17 Influencer Outreach Email and Instagram DM Templates

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Consider you’ve completed all the essential steps to launch a campaign involving influencer marketing. You’ve set clear goals, identified the proper social media channels for your objectives, researched your target audience, and developed a creative brief for the project.

Now, you’re ready to reach out to influencers but have no idea what to say. If you’ve ever experienced this awkward moment, you’re not alone. Writing the first email to influencer prospects is often the most challenging part of creator marketing. Luckily, with an influencer outreach email template, you can easily create a personalized message and start the creator marketing conversation.

In this guide, we’ll explore the value of influencer outreach email templates so you can grow your LinkedIn and X accounts with organic engagement. Let’s start with a solution to help you achieve your goals faster.

Megaphone's viral on-demand platform offers a quick and easy way to find the right influencers for your project, and it automatically generates outreach emails to help you get the ball rolling.

Benefits of Influencer Outreach

Boost Brand Recognition with Influencer Outreach

One of the most significant advantages of influencer outreach is its impact on brand awareness. As influencers create content featuring your products, increased brand awareness will inevitably grow among their followers. This is particularly useful for new ecommerce businesses that don’t have an engaged audience. It’s also a fantastic way to create excitement around a new product or collection launch.

For instance, Athletic Greens used TikTok influencers to spread awareness of their nutritional supplements among health-conscious Gen Zers. These social media influencers created content that showed how the supplement can become a part of their audience’s daily routines. The campaign’s success speaks for itself. The hashtags #athleticgreens and #athleticgreenspartner have over 90.6 million views and 39.5 million views, respectively.

Reach Untapped Markets with Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing can help you find untapped markets and reach wider audiences. Take the food brand King's Hawaiian, which partnered with creators to create its #foodtok. They worked with 16 creators who produced slider recipes for 'Slider Sunday' using the brand's delicious sweet bread. They used hashtags like #mealinspo to reach new viewers. The key lesson here is to identify and collaborate with relevant influencers whose social following overlaps with the niche audiences you’re trying to achieve.

The first step to encouraging sales through your social media? Build an engaged social following with influence marketing. As influencers talk about you and get their audience's interest in your brand, followers will likely follow you, too. This will hugely benefit your social media marketing efforts. Partner up on some giveaway campaigns with your social media influencers. The trick of asking people to follow your brand in return for a chance to win a gift will work a charm. After all, everyone loves a freebie.

Get Feedback from Influencers

You can also use influencer marketing to source feedback on a new product, collection, or product feature. Because many influencers engage with specific niche audiences, they’ll have valuable insights into what your ideal buyers look for in a product. Plus, they can share detailed feedback by trying your products for themselves. Feminine hygiene company Thinx did just that.

They invited 25 influencers for a slumber party event in Los Angeles to get feedback on their new athleisure line. Thinx used the information they gathered to launch clothing their consumers would be interested in and grew their sales by giving influencers unique discount codes. This led to $810,000 in revenue with a per-customer acquisition cost of $35.20.

Build Trust with Your Audience

Content that talks positively about your brand can help you build a good reputation. As influencers discuss you and endorse your products, you’ll slowly build trust with your target audience. Skin + Me uses influencers and user-generated content (UGC) in their Facebook ads. From people unboxing their products to before and after videos to show how their skin has improved after using their products — this is sure to build trust and credibility with their target market.

This tactic has worked so well that customers often post their own before and after pics in the comments section showing the improvements they saw in using their products. This just adds to the positive perception of your brand when customers are making purchasing decisions.

Boost Sales with Influencer Marketing

Influencers can help increase sales directly as they share discount codes or recommend your product and indirectly as your brand awareness grows. Intimates brand KNIX collaborates with influencers for this reason — using custom discount codes to drive sales. For example, influencer Hilary Henderson promotes Knix's products via her Instagram page. You can grab her discount code, HILARYHCOMEDY_KNIXLOVE by checking the post descriptions.

