How to Conduct a Blogger Outreach Campaign

Table of Contents:

• What Are Blogger Outreach Campaigns?
• Common Influencer Outreach Mistakes
• How to Approach Influencers Through Email
• Best Blogger Outreach Tools
• Blogger Outreach Campaign Examples
• 5 Insider Tips for Blogger Outreach
• How to Find Bloggers to Promote Your Products

At a time when consumers are more aware of and skeptical of marketing techniques, influencer marketing comes off as more authentic and trustworthy. It boosts brand awareness, sales, and customer trust and engagement. Plus, it helps you get in front of a relevant audience at a lower cost than traditional advertising. One area of opportunity in influencer marketing is doing a blogger outreach campaign to get popular bloggers to feature you. Let’s explore how you can make blogging part of your influencer marketing strategy.

What Are Blogger Outreach Campaigns?

We define blogger outreach campaigns as the intentional act of finding and reaching out to bloggers to make connections. These outreach campaigns serve as the starting point for blogger influencer marketing. 

Once you make successful influencer connections, you can start collaborating with bloggers who fit your needs. Bloggers can promote your products and brand in a number of ways, for example, linking to your website, offering discounts on purchases, doing product reviews or unboxings, or doing giveaways.

Common Influencer Outreach Mistakes

The relationship between a brand and influencers is always a work in progress. Even though it’s a professional one, it does require a lot of personal nurturing and care. Building your outreach strategy around relationships can help you build more authentic, fruitful connections.

To make sure you are able to instantly hit it off with your influencers, here are three things you should never do while trying to build relations with influencers.

1. Don’t Send Irrelevant Messages

Influencers are busy people. To nag them with a mass email blast or irritating email forwards can automatically threaten your relationship with them.

Make sure you’re only sending relevant emails to influencers that make sense for your brand. You can’t send a SaaS content piece to a travel blogger, for example; it will be dismissed right away by both the blogger and their readers.

2. Don’t Expect a Free Ride

Don’t expect freebies from influencers just because you wrote some sweet lines of praise. To an influencer, their blog is their bread and butter, and creating content requires time and skill. To expect a service without paying for it is unprofessional and disrespectful. 

Keep a set budget for your influencer marketing that allows you to provide product samples as gifts to influencers. These gifts should aim at introducing influencers to your product, and it needs to be done without any hidden agenda. Keep in mind that even though you gave out a freebie, you might not get anything in return. 

3. Don’t Nag

Influencers appreciate it when you praise their work, but don’t fake it. Being superficial will take you nowhere. What’s more, you’ll want to avoid sending constant follow-up messages to see if they’ve tried the sample and if they will feature you in their blog.

To avoid becoming a nuisance, use smart tools and techniques to enhance productivity and reduce friction in your communication.

For instance, follow up with influencers by creating a Slack community, a forum of like-minded professionals discussing common topics. Use the real-time chat platform to network with your influencers and pass along relevant information. Influencers would be more than happy to use this forum as it will keep their inbox clutter-free.

But remember, even though a Slack community is more approachable, be mindful of being active at hours which might be inconvenient for community members. As part of Slack etiquette, fix a reasonable time to chat with everyone in your community.

How to Approach Influencers Through Email

One of the challenges marketers face is that of approaching influencers effectively so that they say yes to the collaboration proposal. In fact, communicating with potential and existing influencers is a challenge for 43% of marketers.

Approaching influencers for collaboration can be tricky. Many times, there are gaps between the expectations of brands and those of influencers, including the preferred method of outreach. 

Emailing is one of the best ways to reach out to influencers. It’s reliable, personalized, and efficient. Usually, emails have high deliverability rates. This means your target influencers will be more likely to receive your emails.

Let’s look at how you can use email as part of your outreach strategy.

Get to Know the Influencer

Even if you know loads about your influencer, you need to dig a little deeper before reaching out to them. The better you know your target influencer, the more appealing your pitch will be.

Learn their real first name. (Hint: check their social profiles or blog). Learn who handles their business (themselves vs. an influencer agency). Dig into the social feed of your target influencer and try to understand the brand values close to their heart. Your aim is to understand if the influencer you are targeting is a good fit for you.

For example, if you’re an organic food brand, you can’t collaborate with an influencer who promotes animal testing. 

Burt’s Bees is one brand that understands the power of authenticity in influencer marketing. The brand manufactures all-natural lip balms and cosmetics. They partnered with 44 influencers for their World Earth Month campaign. All of the influencers were nature or wellness enthusiasts who believed in the concept of sustainability, just like the brand.

To find an influencer who fits your brand values, check out their bio and posts. They will reflect the causes that the influencer champions. 

Check Their Reach and Engagement

An influencer’s influence can be gauged by the engagement their content gets. If the number of likes, comments, and shares is adequate, you’ve found a winner even if the influencer has just a few thousand followers. 

