 Whether you are managing a link building, content marketing, PR or even a sales campaign you’ll need to write outreach emails. I’ve lost count with how many outreach emails I have written during my marketing career. Over the years I have started to hone my technique & get an understanding of what works and what doesn’t. This article will provide 9 actionable tips you can use when writing your own outreach emails. My hope is that you will apply these techniques and see your conversion increase and also start to build beneficial relationships with other businesses instead of annoy other businesses. More on that in the first tip! Tip 1: Address your mindset The first tip is to make sure you are in the right mindset during the outreach process. This has to be constantly checked, I need to check myself all the time. When dealing with a lot of data it is very easy to slip into an analytics mindset. It is easy to only think about the numbers and lose the human approach. You must remember that you are reaching out to another business to build a relationship with them, it cannot just be about the numbers. The point is to grab the readers attention & interest long enough for them to enter into a conversation with you about how you can help each other out. A robot does not grab attention. Nor does language which sounds to rushed, abrupt or angry. (passive aggressive emails never go down well!) The mindset you are when writing the email influences how you put together the outreach email and the tone of voice & pace of your writing. An analytical mindset leads to copy which does not resonate and may in fact just piss people off. Tip 2: You do the work! The person you are speaking to doesn’t want to have to work out how they can work with you in a mutually beneficial partnership. You must do the work since you are emailing them and interrupting their time. So, work out what it is that you are suggesting. This means work out which specific tactic you think could work & also the specific content. I.e. X post shared on X channel because X. The worst emails are those that just say I want to guest post, can I? Or, I want to partner can we? Um no, is my immediate response when I get those emails and I can imagine that’s what other people think when they receive them too. So, when I email someone I tell them exactly how I think we can work together and take the time to map it out so they don’t have to spend time working it out themselves. Tip 3: Get to the point quickly Mystery does not increase conversion. Most of the emails based on mystery are doing so because Tip 2 hasn’t been implemented. The person doing the outreach hasn’t figured out how or why they are emailing x person. The outreach manager just wants to work with somebody …. NOW! And the reason is, they are too much in the analytical mindset and not the relationship building mindset, Tip 1. See how these points build on each other? You must get to the point really quickly, ideally in the first 2 sentences. You are a new person taking up someone elses time which is already annoying. So, you must eliminate the annoying factor as much as possible by helping the other person make a decision as quickly as possible. No-one wants to work with someone they don’t like. So, get to the point and help the other person decide yes, no or maybe.  Tip 4: Prove you’re worth their time The other person is just like you. They have their own targets to hit and want to grow their company so they can make the impact that they want to make. Whether it’s increasing their salary so they can look after their family, or making the impact they want to see in their community or the world. Every person you speak to has their own motivations. So, they are only going to speak to you if they believe you are worth their time and can help them reach their own goals. Perhaps that sounds really selfish, but it’s just how we are wired. I believe everyone has good intentions and are good people, but when it comes down to it, we are all under a lot of pressure, and under pressure we make selfish decisions based on own deep routed motivations. In the first sentence you should say who you are, the company you are writing from + include trust metrics / social proof. I.e. we just won X award, we have 1 million hits per month, we planted 500, 000 trees last year, we have the largest selection of X online, we are established in x countries, we have a 95% score on trustpilot... If you are a blogger or solo entrepreneur you can talk about your experience, I’ve worked for X,X + X company or, I’ve analysed over 5,000 websites, I gave a ted x talk… Whatever you say has to be TRUE. Don’t make something up, it has to sound good but it has to be true, very important. Also, with this point you can go overboard. No-one wants to speak to an arrogant person. The person you are speaking with wants to feel good during this interaction. They want to feel that they are speaking with someone who is trustworthy and can help them to their goals, but they also want to feel good about themselves at the same time. A single sentence is a good length. Tip 5: Include links to back up points You also have to appreciate that you are interrupting this person’s time and they don’t know you, at all. It is also unlikely they know the company you are emailing from either, even if you think your company is well known. Which means, just because you say you are trustworthy, doesn’t mean they will believe you. So, make sure you link through to your website at the very least. And ideally also a review site which shows your positive customer feedback. It is also important to link through to the specific content you are talking about promoting. As well as any channels you want to promote it on. Finally, if you can link through to the blog you emailing about that is also great, ideally you should add it as an anchor text link instead of a straight URL since this looks more natural. I don’t know of an email system which adds anchor texts in automatically, so, if you are scaling your campaign it may not be possible. However, if you are outreaching to some high value businesses and websites you might want to just write a personal email and include the anchor text links.  