Important Email Outreach Tips

What is Email Outreach?

Email outreach refers to the process of getting in touch with people using email. In terms of content marketing, this is usually done with the main goal of promoting a piece of content, request a backlink, or form a collaboration or partnership with an influencer.

Most businesses have had some bad outreach emails – in fact, you might have an inbox that is full of them. And receiving these terrible emails might have got you wondering whether or not email outreach is something that can actually work.

The good news is that yes, it can, but you need to send the right type of outreach emails. These are emails that are not going to make you look like a spammer and will actually provide value to the people that you are sending them to, helping you get the desired results.

Best Outreach Sequences

When you send outreach emails that recipients are excited to see, your will notice some of the main benefits for your business. Email outreach has lots of different benefits when done correctly. These include:

• It is still one of the most effective ways to build links, with most link-building methods requiring you to send outreach emails.
• It can help you build relationships with other people in your industry, which can lead to guest posting opportunities, partnerships, interviews, and more.
• Email outreach to journalists that are highly targeted can lead to further press coverage for your business.

Some of the main best practices for email outreach include:

Compile a Target List

Making sure that your outreach emails are going to the correct people is one of the most important aspects of email outreach. This might sound like common sense, but you might be shocked to hear how many emails are sent to the wrong people.

To create a list of outreach targets, do the following:

Set goals – different outreach targets will need different goals. For example, if you want press coverage, then look for journalists who cover a relevant topic.

On the other hand, if you are link building, then look for people who have linked to similar pages before. You need to know exactly what you want to achieve with the outreach before you start sending out emails.

Create the list – Make a spreadsheet that includes the targets’ names, why you want to reach out to them, and the URLs of relevant pages.

For example, make a note of the page that you want them to link to you from, or note a relevant, recent article. Consider adding a status column so that you can track who you have reached out to so far and whether they have responded.

Find email addresses – Once you know how you want to target, it’s time to find email addresses and add them to your spreadsheet.

Wherever possible, find the email address for the person rather than the generic email address for the company. To do this, you can use an email finder tool like Hunter.io.

Create a template – Use a template that you can personalise. You can find email templates to use offered by many email outreach tools, or create your own after looking at some good email templates for inspiration.

You want it to make sense, but it’s a good idea to avoid your email looking the same as everybody else’s. Add special attention to the subject lines and consider creating two different versions so that you can conduct split testing.

Personalisation

Personalisation is a crucial part of email outreach and is the single largest factor that helps to distinguish the legitimate senders from the spammers.

Personalised emails will also help you be more successful with your outreach campaign, as statistics show that they get 33 percent more replies compared to generic emails.

There are several things that you can do to personalise outreach emails, including:

Personalise Your Email Outreach Subject Line
Using their name in the subject line immediately demonstrates that you know who they are and have something to offer them of value.

Use their Name in the Email
‘Dear sir’ probably won’t get you very far; using the recipient’s name in the email makes it much more likely that they will read it.

Reference Something Relevant
Names aren’t the only way to personalise. By referencing something of theirs that you have seen on their site or elsewhere, you can demonstrate that you know who you are sending the email to and what they do.

Creating the Right Outreach Email Subject Line

There are lots of different things to think about when creating a subject line for your outreach emails. Bear in mind that no matter who you are sending an outreach email to, the subject line is going to be the first thing that they will see, and it will be the difference between whether the email is completely ignored or opened and read.

Along with this, you should also be mindful of using spam words in your subject line since these may get picked up by spam filters and if there are too many present, your email may get sent directly to the spam folder where it will likely never even be noticed.

For email outreach, unlike email marketing, a longer subject line might be a better choice. This is because it gives your recipient a clearer insight into what your email is all about and can help to set you apart from marketing emails in their inbox. As a result, this can boost your open rate.

Choosing a Subject Line for Influencer Outreach Email

When conducting influencer outreach, it’s important to make your subject line stand out. This is because influencers are some of the main targets of email outreach campaign, and emails like yours are something that they are probably going to see a lot of in their inboxes on a daily basis.

If you want to collaborate with an influencer, it is important to come up with a subject line that is going to stand out. This could involve spending some time following and becoming familiar with the influencer so that when it comes to sending your outreach email, you have more information that you can use to add personalisation to both the subject line and the body of the email.

You may also want to consider including something of value to the influencer to the subject line.

The main takeaway is the better you get to know your subjects before you send, the easier it is going to be for you to get noticed in their inboxes.

Using an Email Outreach Tool

Using an email outreach tool can save you a lot of time and help you scale no matter your goal. There are several different email outreach tools to choose from with some that are designed with specific goals in mind. These include:

• PitchBox – This is a popular tool among most outreach professionals and comes with workflows that are designed to guide you through setting up and implementing outreach campaigns.
• Skua – A powerful cold email outreach tool. As an AI-driven solution, it elevates deliverability and fosters revenue-generating dialogues through automated warm-up and smart sending.
• JustReachOut – This tool is designed for those who want to pitch journalists, rather than influencers or bloggers.
• BuzzStream – This is one of the oldest and most reputable email outreach tools available. It is created for small teams or solo business owners that incorporate cold outreach into their SEO campaigns.
• NinjaOutreach – This tool is designed specifically for link building and SEO outreach.

How to Improve Your Chance of a Reply

It is important to remember that the people that you are sending outreach emails to are likely to be busy individuals. This is why they are likely to appreciate and may be more likely to respond to an email that is specific and concise. Some things to keep in mind include:

Get to the Point

Don’t send a super-long email with lots of paragraphs; keep it short, sweet, and to the point so that it can easily be skimmed and the person you’re getting in touch with doesn’t need to waste a lot of time before coming to a decision.

Put the Important Stuff Up Top

The ‘inverted pyramid’ approach is a good option, with the most important elements at the top of your message, and everything else short and concise afterwards.

Include Key Details

While you want to avoid going on, it’s important not to omit key details to achieve this. A one-sentence email asking them to get in touch with you without a solid reason can be just as annoying.

Don’t Follow Up

If you don’t get a reply, take that as your reply. Journalists say that too many follow-ups are one of the most annoying things that they deal with from email outreachers.

Email outreach can be an ideal way to build your business, but you need to know how to do it correctly.