Research shows that micro-influencers have 22.2X more “buying” conversations (such as product recommendations) than other people.

The quality of conversations in an influencer’s account also makes a big difference. If the comments on their posts are just emojis or generic comments, that doesn’t count as real engagement. On the other hand, if the influencer’s followers ask them for reviews or recommendations or comment on something specific about their post, the influencer can be considered a bankable partner.

Relevant reach is equally important. Check out the follower demographics of your target influencers. They should align with your target audience so you get access to new and engaged audiences that might be interested in your brand. 

Give Your Emails a Personal Touch

Once you are sure that the influencers on your list are well matched and verified, it’s time to compile your outreach emails. Ditch the generic approach when it comes to composing and scheduling your emails. Everyone likes a bit of personal attention, and influencers are no different.

Addressing influencers by their name, customizing the content to match their tone, offering them things that they crave, and sending them emails when they are most active are some ways by which you can personalize your outreach. 

Even if you plan to use an email template, tweak it to add a personal touch. Here are some ways to do that:

Personalize email subject lines and salutation

Even if you’ve crafted a great collaboration proposal for an influencer, it will be a waste unless they open the email. 

To increase the chances of them opening your emails, include their first name to make your email stand out in their overcrowded inbox. Use words and phrases like “collaboration,” “proposal,” “business opportunity,” or “let’s work together” to grab their attention. Be friendly but respectful in the salutation. 

Spammy keywords in the email subject line and body can trigger a bounce. Avoid all words/phrases that make you look manipulative, needy, or sleazy. 

Personalize the content

After introducing yourself briefly, compliment the influencer’s latest achievement or post. Share why the collaboration would be mutually beneficial. The key is to connect with influencers on a human level. Great influencers are often inundated with offers, so they’re more likely to remember a brand that took pains to do research about them. 

Include a compelling offer

Influencers work for different things, including money, exposure, free products/services, and emotional satisfaction. If you know what motivates your target influencers to accept a proposal, you can pitch them more effectively.

Be upfront about what you bring to the table. Make the offer more appealing by adding frills like free product samples for them to try. Try to match the industry standards for influencer pricing.

Personalize your sender details

Use your professional account to send the email. You don’t want an influencer to think the email is coming from a bot or an impersonal automated platform. Include your complete contact details in your signature so they can respond easily.

Clarify Your Expectations

Lay down your expectations in unambiguous terms. What should be the influencer’s deliverables? What is the timeline of the delivery? How will you measure their performance? These are some questions you need to think about while drafting the email. 

While it’s good to be honest, try not to overwhelm them with stringent guidelines and unrealistic goals. Content creators crave freedom of expression, and you should respect their boundaries as well. 

Pro Tip: Busy influencers don’t have the time to go through lengthy blocks of text about your company’s background and campaign ideas. Use video editing tools to create slick videos and showcase your brand story and value proposition visually. Your influencers might appreciate your ingenuity and effort.

Here are a few more things to keep in mind:

• Make your emails mobile-friendly. 
• Schedule them for early business hours on weekdays. 
• Include a clear CTA about how the influencer should proceed after receiving the email.
• Follow up within a week if you don’t hear back from them. 
• Follow email deliverability best practices if you don’t want your email to land in the spam folder, like 45% of all business emails. 

Lastly, have a system in place for following up with influencers who reply to your emails. You’ve done plenty of hard work to this point, so make sure you don’t let interested influencers fall through the cracks.

Best Blogger Outreach Tools

Doing all of your blogger outreach campaigns manually can be tiresome and tricky. Using blogger outreach tools can take on some of the heavy lifting so you can focus on your campaign specifics. Let’s look at a few blogger outreach tools to try.

Klear

Klear’s all-in-one influencer marketing platform handles all aspects of blogger outreach and collaboration. Find and vet influential bloggers using our search tools, then make an introduction via the platform and maintain ongoing communications. Get access to bloggers’ contact information, measure your response rate, and manage your entire blogger outreach strategy from one place. Klear helps digital marketing managers build stronger connections with bloggers and social media influencers without spending hours in their inbox.

Mailshake

Mailshake’s cold email platform helps you land in more inboxes and puts your outreach on autopilot. Key features include reusable templates for your blogger outreach campaigns while adding personal touches to make each email unique. You can also automate your follow-up cadences so you’re not over-communicating or under-communicating with potential partners.

Ninja Outreach

Ninja Outreach is designed to connect you to influencers on Instagram and YouTube. However, many of these social media stars also have blogs, giving you even more ways to collaborate. Filter your search through millions of influencers, then grab their email addresses from Ninja Outreach data to make an introduction.

Pitchbox

Doubling as an influencer outreach and link-building tool, Pitchbox streamlines your search for relevant blogger influencers. It also connects with popular SEO platforms like Moz and SEMRush so you can track your backlink profile as you make more connections.