Tip 6: Include name If you or your outreach software can find the bloggers name then include it at the beginning of the email. Keep the intro quite informal i.e. Hi Sally, When the name is not found you can use “there” this works with “Hi” so it would read “Hi there”. This is a point we don’t really need to labour on, it’s quite simple, I just have one thing to say. Adding the name does increase conversion and it does get the relationship off to the right start since it’s just common courtesy to find out the person’s name that you are emailing. I do appreciate though that in large campaigns with limited resource finding the bloggers name is not always possible, just expect less reply's if that is the case. Tip 7: Keep the email short Your email shouldn’t be longer than 150 words unless the partnership opportunity you have is quite complicated and needs more explanation. For most outreach emails, 150 words is enough space to introduce yourself, your pitch and close the email. The average reading speed is 200 - 250 words per minute. So, it's going to take the person you are emailing just less than a minute to read your email. Most people will then file the email, leave it in the inbox or delete it. This could be because of a few factors. a) The person needs to think about it, but they also have a lot to do so they file your email and move on to something else with the intention to come back to your email. b) The person doesn't want to work with you but they don’t want to be rude by saying so. c) They are pissed off at you for interrupting their time. d) They want to work with you but pioritise other activities on their list for the time being. Very rarely do you get instant responses from an outreach campaign. A few people will reply back several hours later, some, several days later. The majority will forget the email leading us to tip 8. Tip 8: Follow up The big advantage of email software is the automatic follow up. Following up can double your response rate (or more) study. The reasons are what were described in Tip 7. The follow up email just needs to be a couple of lines repeating the ask. It should go out around 3 days after your first email. Studies show that the longer a decision is not made the less likely the person is to follow through, so it’s important to get the conversation going and the decision made quickly. Study. Tip 9: Format -- create space & flow The final tip is about formatting your outreach email. This is quite important because the position of the words, the flow of the sentences and the size of the paragraphs all give off a certain feel. I can write a short sentence. Or I can write a beautifully long sentence which weaves words in a way which makes you feel calmer. Or, I can break it up, and make a point. Ideally you want a mix of all three of these sentence structures in your email. And you should use all three to pace the email and bring the reader along to the end. This is the most important aspect, you need your reader to get to the end of your email so they can at least be in a position to make a decision. Along the way, you need to a) not piss them off and b) warm to you at least a little bit. If you have followed all the tips previous to this, hopefully you should be able to accomplish b). When it comes to writing emails, being a good writer is a definite advantage. Writing good emails is more than passing over information. As you can see from these tips, writing good emails is about passing over information & the right emotions which lead to a positive outcome. You could have the best intentions in the world, but if you can’t convey those best intentions through your writing, then your reader will never know about it. That's the end of my outreach tips for now. I'd love to know in the comments if you have any more to add or if you agree or disagree on any of these points, lets have a conversation!
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 Working with bloggers on collaborations is a great way to drive traffic back to your company or service. No matter what you sell, it is very likely that there are a group of bloggers out there who can help you reach your audience. Here are 7 primary benefits of working with bloggers to promote your business. 1. Use The Power Of Leverage For Fast Results The reason it is so powerful collaborating with other bloggers is because you have access to their audience of followers. It is very important that the audience listens & trusts the blogger you are working with. The volume of followers doesn’t matter as much as the quality of engagement that happens on the blog. Whenever you work with a blogger with an engaged following who recommended your company you are reaching a wider audience of people who are then introduced to your product or service. 2. Cost Effective Marketing Tactic Working with bloggers is a fairly low cost marketing activity. If you are doing it yourself the only cost will be providing whatever it is you want to provide to the blogger. And if you are DIYing it I suggest you sign up to our Guest Bloggers Wanted tool and connect with bloggers for free! It is a really easy way to collaborate with bloggers in multiple different niches at a very low cost. If you want someone to run your blogger outreach for you then you will need to pay for this service, and the more you can afford to pay for a high quality guest posting service the better your results will be long into the future.  3. Open To Every Business No matter what your business is blogger outreach is a useful tactic. You might adjust it differently depending on the type of business you are… for example a mostly offline business might choose to only appear in well trusted and high authority online magazines and newspapers in order to build their brand trust. Whereas a mostly online business might decide to heavily focus on working with bloggers to drive online traffic to their site and make more online sales through increased search engine traffic. 4. More Search Engine Traffic Collaborating with bloggers can help drive more search engine traffic back to your site. This is of course assuming you have the correct strategy in place first. Make sure you know what keywords you are targeting and what you want to be ranking for! Assuming you have this keyword plan in place the additional links that you pick up from collaborations will help your blog content & product pages to rank. 5. Grow Your Brand Trust Research by BlogHer found that 81% of respondents to their 2012 survey said that they trust the information and advice that blogs give them and that 61% have made a purchase based on a recommendation from a blogger. Working with bloggers grows trust.  6. Grow Your Network Everytime you collaborate with a blogger you have also introduced your company to them as well. Don’t always just think about the audience you are reaching but the person you are in direct contact with! Guest blogging and collaborations is a great way to grow your network and will start to snowball once you hit a certain number of them. 7. The Process Is Fun Working with bloggers is fun! You are speaking with a person who has spent a lot of time and effort on their blog, growing & nurturing their audience. It is a pretty special thing when they are accepting to work with you and help promote your product or service to their audience. Enjoy the process of creating content, promoting it and seeing the results! If you want to work with bloggers check out Guest Bloggers Wanted, our new outreach tool which helps you connect with the bloggers & influencers SUPER easily. You don't need to build long outreach lists & get lost in email. Just post your guest post title in the tool and you'll find bloggers who want to collaborate with you!