Every influencer has a different code, so when someone uses it in their online store, it’s easy for the team at Knix to know which influencer has had the most impact. Moreover, if your current customers see their favorite influencers share content about your products, they'll feel encouraged to place repeat orders.

Create Unique Content for Your Audience

Experienced influencers can bring fresh, out-of-the-box marketing ideas to the table. They'll have a new perspective on your brand and can offer creative ways to promote your product - with little effort on your part. To find influencers or manage your campaigns, look at our list of influencer marketing tools ideal for small and growing brands.

Save Money with Micro-Influencers

Another benefit of influencer marketing - and one your boss will love - is that it can be cost-effective. Running influencer campaigns is 30% cheaper than most advertising and marketing strategies. For this very reason, Doe Lashes‘ founder, Jason Wong, chose influencer marketing over other paid ads for the first 4 months of his brand’s launch. Jason found that sending a shipment of lashes to micro-influencers would cost less than $10 per shipment.

And if he made even one sale from an influencer, he’d break even. If he got 2-3 sales, he’d profit and slowly start gaining traction. This is precisely what happened. One month of influencer marketing led to $2.6K in daily sales by effectively reaching niche audiences!

Educate Buyers About Your Product

A non-salesy way to market to potential customers is by educating them on how to use or style your product — depending on what you sell. By thoroughly briefing influencers about your product, you can allow them to create content that educates their target market about your product in an engaging manner. Not only does this help grow your sales, but it encourages customers to create user-generated content featuring your product.

This, in turn, gives you more exposure and grows brand awareness. Take a page from Supergoop's TikTok influencer marketing campaign. The sunscreen brand reached its ideal audience by pairing with influencers in fashion, lifestyle, and beauty niches. Their influencers made creative content that highlighted Supergoop sunscreen's features in a light-hearted and entertaining way.

This aligned with the brand's voice and educated the influencers' followers on the importance of wearing sunscreen. They also showed how Supergoop's clear SPF50 differed from the traditional, white-cast sunscreen people are used to.

Build a Bank of Content for Repurposing

Finding time to create high-quality content can be challenging if you're a small or growing marketing team. You're already busy with product shots, banner ads, email campaigns, etc. Working with influencers means that content is created for you, and you can repurpose it across your campaigns and channels.

Brands like Starface, for example, use pieces of content created by their customers to enhance their checkout. Using real people will add a personal touch to your brand's online store, which helps reduce friction when they're getting ready to buy.

However, you'll need to keep track of contracts and image usage rights. If you have content from last year's campaign, it is essential to determine if you have permission to reuse it the following year. Using content without permission can lead to some severe brand damage.

Collect Data to Understand Your Audience Better

Next on the list of influencer marketing benefits is the advantage of collecting data about your niche audiences. As gathering third-party audience data becomes harder, working with influencers can help you source audience data. The more data you have, the easier it is to create better and more audience-relevant marketing content.

Your influencer will have data on audience demographics. That’s age, gender, and location — broken up into the different social platforms they work on. They’ll also be able to tell you about the engagement, reach, and impressions their posts get. This will be useful in understanding how well your campaigns are going and whether they resonate with their audience.

For direct sales attribution, it’s worth setting up tracking codes to see who’s clicked through to your website and checkouts. You’ll need to give this to your influencer before they start the campaign. However, not all influencers are open to sharing their audience analytics.

Building long-term relationships with influencers often leads to them giving you access to their demographic data from social media platforms and any other tools they use. This, in turn, helps you make better-informed, data-driven decisions.

Work with Experts to Boost Brand Authority

If you’ve good brand authority, your customers view you as the subject-matter expert in your industry. Growing your brand authority will increase brand awareness and give you a better chance at helping prospects overcome objections. To increase brand authority and focus on enhancing brand awareness, you could interview experts as part of your content strategy, create a podcast, run webinars, and be a guest on other people’s platforms.

