There’s one main goal that all brands are trying to reach: getting noticed among the crowd. That crowd is noisy, all right! No matter what industry you’re part of, you’re dealing with a crazy competition that’s coming up with new advertising strategies by the day.
What’s the answer to this struggle? Influencer outreach may be the solution you’re after.
This is a useful strategy for content sharing, link building, and other types of brand promotion. It’s based on making connections with industry leaders with the purpose to boost the awareness around your brand.
If you check out Instagram, for example, you’ll notice that most influencers are linked to brands, and the most popular brands are almost always connected with influencers. Alo Yoga, in particular, sparked tons of controversies about the way it was promoted on Instagram, with the influencers “forgetting” to mention their posts were sponsored. But that’s a different story. What we do care about is that this brand became famous thanks to Instagram influencers, and it’s a good example that shows how successful such a campaign can be.
What will the return of investment be? It depends. No one can forecast the ROI for your business and your campaign, since it’s a unique situation. According to a marketing study conducted by Tomoson, businesses make $6.50 for every dollar they spend on influencer marketing. Take a moment to digest that information.
But the more important question is: how do you do it? How do you connect with influencers, given the fact that most of them are already under contracts with competitive brands and services?
As usual, there are tools for that! We’ll suggest 12 awesome tools that will make your influencer outreach campaign easier and more enjoyable.
Talkwalker Alerts is a nice alternative to Google Alerts. It’s a free tool that will monitor the web and notify you whenever your brand is being mentioned. If you notice a blogger or social media star mentioning your brand, you know what to do. If you notice these influencers getting questions from their followers about your products/services, you know what to do. Reach out to them and offer a deal. They already have the initial information, so your brand will seem familiar when you contact them.
With Talkwalker alerts, you can also monitor the mentions of your competitors. That’s a great opportunity for a sneaky game. When you locate influencers talking about your competition, you may outreach with a suggestion for them to test your offer. You’ll explain how it’s different and better than what other brands provide at the moment.
First of all, you want to know what happens to the emails once you send them. Moreover, you want to know if these influencers clicked the link to your website, so they could get more information.
That’s when Bananatag gets into the picture. It’s a tool that sends you a notification when someone opens your emails. You’ll also get info if they clicked a link within that message.
These are valuable details, since they help you measure the success of your influencer outreach campaign. If you notice that someone opened your message, you can use the same tool to schedule a follow-back email, so you’ll remind this influencer about your great offer. If someone didn’t open your message within a week after you sent it, it probably gets lost in their crowded inbox. Think of a catchier subject line and reach out again!
Needless to say, you shouldn’t be too pushy. Reaching out to an influencer twice is enough. If you don’t get a response, it’s time to step back.
This tool has an advanced search option, which allows you to find influencers from your niche. It works as an influencer campaign management tool, too. You can use it to customize template emails in a matter of seconds, and automatically follow up with influencers who didn’t respond to your messages.
Plus, you’ll get reports that enable you to track every step of your outreach campaign. This data will lead you to better decisions.
According to the information at the website, Pitchbox is proven to boost response rates by 62% on average. How cool is that?
Instead of bouncing from one platform to another, you should simply use your email. Yes; influencers are mostly active on social media, but that doesn’t mean they don’t use email. In fact, most of them make their addresses publicly available, so business owners can contact them with their suggestions.
There’s a problem: how do you manage such a busy inbox? You’ll be sending and receiving emails all the time. You need something like a CRM that works right from your email. Streak is the tool you’re looking for! It automatically transfers your Gmail conversations into your CRM. It will make your campaign much more organized, and the communication with influencers much more effective.
The idea of BuzzStream is to enable you to track the people your team is working with. If you have a larger team and all of them are in touch with different influencers, BuzzStream will make it easy for you to control the partnerships.
You’ll be able to see the contacts by alphabetical order or by project. You can build templates that you can later customize, and you can use the tool to keep track of all emails the team sends. Naturally, you’ll also get simple follow-up features, as well as performance-tracking capabilities.
BuzzStream is also great for searching influencers. It will provide you with their social profiles and contact information. Plus, you’ll get metrics on their sites, so you can choose the most influential ones.
Since you can try the tool for free, you have absolutely nothing to lose if you see how it works.