I’ve been looking at websites for over 8 years, and have developed quite a keen sense of what constitutes a real or a fake blog.
One thing I’ve noticed is, it is getting harder to tell the difference because it is very easy to fake things like social proof, by simply buying cheap fans and engagement. And, it is easier to set up a good looking site or blog as well because there are just so many great free templates and great, free website builders. What is a fake blog? A fake blog is one that has been set up along with around 200 more fake blogs for the purpose of pumping out low quality content and profiting from it. One webmaster and several hundred blogs does not lead to high quality editorial standards and fully researched and accurate information. Fake blogs are not the types of places you want to go to in order to research what is the best holistic health diet to follow, or what herbal medicine is available for your toddler. There is no integrity on these blogs. The owners don’t care if you get the right information, just that you click a link and buy something. Or, if you are a company that you pay to be featured on the site for SEO purposes. Why should you avoid working with fake blogs? Its obvious why you wouldn’t want to take health advice from these blogs, but what about guest posting? With the recent announcement of Rank Brain, a system which Google can use to look at the quality metrics of websites - including time on page. It has become even more important for webmasters not to be associated with these kinds of low quality sites. If Google takes a look at your backlink profile and can tell that you’ve been associating with these types of blogs then it is a definite indicator that you have been link building against Google’s guidelines. If you are not penalised then at best these links will be discounted and with it your hard earned rankings will drop and no-one wants that.. not even this lady. 
So, do not work with fake blogs. They don’t provide any additional benefit further than a link and purely guest posting for links is a risky, risky business.
To help you build up you fakedar let’s go through the subtle signs of a fake blog now. 5 Subtle Signs Of A Spammy Or Fake Blog
If you land on a blog and the template is one that you’ve seen literally everywhere then it is very likely to be a fake blog. Webmasters that create these blogs need to create a lot of them cheaply and quickly. They won’t put very much effort into the look of the website but instead just buy a free template and upload a ton of low quality content to make it seem like this is a blog that has been around for a while. Often, the design is one that has a lot of categories set up, so it seems like there is a wide variety of content which makes it feel more aged. But, on closer inspection you’ll notice that one post will be in multiple different categories. You might also notice that the last post was uploaded several months, or even years ago. Be wary of blogs which use generic templates! 2. Too much social proof everywhere Have you ever been to a networking event or a party and there’s that one guy that can’t stop going on about how amazing he is and all of the great stuff he has been up to? He’ll be name dropping and talking about all of his latest achievements, you just can’t get a word in. How do you feel listening to that? 
It doesn’t feel natural does it. It feels forced, like he’s trying to prove something. It’s the same on a blog. We’ve all heard that social proof is a good way to show you are an expert, and it is. Having social media numbers and shares visible on your blog is a good way to make visitors feel like they are not alone in coming to you for advice.
However, be wary of the unknown blogger who has been featured in every single top publication, who has several thousand homepage shares and displays all of their social media follower counts (which by the way are all huge). 3. Social media icons which redirect to the homepage Another subtle sign of a fake blog is if the social media profile buttons don’t link anywhere. Very often the site appears on face value to be legit but when you click on the social media icons they redirect back to the homepage. This shows that the webmaster has set up a generic template, imported content and not even bothered to make sure the links work properly. Make sure you click through and check that the blog does in fact have some kind of a social media presence. 4. No visibility of the owner I’m pretty proud of Ginger Marketing, and I’m proud to put my name to this company and this blog. Of course, I’m not yet at the level that I want to be, there is always room for improvement and growth and I try to improve with every single client, placement, blog post & interaction. But, what I produce is to the best of my ability in this moment. That should be the case of the types of people you want to associate with for Digital Marketing purposes. There are many, many nameless blogs out there with owners who are not proud of the work they are doing and so don’t want to be associated with it. If you land on a blog which does not have any description of who runs it then be wary! This could be a fake blog. 5. Traffic but no engagement It’s gotten quite easy now to fake traffic. Yep, that’s right, it is possible to actually fake traffic now! With sites like Traffic Junkie and others bloggers can game the system and just drive traffic to their site. Looking at pure traffic metrics is no longer an indication of a high quality blog or website. This is the reason I talk so much about engagement metrics and how important they are. It is vitally important that you work with blogs and websites who have a real audience. Even if this audience is small, it is still an audience and that is what counts. Growing traffic takes time, especially with so much competition. So, be wary of any site that has managed to build high traffic in a short period of time - especially if no-one engages with their content. We hope you've enjoyed this post! As usual let us know in the comments below. |
AuthorWritten by Cheryl A Clarke Chief Happiness Officer & Content Marketing Freelancer @ Ginger Marketing (unless stated otherwise) Blog CategoriesMost Popular ContentTotal Social Media Share Count
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