You could also enlist the help of an expert influencer. This is something one of our customers, Forthglade, does well. As a dog food brand, they know their customers only want the best products for their furry friends. So, as well as providing lots of tips on their blog, they work with different types of influencers like Dr. James Greenwood on their social media platforms to provide accurate, expert advice on looking after and caring for your best friend.

Turn Influencers into Brand Ambassadors

Another key benefit of influencer marketing is the opportunity to build long-term partnerships with your content creators, leading to increased brand awareness. If they try out your products and genuinely love them, they’re more likely to post about them organically and recommend them to friends and people outside their following.

Just look at this case study from Grin, who helped an online brand, Inkbox, create an influencer campaign to build a community of brand ambassadors. They got 70+ creators to post about their products across different marketing channels. This, in turn, created a 40% uptick in unprompted creator posts. If you can cultivate genuine connections with your influencers, you can turn them into loyal brand ambassadors.

Strengthen Your Online Community

Online communities are fantastic places for like-minded people to connect, chat, swap tips, and share advice on particular topics. Communities mainly flourish on social networks, which makes them a great place for brands to build connections with their customers. (Look at big brands like Gymshark and GoPro to see what we mean.)

But creating a sense of community isn’t easy. You must establish a loyal customer base, a good online following, and an emotional connection with your audience. This is where influencers can help. Take Lick, a UK-based paint brand. They took a slightly different approach and encouraged their Director of Interior Design to be their ‘internal’ influencer. Having this regular face show up on socials is essential in building a strong bond with their community.

Amie, Head of Social Media and Creators at Lick, says: “It's nice for our community to know that there are real people at Lick, like Tash, who’re there to give our decorators help and advice on brands. This is important for our brand values as well. It's also given us a unique way to lean into video content across our key platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Tash also creates the colors, so who better tell our community about them than the person who makes them?

Get Better Quality Leads

As we mentioned, 82% of brands say they see better ‘quality’ leads from influencer marketing campaigns over any other campaign, especially when targeting niche audiences. That’s quite an impressive stat, and after learning about the influencer marketing benefits in this post, you can see why. By partnering with influencers who talk about your specific niche, you can reach a loyal audience that’ll be genuinely interested in your products.

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How to Write an Influencer Outreach Email in 5 Simple Steps

1. Define Your Objectives

Before contacting influencers, clarify what you want to achieve from the partnership. Do you want to boost brand awareness, increase engagement, or drive sales? Also, think about why you want to collaborate with this particular influencer. Understand how their values align with your brand and what you want them to do, such as create content, promote a giveaway, or review your products.

2. Create A Compelling Subject Line

The first thing an influencer sees when they open your email is the subject line. Make it count! Get straight to the point and summarize the email in a short sentence or phrase. Aim for around seven words or 41 characters to keep your subject line concise. For example: [Name], we want you as [brand name]’s VIP. Or: Love your Instagram aesthetic, [name]!

3. Personalize Your Email

Nobody likes receiving generic and templated emails, and influencers are no exception. To increase the chances of getting a reply, personalize your email outreach to each influencer.

Start with the subject line and greeting, and use their name early in the email. Then, look for opportunities to express genuine admiration for their work.

Be specific, and even include a link to a recent post of theirs that you love. If you or someone at your company knows the influencer personally, mention it in your email. You can also reference past collaborations or activities related to your brand. Finally, if you’re contacting an influencer from another country, include a few words in their language to help establish rapport.

4. Get To The Point

Influencers get a ton of emails every day. Therefore, you must make your outreach email as quickly read as possible. Avoid lengthy introductions and unnecessary details; get straight to the point. Open by introducing yourself and your company. Let them know who you are and what your industry is, and briefly describe your product or service. Next, connect your brand values to the values of the influencer.

Explain why they would be a perfect fit for your brand. Use some of their content that resonates with your brand to establish a connection where possible. Lastly, let them know about the offer. Give details about what you’ll offer, whether it’s free products, collaboration, or an affiliate program. You will only talk about the monetary compensation when they show interest in your offer.