Traackr

Traackr offers influencer campaign management and collaboration tools along with influencer discovery helpers. Marketers can leverage the data on Traackr to streamline their search and find influencers who fit their needs and align with their values.

Respona

Respona is a user-friendly tool that makes personalized, automated email outreach a breeze. Primarily used for link building, it’s also a great tool for reaching new influencers who might want to include you in a blog post. Respona offers a free trial and a demo so you can see it in action before upgrading.

YesWare

Marketed as a sales engagement tool, YesWare connects to your Gmail or Outlook inbox to improve your email outreach. It automatically logs communications in your CRM so you can track all communications and responses. Best of all, it’s free to use!

Blogger Outreach Campaign Examples

Knowing what you know now about blogger outreach campaigns, let’s put it all together and see these steps in action. We’re sharing six blogger outreach campaign examples to inspire you.

Example 1: Share a Percentage of Profits

Asking influencers to promote a product can take some creative finessing. The influencer might not have first-hand knowledge of the product and may not feel comfortable promoting it to their audience. 

One way around the uncertainty is to offer a share of profits for each sale made through the influencer’s network. You can assign your influencer a special discount or coupon code, affiliate link, or something else to monitor engagement. They keep a portion of the sales in return for sharing the product with their followers. 

Here’s an example email template you can use for this purpose:

Example 2: Invitation to Become a Brand Ambassador

Brand ambassador programs tend to offer multiple incentives, not just a portion of the sales. Brand ambassadors may receive branded swag, are the first to know about new products or special events, and have access to media and tools to promote the brand’s products. 

Adding new influencers to your brand ambassador program can help you get in front of new audiences in different ways. Plus, these programs are usually not tied to any single campaign, meaning your influencer partners may promote you on an ongoing basis.

Here’s an email template you can use to invite influencers to become a brand ambassador:

Example 3: Offer a Free Sample

Professional influencers wish to be treated like normal people. Putting them on a god-like pedestal is just absurd. Influencers expect brands to interact and engage with them without the tendency to grovel at their feet — this makes you and your brand seem unreliable.

Here’s an example of how you can politely ask an influencer for a review by showing genuine courtesy.

Example 4: Write a Guest Post

Benefiting from the influence of an influencer doesn’t have to mean lots of involvement on the influencer’s side. If they have an audience you want to get in front of, see if the blogger will let you write a free or sponsored guest post for them. 

A guest post is a bylined article on the blogger’s site. You can write something that aligns with the other content on their blog that their audience will find appealing. You can also insert a backlink to your own website where it’s contextually relevant. The more backlinks you earn, the higher your domain authority grows, which can help you increase your organic rankings.

The blogger benefits from having a piece of free content to share with their followers. You benefit from the exposure on their website and the backlink to your site. It’s a win-win!

Here’s some example copy you can use to pitch bloggers for guest posts:

Hi [First name],

I absolutely loved reading your article, [insert title]. I hadn’t considered [pick out something helpful from the article you found to be inspiring].

In fact, your article inspired an idea of my own. [Go into detail about your topic idea and why it’s a good fit.]

I’d love to send you this article as a guest post for your blog. Interested?

[Your name]

[Company/contact details]

Example 5: Host an Event or Giveaway

You don’t always have to focus on online activities when working with bloggers. In some cases, it makes sense to conduct blogger outreach when hosting an event. Invite them to attend (e.g., asking a food blogger to come to your restaurant’s grand opening) and write about their experience. 

On a similar note, you might ask bloggers to do a product giveaway on your behalf. This is a great way to get your products in front of a contextually relevant audience. It works well for new product launches, grand openings, or anytime you want to draw focus to a particular product.

Here’s some sample email copy you can use:

Hi [First name],

I’m [Your Name, Job Title, Company]. I want to personally invite you to join us at [event, location, date, time]. Your blog has caught our attention and is such an excellent resource for [topic of interest], and we’d love to find a way to collaborate together.

In return, we’re treating all of our guests to [list your incentive(s) for attending].

Please reply to this email and let me know if you’re able to make it. I look forward to meeting you in person.

Best wishes,

[Your Name]

[Company/contact details]

Example 6: Ask for a Review

Blogger outreach campaigns can also help you get more product or business reviews. Connect with bloggers to see if they’re interested in trying your product in exchange for honest testimonials. They can leave a rating on your Amazon or store product page, share a paragraph about their experience, or even do an in-depth blog post and/or video demonstration.

Use the sample copy below to get started:

Hi [First name],

I noticed your [review/testimonial/content] for [insert product] and loved your approach. Would you be interested in a similar collaboration for our product?

[Go into a brief description of the product.] It’s a great product that readers of blogs like yours have found to be useful. Let’s connect and we can chat more.