That subject line is your ultimate factor of attraction. It has to grasp the point of your message, but it also has to be attention-grabbing. It’s probably the hardest part to write out of the entire outreach message.
But don’t worry; SubjectLine will help you get it right. It’s similar to a headline analyzer tool that you’ve probably used when composing blog posts. The only difference is that it’s programmed to evaluate email subject line according to several criteria.
Just type your subject line in the bar, and you’ll get marketing results based on the tone. The tool will give you a score, along with suggestions on how to improve the line.
Many things are wrong with that message. First of all, it doesn’t deliver a clear message, but that’s not what we want to focus on at this moment. It’s the clichés. “I hope this message finds you well.” That sounds so polite, but so… boring! Trust me on this one: no influencer will want to collaborate with such a boring business owner.
Is your message full of clichés? You won’t be able to find out unless you use a special tool to analyze it. Cliche Finder is a really simple tool that will identify the clichés in your message. From that point on, you can engage in efficient editing before you send that email.
Hemingway App is all about discovering common errors and complex sentences. You clearly want to locate and fix common errors, such as your instead of you’re. But why get rid of complex language? – Because influencers don’t have time for that. They don’t want to make an effort to understand what you’re trying to say; they want to get your point right away.
Plus, “advanced” phrases make you look silly. You’ll miss the whole point of the outreach if you don’t clean it up.
Just paste the text of your message into Hemingway App, and it will give you suggestions on how to improve the readability.
The first thought that comes to mind is: social media. Yes; Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are great platforms that expose you to influencers. But what about LinkedIn? You mustn’t neglect that platform, especially because of the fact that people go there with the intention to make business connections.
LinkedIn Groups, in particular, are great for discovering influencers from your particular niche. Just start joining groups from your niche and connect with their members. LinkedIn has a nice messaging feature, so you can directly outreach once you make the connection. When you’re an active member of a relevant group, you’ll already have a reputation in their eyes and your messages won’t seem intrusive.
Of course you have options! You always have! With Hunter, you can easily find their email address. With a free account, you’ll get 100 free searches per month. You will simply type the influencer’s name in the search bar, and you’ll get their proven or most likely used email address.
When you set up your Twitter lists to monitor bloggers or influencers you’d like to connect with, Tweetdeck will make it easy for you to follow their activity. Follow their tweets regularly, so you’ll find the perfect moment to start a conversation or make your offer.
But how do you know what an influencer’s personality is? Crystal knows! This is a personality assessment tool. As you browse social media and send email messages, Crystal will predict the personality of your prospects.
Sounds too good to be true? Well, you can use the free trial version of the tool, so you’ll see if it works for you. Chances are, it will take your outreach campaign to a whole other level of efficiency.
You’re Ready to Connect!
The influencers are out there, waiting for great brands to contact them. They are usually open for collaboration, so it all depends on the way you approach them. With the right tools, you can plan an effective outreach campaign!
BIO
What’s the answer to this struggle? Influencer outreach may be the solution you’re after.
This is a useful strategy for content sharing, link building, and other types of brand promotion. It’s based on making connections with industry leaders with the purpose to boost the awareness around your brand.
If you check out Instagram, for example, you’ll notice that most influencers are linked to brands, and the most popular brands are almost always connected with influencers. Alo Yoga, in particular, sparked tons of controversies about the way it was promoted on Instagram, with the influencers “forgetting” to mention their posts were sponsored. But that’s a different story. What we do care about is that this brand became famous thanks to Instagram influencers, and it’s a good example that shows how successful such a campaign can be.
What will the return of investment be? It depends. No one can forecast the ROI for your business and your campaign, since it’s a unique situation. According to a marketing study conducted by Tomoson, businesses make $6.50 for every dollar they spend on influencer marketing. Take a moment to digest that information.
But the more important question is: how do you do it? How do you connect with influencers, given the fact that most of them are already under contracts with competitive brands and services?
As usual, there are tools for that! We’ll suggest 12 awesome tools that will make your influencer outreach campaign easier and more enjoyable.
