offering.
The truth is – you always need to be focused on the benefits you are offering and avoid talking about yourself too much.
Your body text strongly depends on what you are asking for. But in any case – don’t start your email with a long paragraph about yourself. It’s better to draw influencer’s attention by talking about them and then, at the very end, you can tell a bit about what value you get from this collaboration.
Try a different approach
Since Paulina does a lot of promotion of her Shopkeeper brand, she is very curious about this outreach topic. Right now she focuses on creating cross-link promotions. When sending an email, Paulina uses a simple strategy – she tries to be less serious.
She thinks that since many people are promoting their own businesses, their emails end up being too formal and corporate. That’s why she tries to be more informal. Of course, when writing an informal email, you need to clearly understand the boundaries between “informal” and “too informal” – it’s dangerous to get too friendly.
For instance, instead of composing your subject line like “Video Suggestion for X Company”, Paulina suggests trying “let’s do a video together”.
Kristina agrees that when reaching out to someone, it’s a good idea to keep your email informal. However, this strategy cannot be applied every time. For example, there are businesses in the finance or legal sector that are quite conservative and, talking in a more informal way, it’s not always going to work. So you might want to consider these factors based on what type of business you want to reach out.
Do your research
Kristina gives another great tip: If you are reaching out to influencers or marketing agencies, do a little research on their LinkedIn profile. By doing so, you can find interesting information that you can later use when preparing your email. For instance, if you find a blog post, you can start your email by saying that you read this post and highlight, which parts were the most interesting ones.
Then you can go to the point and tell them how engaged you are with their content. Then, after they write you back, politely suggest that you have an idea of how to help them with getting more clients.
After showing your genuine interest, people respond more positively. What Kristina does at this point is arranging a 10-15 minutes video call and that’s usually enough to get them fully convinced.
Think out of the box
Another great tip from Augustas: When he started creating virtual summits and reaching out to different speakers, he found out that one of his strategies – recording personalized videos – was working quite well.
Basically, those were 2-minutes long videos where he invited a person to join the virtual summit by mentioning his/her work and expressing how it would be a great addition if they could share their expertise with the audience in exchange for exposure.
When someone sees an email with the subject line saying “personal invitation” and a video attached to it, it definitely draws attention.
Which subject lines get the highest open rates?
Personal subject lines are the ones which attract the most attention. Even more, it works really good if it’s also a bit personalized. For example: “question about X company”.
How should you end your email?
Is it okay to end your email with a call to action? Maybe it’s better to ask an open question? How to keep your target engaged?
Paulina believes that you cannot stick just to one strategy – it’s all about diversity. Some people are more likely to take action right away, while others are more passive. So if you use the exact same strategy all the time, you are focusing only on one type of people.
Is it okay to use emojis when writing an email?
Emojis are everywhere on social media. However, you would want to avoid using those when writing your outreach email – it looks unprofessional and even a bit scammy.
On the other hand, Kristina suggests using gifs when sending messages on LinkedIn or other social media. As she says, you can quickly notice how the person engages with his audience on social media, if he/she uses gifs as a way of expressing emotions, and then use an appropriate gif to warm the conversation.
If you don’t get the response, should you try writing the person again?
Paulina suggests that in this case, you might want to try reaching the person through other social media channel, but do not overdo it.
Kristina adds that sometimes by doing so you can make people feel cornered. So don’t go crazy there and if you don’t receive a reply within 3 days, write a short message on LinkedIn and friendly remind about yourself.
Tips on how to successfully outreach influencers and to be seen:
- Always talk about them, not about yourself.
- Use a more informal approach.
- Be creative when writing the main text.
- Write the most important information in the first 4 words.
- Clearly describe what value you expect getting from them in the last paragraph.
- Always give exact collaboration options – that is the next action step for them.
- Always prepare a clear list of how they can benefit.
- Be sure your letter contains up to 3 paragraphs – explain everything briefly.
- Do research first – people respond more positively when they see your genuine interest in their work or common topics you share.
- Try different formats of messages, either videos or voice messages.
- And, most importantly, don’t be scared of reaching out to others – they are just people, like every one of us.
Find Paulina on LinkedIn. And be sure to visit Shopkeeper’s website for more! You can also take a look at the DEMO of Shopkeeper on our website here.
To reach Tobias and Kristina to find out more about Sermondo, email at kristina@sermondo.com, or use a contact form you can find on https://sermondo.com/
Klik Chat series #1
This is the #1 episode of the Klik Chat series where together with our guests we discuss trendy topics, reveal lots of tips and tricks, and share effective personal strategies on how to grow your online business.