Best wishes,

[Your Name]

[Company/contact details]

5 Insider Tips for Blogger Outreach

To learn more about what works in outreach campaigns, we connected with five bloggers who are influential in food, fashion, and lifestyle. We asked them a simple question:

“A company approaches you and offers to collaborate. What would it take for you to say yes?”

The bloggers’ answers were honest and straightforward. Here are the blogger outreach tips they’ve shared with us.

1. Learn How to Communicate with the Influencers

“I think great communication is the key to keeping everyone happy. There’s nothing worse than sending an email, and not receiving a reply for several weeks. If both parties are communicative, everyone knows where they stand and things run much more smoothly — and with a lot less frustration!” (Becca Pusey, Amuse Your Bouche)

“The pitch from the brand has to be personal. I like to know that the person has clearly done their homework and knows at least a little about me and my blog. Their email addresses me by name, might mention something they like about my blog, audience, content, etc. I just want to know that they actually care and it isn’t a canned pitch.” (Molly Stillman, Still Being Molly)

Takeaway: Before reaching out, be familiar with the influencer’s content. Know what they publish, and later be friendly and communicative.

2. Make Sure It’s a Perfect Audience Fit

“In order for me to say yes, the post would first have to be relevant to my blog and audience.” (Kait Hanson, CommuniKait)

“It has to be the right fit. If the brand isn’t the right fit for my blog, audience, or demographic, it doesn’t matter — I won’t do the campaign. I have had that mantra since I started and will always keep that mantra.” (Molly Stillman)

Takeaway: The influencers know their audience. So should you. Use audience demographics data to know exactly who are the people who are part of the influencer network, their age, country, gender, and content preferences.

3. Be Transparent about Compensation

“I would say yes to a brand who is paying money for a collaboration and is a good fit with my audience.“ (Heather Mann, Dollar Store Crafts)

“$$$: While certain campaigns can be done for “trade,” when a company respects the fact that my blog is my full-time job/business and that I do charge for certain things, I really appreciate that. It has taken many years to grow my audience, create my content, etc. and I work hard and I really appreciate that brands treat partnerships/collaborations like any other type of advertising and respect when it costs money. “ (Molly Stillman)

Takeaway: The bloggers put a lot of time and thought into their content. They need to be fairly compensated for it. Be transparent about it and figure out what’s the right model for you both.

4. Visualize Any Potential Content

“Before saying yes, I research the brand and their products to visualize any potential content.” (Romy, Ymor Beauty)

“It is time-consuming (reading reviews, brand philosophy, product ingredients, etc…), but if exploring the potential content before even agreeing, I can then imagine what type of work I can create. I need to have a clear picture and a clear direction of how I can integrate the brand into my personal brand before saying yes.”

Takeaway: Help the influencer understand the brand’s visual guidelines and style on social media. Share examples from previous campaigns you’ve run or choose a post by the influencer that reflects the brand’s style. The more they know about your marketing strategy, the better they can see how they might fit into it.

5. Go the Extra Mile

“I like it when brands are willing to do something more personalized and customized to best fit BOTH our audiences… it makes it more fun and that much more engaging!” (Molly Stillman)

Takeaway: You’re probably not the first one who has reached out to the blogger, so why should they choose you? If an influencer is going to invest time in your brand, then you must show them that they are appreciated as an individual and not as a marketing tool. Be unique or offer them something special. Keep in mind what’s in it for them.

One answer we got had everything in it. It incorporates all of the takeaways above. Read Emily’s answer carefully:

“I say ‘yes‘ to brands who offer me something that I feel is a natural fit for my blog, and is valuable to me. If a brand reaches out who doesn’t fit with my blog then the answer is always no. If a brand reaches out and their message or product is a good fit for my blog, then it’s still just a ‘maybe’. If a brand has a message and product that I really believe in, and fits my blog, but they aren’t willing to send me the product or compensate me in a way that makes it worth my time to write about them, then I will still say no.” (Emily, Emily Reviews)

If you’re a marketer looking to form close relationships with influencers, following these bloggers’ answers can help you better understand their points of view. It will be hard to please every influencer or perfectly meet each of their requests, but taking their needs into consideration will give you a better chance of acquiring influencers.

After all, a good partnership takes understanding, mutual respect, and close care. Listening to the influencers’ needs is a good place to start.

How to Find Bloggers to Promote Your Products

With influencers and bloggers playing such a big role in today’s content marketing, brands can benefit from a streamlined approach to blogger outreach. The fastest and most consistent way to make these connections is to use an outreach tool, like Klear. 

Klear does most of the heavy lifting for you by providing you with a ready-made database of bloggers in your niche. Filter your options based on values, audience engagement, domain authority, social channels, and more, then make an introduction directly from the platform. 

It’s blog outreach done right — schedule a demo to learn more!