As a marketer, understanding how to effectively pitch campaigns to creators is an essential skill. Authentic outreach is the stepping stone to genuine connections, which result in stronger partnerships, and ultimately, more effective campaigns.

This article contains several best practices that our team at Later Influence™ (formerly Mavrck) has picked up over the years to increase creators’ response rate to your outreach efforts, and start your relationship off the right way!

Write Better Emails

Often, connecting with a creator starts with an email. Many creators receive a high volume of outreach from brands—to give your email the best chance of standing out, consider the following best practices:

Include a photo or banner

A photo or banner that represents you or your brand is a great way to boost your connection right off the bat. It helps creators envision who you are and starts forming the basis of a personal connection. 

Even if you don’t want to include a photo of yourself personally, a branded image that showcases the vibe of your business can still have an impact over a plain-text email with no visual cues.

Make them feel seen

Try to include a genuine complement on the creator’s content, or a milestone of theirs that you’ve witnessed. Making creators feel seen can help them feel more comfortable engaging with you, rather than feeling like they’re one of many that you sent the exact same message to. 

Keep it short

Shorter messages are more likely to grab creators’ attention! A wall of text can be overwhelming, and there’s a good chance a busy creator might not make it past the first couple of sentences.

Keep the initial email snappy and attention-grabbing—if they’re interested enough to respond, there’s always time to dig further into the details later on.

Leverage coupons and discounts

If you’re a small business, you might have a limited budget for paid collaborations—that’s okay! If creators love your product or service, they’re often willing to collaborate in exchange for coupons and discounts. Don’t be afraid to offer these incentives as an alternative to monetary compensation.

Always include your onboarding form

Always include a link to an onboarding form that allows the creator to express interest in working with you! Even if the particular campaign you’re pitching isn’t a fit, they still might resonate with your brand enough to opt in to hear from you again in the future. Here’s an example of how you might promote your onboarding form in your email (and it can double as a branded image to help with recognition, too):

Increase Creator Response Rate

Crafting effective emails is an important part of the process, but it’s not the only way to connect with creators! The following tips are actions you can take outside of the initial email to help you increase the amount of responses you receive.

Don’t forget to follow-up

Don’t be afraid to follow up to boost your message in their inbox—as mentioned, creators often receive many emails from brands offering to work with them, and it’s not unusual for some to slip through the cracks even if they’re potentially a good fit.

Just be sure to give it a few days in between messages, as you don’t want to frustrate them or cause annoyance. As with all outreach, keep it genuine, kind, and positive—don’t apply pressure, as it’s unlikely to be received positively. If your brand and campaign resonates with them, that should be what shines through!

Engage with their content

If you engage with creators’ content from your brand’s social account(s), they’re more likely to recognize your brand name, and might feel inclined to consider outreach from you more closely. This also ties back to our earlier tip of making creators feel seen and valued to help form a connection.

Take it to the DMs

You don’t just have to stick to emails! Creators are often on social media, and may be more likely to see and respond to DMs. You can include a friendly reminder to check their inbox as you’d love to work with them and have reached out over email—but try to include a genuine message along with it so that it doesn’t feel spammy or contrived.

Test different creator ‘tiers’

More followers doesn’t always equal better! Try reaching out to creators with a variety of audience sizes. There are certainly benefits to working with creators who have large audiences, but there are some drawbacks, too. In fact, we’ve found that micro- and nano-influencers can sometimes receive more engagement and trust from their audience than those with massive followings—so don’t overlook the smaller players, especially if their niche is strongly aligned with your brand!

This Later blog post contains some great insights about the different types of creators you might want to consider working with. Once you have an idea of who you might want to reach out to, use the search filters in our Influencer Index to start narrowing down those who might be a good fit! 

Remember the math

On average, the industry response rate is around 10%—that means if you want 10 creators to participate in your campaign, you should plan to reach out to 100 or more. It also means that it’s normal (and expected!) to only hear back from a small portion of the creators you reach out to, so don’t get discouraged.

This is also why it’s important to continuously build your list of engaged influencers that align with your brand, so that you have a larger pool to reach out to when opportunities arise. ✨

We’re here to help!

Our Core Services team is dedicated to helping you source the best creators and run the most effective campaigns for your unique business. 

To learn how you can start working with our team of experts and leverage their skills and knowledge, book a call →