5. Give Them Creative Freedom

Influencers run their business how they want them to, and they’re successful at what they do. Give them the freedom to create content the way they like it. Don’t give them strict prerequisites that limit their creativity, as this will likely turn them off and make them not consider associating with you.

Megaphone: The Viral Marketing Tool to Boost Your Online Presence Organically

Megaphone is a viral on-demand platform designed to boost your online presence authentically and organically. Our software connects you with influential creators in your niche, helping you grow impressions, followers, and leads without relying on paid ads. Using Megaphone, you can increase impressions, followers, and leads without relying on paid ads. Key features include:

A sophisticated engagement network,

A private engagement pod service (coming soon),

Diverse creator partnerships for sponsored posts, X spaces, and newsletter ads (coming soon).

Megaphone caters to startup founders, marketers, emerging creators, and ghostwriting agencies seeking to amplify their digital footprint and social proof. Our complex matching algorithm ensures you partner with your field's most suitable and valuable creators. Go viral today with our viral on-demand platform.

17 Influencer Outreach Email and Instagram DM Templates

Help Us Improve [Product Name] – Your Opinion Matters!

Body

Hey [Influencer’s Name],

We’re launching [Product Name] and would love your feedback before the official release. Let us know if you’re interested in testing it!

Best,

[Your Name]

6 Tips for Efficient Influencer Outreach

1. Leverage the Potential of Megaphone

A sophisticated engagement network,

A private engagement pod service (coming soon),

Diverse creator partnerships for sponsored posts, X spaces, and newsletter ads (coming soon).

2. Goals and Messaging for Influencer Marketing

Before reaching out to influencers, define your goals for the campaign and how you will achieve them. The most popular reasons for implementing influencer marketing are to raise brand awareness and increase sales. The great thing about working with influencers is that they reach very niche audiences, often making it a more effective strategy to reach new potential customers.

Once your goals are set, you’ll want to work on messaging. The best way to engage an influencer’s audience is to let the influencer be themselves, but you don’t want to give them complete free rein to say whatever they want. Determine key messages for the influencer to include in their post to keep your campaign on track.

3. Identify Your Target Audience

Knowing your target audience will make identifying relevant influencers to work with much more straightforward. Because influencer followings are so niche, verifying that their audience is also your audience is essential to ensure you get a return on investment. Oftentimes, the influencers themselves will align with your target buyer persona.

4. Build an Influencer List

The key to driving a successful influencer marketing campaign is identifying relevant influencers who share your target audience to promote your brand or product. Just like public relations professionals must do their research to determine the appropriate reporters and producers to pitch, you’ll want to take your time finding the right influencers who share your target audience.

Experienced influencers will have a media kit to share with you, breaking down their audience demographics, reach, category of content, and compensation expectations. When deciding on influencers, determine how much their audience trusts them. A large follower count is great, but you might not achieve your goals if those followers don’t engage with the influencer’s content.

Therefore, looking at an influencer’s engagement rate is a must. High numbers of views, likes, comments, and shares any influencer receives on their posts are significant indicators of a healthy engagement rate.

5. Pitch Your Brand

Reaching out to influencers about a possible partnership looks like public relations pitching. Many influencers will provide an email address on their social media accounts, but reaching out via direct messages is common. When you’re ready to inquire about a partnership, sending a personalized message to each influencer will increase the likelihood of a response.

Compliment their content and tell them how much it would mean to work with them, but try not to come off as too salesy. Your pitch should include as much information as possible about your brand, the campaign you’re recruiting them for, and how working with you will benefit the influencer beyond the flat rate.

Are you willing to send them free products? Will you provide an affiliate link from which they can receive a commission? These are all things to quickly note in your pitch.

6. Review Content Before Publishing

While you should give influencers creative freedom to make the content look and sound like them, reviewing the images, videos, and copy before they’re published online to ensure they align with your brand messaging and campaign requirements is essential.