Are you ready to start collaborating with influencers? You’ve done the hard work of pinning down your strategy and identifying the types of influencers you want to work with. But, how do you approach influencers about promoting your brand? Let’s find out.
How should brands approach influencers?
If you’re reaching out to a small number of influencers then you can contact them via DM directly via a social media channel. Once you’ve confirmed their interest, you might want to switch to email, but you can start with a DM. On the other hand, if you’re reaching out to a new cohort of influencers, of say more than 10? it’s better to automate your outreach. Use an outreach tool to help you stay on top of influencer outreach and save time!
Contacting influencers is where we go from ‘strategy’ into ‘action’, so it’s useful to have a plan in mind. Ultimately, you want your approach to be effective in getting sign-ups for your campaign and convincing influencers to promote your products.
In this article we’ll focus on how to approach influencers manually, or by using software to scale your outreach. For many brands influencer outreach can be one of the most time-consuming and frustrating aspects of influencer marketing. So if you’re tired of sending out email after email or DM after DM and not getting the response you hoped for, then you’ll find useful and practical tips below!
Before we get started, the strategy guide below will help when looking beyond influencer outreach. Read it to make sure your approach to influencer recruitment helps you achieve your goals.
Ok, let’s get started!
We’re going to focus on contacting Instagram influencers in the examples shared below, but remember these principles can also be applied to other social media channels.
Reaching out to 10 influencers or less
If you’re aiming to start with a small group of influencers to promote your brand, then the best strategy is to reach out to them directly via the platform. This can be a good idea if you’re new to influencer marketing or you want to focus on nurturing a few long-term partnerships instead of running campaigns at scale.
Step One: Start by creating a spreadsheet and adding the names and Instagram profile links for each influencer that you want to contact.
Step Two: You can then either send each influencer a direct message on Instagram or you can obtain their email from the contact section of their profile in order to send them a proposal. Hint: Use Upfluence’s Google Chrome plug-in to get instant access to performance metrics and contact information for any influencer profile!
Step Three: Make a note of the time and date that you contacted each influencer so that you can follow up again in a day or two.
This process is relatively straightforward, but there are a few tips that you can use to increase your chances of success:
- Select the right influencers
When an influencer is not the right match for your brand, you’re simply wasting your time and theirs. It’s important to do some research on potential influencers before you approach them. You’ll want to assess the types of brands they’ve previously worked with, determine who their followers are, and ensure that their values and personality are aligned with your brand.
- Check their website first
This is an important part of the initial research to conduct when selecting influencers. It will allow you to see if they have shared information about their brand partnership policy and how they prefer to be contacted. Influencers that are most open to new opportunities will publicize this well via their website or social media profiles. You’ll also be able to assess whether the campaign you have in mind meets their criteria before deciding to contact them.
- Use a professional account
If you’re sending a direct message from Instagram, always send it from your business account. And if you will be emailing an influencer, make sure that you’re using a professional email address if you want to increase your chances of securing them.
Reaching out to more than 10 influencers
There are thousands of influencers on Instagram and the goals of your campaign will determine how many influencers you should reach out to. In any case, if you’ll be contacting more than a handful of influencers your best bet is to automate the process.
Identifying and manually messaging hundreds of influencers will be an incredibly time-consuming and costly process and not the best use of resources. This is where influencer marketing tools can have a big impact on making your influencer marketing campaigns a smooth process.
Upfluence software has an integrated emailing tool that’s easy for brands to use, with the option to build lists and contact any influencer directly from our platform. You’ll save so much time as there’s no need to search for contact information or struggle with spreadsheets. Whether you would prefer a mass-emailing approach or want to contact influencers one by one, Upfluence Software simplifies the process.
The beauty of the Upfluence platform is that you can use a variety of different templates, internal notes, and real-time open rates to test different approaches with hundreds of influencers in a matter of minutes. With built-in opportunities to optimize your outreach process the chances of securing a top selection of influencers for your campaigns are greatly increased.
Plus, you can use dynamic fields to personalize your email messages and automatically include the influencer’s handle name, first name, location, etc. When approaching influencers for a new collaboration, that first email will make all the difference. Showing that you already know and appreciate their content will help to build trust and nurture a strong relationship going forward.
How to approach influencers with the perfect outreach message
There are a few things to keep in mind to make sure you grab their attention, right from the very first message.
Each email should be unique and personalized to include details specific to that influencer. Be sure to include details such as company name, Instagram handle, job title, brand name, and product descriptions.
What is your unique value proposition and why do you think they would be a good fit for your brand? Remember to set this out clearly, you need to have something great to offer them if you want to grab their attention. While a monetary offer usually works quite well, it does leave you with less leverage. Instead, you could start out by offering them free samples of your product so that you can take your conversation further from there.
At the end of the email, it’s important to include a clear call to action and give contact details so that the influencer is clear about the next steps if they want to take the conversation with you. If you need some more inspiration for crafting the perfect email, try out one of these 7 influencer marketing outreach templates.
How to approach influencers you want to work with is a key consideration of your influencer campaign that underpins your success, and how quickly you can recruit and onboard influencers to launch your campaign.