1. Talkwalker Alerts
If you’re promoting your brand through different channels, then people are already talking about it. You want to monitor those conversations, since you can locate your influencers somewhere in that crowd.Talkwalker Alerts is a nice alternative to Google Alerts. It’s a free tool that will monitor the web and notify you whenever your brand is being mentioned. If you notice a blogger or social media star mentioning your brand, you know what to do. If you notice these influencers getting questions from their followers about your products/services, you know what to do. Reach out to them and offer a deal. They already have the initial information, so your brand will seem familiar when you contact them.
With Talkwalker alerts, you can also monitor the mentions of your competitors. That’s a great opportunity for a sneaky game. When you locate influencers talking about your competition, you may outreach with a suggestion for them to test your offer. You’ll explain how it’s different and better than what other brands provide at the moment.
2. Bananatag
So you notice few influencers you’d like to do business with, and you decide to contact them. You write great messages with your suggestions. But what happens with those messages? If you don’t get a response, should you follow back? When?First of all, you want to know what happens to the emails once you send them. Moreover, you want to know if these influencers clicked the link to your website, so they could get more information.
That’s when Bananatag gets into the picture. It’s a tool that sends you a notification when someone opens your emails. You’ll also get info if they clicked a link within that message.
These are valuable details, since they help you measure the success of your influencer outreach campaign. If you notice that someone opened your message, you can use the same tool to schedule a follow-back email, so you’ll remind this influencer about your great offer. If someone didn’t open your message within a week after you sent it, it probably gets lost in their crowded inbox. Think of a catchier subject line and reach out again!
Needless to say, you shouldn’t be too pushy. Reaching out to an influencer twice is enough. If you don’t get a response, it’s time to step back.
3. Pitchbox
So how do you find those influencers? You could use the hints that social media platforms provide. If you scroll down your feed, you’ll inevitably see an influencer’s post that’s been liked or shared by one of your friends. But we said we wanted to guide you to hassle-free influencer outreach, right? Pitchbox helps with that!This tool has an advanced search option, which allows you to find influencers from your niche. It works as an influencer campaign management tool, too. You can use it to customize template emails in a matter of seconds, and automatically follow up with influencers who didn’t respond to your messages.
Plus, you’ll get reports that enable you to track every step of your outreach campaign. This data will lead you to better decisions.
According to the information at the website, Pitchbox is proven to boost response rates by 62% on average. How cool is that?
4. Streak
If you tried to contact each influencer via social media, you’d only complicate things. That’s not practical for influencers, either. Since they are very popular on social media, they constantly get messages there. Yours will easily get lost in the crowd, and it won’t be easy for them to find it if they want to respond to it later on.Instead of bouncing from one platform to another, you should simply use your email. Yes; influencers are mostly active on social media, but that doesn’t mean they don’t use email. In fact, most of them make their addresses publicly available, so business owners can contact them with their suggestions.
There’s a problem: how do you manage such a busy inbox? You’ll be sending and receiving emails all the time. You need something like a CRM that works right from your email. Streak is the tool you’re looking for! It automatically transfers your Gmail conversations into your CRM. It will make your campaign much more organized, and the communication with influencers much more effective.
5. BuzzStream
This is another suggestion for a CRM that will support your influencer outreach campaign. No; you don’t have to use multiple similar tools. We’re just giving you options, so you can check them out and see what works for you best.The idea of BuzzStream is to enable you to track the people your team is working with. If you have a larger team and all of them are in touch with different influencers, BuzzStream will make it easy for you to control the partnerships.
You’ll be able to see the contacts by alphabetical order or by project. You can build templates that you can later customize, and you can use the tool to keep track of all emails the team sends. Naturally, you’ll also get simple follow-up features, as well as performance-tracking capabilities.
BuzzStream is also great for searching influencers. It will provide you with their social profiles and contact information. Plus, you’ll get metrics on their sites, so you can choose the most influential ones.
Since you can try the tool for free, you have absolutely nothing to lose if you see how it works.
6. SubjectLine
Imagine you’re an influencer. You receive dozens of emails per day. Like most people, you won’t bother reading them all. Influencers already have their connections, so they will be interested in a message only if it offers something special. Most of the time, they don’t go beyond the subject line before they decide to send a message to the trash.That subject line is your ultimate factor of attraction. It has to grasp the point of your message, but it also has to be attention-grabbing. It’s probably the hardest part to write out of the entire outreach message.
But don’t worry; SubjectLine will help you get it right. It’s similar to a headline analyzer tool that you’ve probably used when composing blog posts. The only difference is that it’s programmed to evaluate email subject line according to several criteria.
Just type your subject line in the bar, and you’ll get marketing results based on the tone. The tool will give you a score, along with suggestions on how to improve the line.
7. Cliche Finder
Hello Mrs. Morrison,
I hope this message finds you well. I have the ultimate offer for you. Together, we can unleash the power of influencer marketing and take it to a whole other level.
Please, contact me if you’re interested.
Thank you in advance,
M.
Many things are wrong with that message. First of all, it doesn’t deliver a clear message, but that’s not what we want to focus on at this moment. It’s the clichés. “I hope this message finds you well.” That sounds so polite, but so… boring! Trust me on this one: no influencer will want to collaborate with such a boring business owner.
Is your message full of clichés? You won’t be able to find out unless you use a special tool to analyze it. Cliche Finder is a really simple tool that will identify the clichés in your message. From that point on, you can engage in efficient editing before you send that email.
8. Hemingway App
Speaking of editing, you must never skip that process before you send a message. I know you’re used to writing emails in a hurry. When you’re trying to build a business partnership, however, you have to be more careful than that.Hemingway App is all about discovering common errors and complex sentences. You clearly want to locate and fix common errors, such as your instead of you’re. But why get rid of complex language? – Because influencers don’t have time for that. They don’t want to make an effort to understand what you’re trying to say; they want to get your point right away.
Plus, “advanced” phrases make you look silly. You’ll miss the whole point of the outreach if you don’t clean it up.
Just paste the text of your message into Hemingway App, and it will give you suggestions on how to improve the readability.
9. LinkedIn Groups
You’ll use many different tools throughout your influencer outreach campaign. But the most important ones are the ones that let you discover influencers and connect with them through simple, straightforward strategies.The first thought that comes to mind is: social media. Yes; Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are great platforms that expose you to influencers. But what about LinkedIn? You mustn’t neglect that platform, especially because of the fact that people go there with the intention to make business connections.
LinkedIn Groups, in particular, are great for discovering influencers from your particular niche. Just start joining groups from your niche and connect with their members. LinkedIn has a nice messaging feature, so you can directly outreach once you make the connection. When you’re an active member of a relevant group, you’ll already have a reputation in their eyes and your messages won’t seem intrusive.
10. Hunter
Let’s say you’d love to connect with a specific influencer, but you don’t have their email address. They don’t mention it anywhere on their social media pages, so you have no other option but to drop them a direct message on Instagram. Or do you?Of course you have options! You always have! With Hunter, you can easily find their email address. With a free account, you’ll get 100 free searches per month. You will simply type the influencer’s name in the search bar, and you’ll get their proven or most likely used email address.
11. Tweetdeck
“Reach your audiences and discover the best of Twitter!” That’s what this tool is about, and that’s what your influencer marketing campaign on Twitter is all about. Tweetdeck is a real-time tracking tool for Twitter, which works through custom-tailored timelines. You can also use it for organizing and managing your timeline.When you set up your Twitter lists to monitor bloggers or influencers you’d like to connect with, Tweetdeck will make it easy for you to follow their activity. Follow their tweets regularly, so you’ll find the perfect moment to start a conversation or make your offer.
12. Crystal
When you understand someone’s personality, the communication becomes easier. You understand what this person likes, so it’s possible for you to craft a message with greater appeal.But how do you know what an influencer’s personality is? Crystal knows! This is a personality assessment tool. As you browse social media and send email messages, Crystal will predict the personality of your prospects.
Sounds too good to be true? Well, you can use the free trial version of the tool, so you’ll see if it works for you. Chances are, it will take your outreach campaign to a whole other level of efficiency.
You’re Ready to Connect!
The influencers are out there, waiting for great brands to contact them. They are usually open for collaboration, so it all depends on the way you approach them. With the right tools, you can plan an effective outreach campaign!
BIO
Patricia Wilson is a contributor at AssignmentMasters and a freelance writer who gives great insights into social media marketing, digital marketing, and content writing. She provides in-depth and useful information based on her previous work experience in the areas of social media and marketing.
