During the holidays, my youngest daughter apparently had cabin fever after being in the house for a couple of days. While exiting the bedroom, my wife found the note below on the floor, after the former had slyly slid it under the door.
Though tired and not really feeling like leaving the house, we had to reward the youngster for her industriousness. And her charm.
Her effective "outreach" earned plaudits from my wife.
"At least she did it the right way," she remarked. "She cleaned her room, washed dishes, and read books all day, obviously part of an attempt to make it hard for us to say no. After all she did, though, she earned it."
Hmm...
She earned it.
Can you say as much about your outreach?
We're missing out on a great opportunity
Over the last few months, I've been thinking a lot about outreach, specifically email outreach.
It initially got my attention because I see it so badly handled, even by savvy marketers.
But I didn't fully appreciate the significance of the problem until I started thinking about the resulting impact of bad outreach, particularly since it remains one of the best, most viable means of garnering attention, traffic, and links to our websites.
What I see most commonly is a disregard of the needs of the person on the other end of the email.
Too often, it's all about the "heavy ask" as opposed to the warm touch.
- Heavy ask: "Hi Ronell ... We haven't met. ... Could you share my article?"
- Warm touch: "Hi Ronell ... I enjoyed your Moz post. ... We're employing similar tactics at my brand."
That's it.
You're likely saying to yourself, "But Ronell, the second person didn't get anything in return."
I beg to differ. The first person likely lost me, or whomever else they reach out to to using similar tactics; the second person will remain on my radar.
Outreach is too important to be left to chance or poor etiquette. A few tweaks here and there can help our teams perform optimally.
#1: Build rapport: Be there in a personal way before you need them
The first no-no of effective outreach comes right out of PR 101: Don't let the first time I learn of you or your brand be when you need me. If the brand you hope to attain a link from is worthwhile, you should be on their radar well in advance of the ask.
Do your research to find out who the relevant parties are at the brand, then make it your business to learn about them, via social media and any shared contacts you might have.
Then reach out to them... to say hello. Nothing more.
This isn't the time to ask for anything. You're simply making yourself known, relevant, and potentially valuable down the road.
Notice how, in the example below, the person emailing me NEVER asks for anything?
The author did three things that played big. She...
- Mentioned my work, which means she'd done her homework
- Highlighted work she'd done to create a post
- Didn't assume I would be interested in her content (we'll discuss in greater detail below)
Hiring managers like to say, "A person should never be surprised at getting fired," meaning they should have some prior warning.
Similarly, for outreach to be most effective, the person you're asking for a link from should know of you/your brand in advance.
Bonuses: Always, always, always use "thank you" instead of "thanks." The former is far more thoughtful and sincere, while the latter can seem too casual and unfeeling.
#2: Be brief, be bold, be gone
One of my favorite lines from the Greek tragedy Antigone, by Sophocles, is "Tell me briefly — not in some lengthy speech."
If your pitch is more than three paragraphs, go back to the drawing board.
You're trying to pique their interest, to give them enough to comfortably go on, not bore them with every detail.
The best outreach messages steal a page from the PR playbook:
- They respect the person's time
- They show a knowledge of the person's brand, content, and interests with regard to coverage
- They make the person's job easier (i.e., something the person would deem useful but not necessarily easily accessible)
We must do the same.
- Be brief in highlighting the usefulness of what you offer and how it helps them in some meaningful way
- Be bold in declaring your willingness to help their brand as much as your own
- Be gone by exiting without spilling every single needless detail
Bonus: Be personal by using the person's name at least once in the text since it fosters a greatest level of personalization and thoughtfulness (most people enjoy hearing their names):
"I read your blog frequently, Jennifer."
#3: Understand that it's not about you
During my time as a newspaper business reporter and book reviewer, nothing irked me more than having people assume that because they valued what their brand offered, I must feel the same way.
They were wrong 99 percent of the time.
Outreach in our industry is rife with this if-it's-good-for-me-it's-good-for-you logic.
Instead of approaching a potential link opportunity from the perspective of "How do I influence this party to grant me a link," a better approach is to consider "What's obviously in it for them?"
(I emphasize "obviously" because we often pretend the benefit is obvious when it's typically anything but.)
Step back and consider all the things that'll be in play as they consider a link from you:
- Relationship - Do they they know you/know of you?
- Brand - Is your brand reputable?
- Content - Does your company create and share quality content?
- This content - Is the content you're hoping for a link for high-quality and relevant?
In the best case scenario, you should pass this test with flying colors. But at the very least you should be able tp successfully counter any of these potential objections.
#4: Don't assume anything
Things never go well when an outreach email begins "I knew you'd be interested in this."
Odds suggest you aren't prescient, which can only mean you're wrong.
What's more, if you did know I was interested in it, I should not be learning about the content after it was created. You should involved me from the beginning.
Therefore, instead of assuming I'll find your content valuable, ensure that you're correct by enlisting their help during the content creation process:
- Topic - Find out what they're working on or see as the biggest issues that deserve attention
- Contribution - Ask if they'd like to be part of the content you create
- Ask about others - Enlist their help to find other potential influencers for your content. Doing so gives your content and your outreach legs (we discuss in greater detail below)
#5: Build a network
Michael Michalowicz, via his 2012 book The Pumpkin Plan, shared an outreach tactic I've been using for years in my own work. Instead of asking customers to recommend other customers for a computer service company he formerly owned, he asked his customers to recommend other non-competing vendors.
Genius!
Whereas a customer is likely to recommend another customer or two, a vendor is likely able to recommend many dozens of customers who could use his service.
This is instructive for outreach.
Rather than asking the person you're outreaching to for recommendations of other marketers who could be involved in the project, a better idea might be to ask them "What are some of the other publications or blogs you've worked with?"
You could then conduct a site search, peruse the content the former has been a part of, then use this information as a future guide for the types and quality of content you should be producing to get on the radar for influencers and brands.
After all, for outreach to be sustainable and most effective, it must be scalable in an easy-to-replicate (by the internal team, at least) fashion.
Bonus: Optimally, your outreach should not be scalable — for anyone but you/your team. That is, it's best to have a unique-to-your-brand process that's tough to achieve or acquire, which means it's far less likely others will know about, copy or use it or one like it.
Awaken your inner child, er, PR person
Elements of the five tips shared above have been, singularly, on my mind for the better part of two years. However, they only coalesced after I read the note my daughter shared, primarily because her message delivered on each point so effectively.
She didn't wait until she needed something to get on our radar; never over-sold the message; was selfless in realizing we all likely needed to get out the house; didn't assume we were on the same page; and activated her network by first sharing the note with her sister first, and, through her mom, me.
Now, the question we must all ask ourselves is if the methods we employ as effective?
Fantastic post. When I first started out, I found it hard to build rapport with strangers as I felt like they would know that I wanted outreach etc but now I realise that it is necessary in this field (and in most!) Something that I did learn from your post was the whole "thank you" and not "thanks" as for me, by using thanks I was trying to "get on their level" and seem "friendly" and at times this did work as some didn´t want to be treated as superiors or unapproachable but I think I will try a new approach to new ones in the future - thanks!
Hello Ronell,
The letter written by your daughter is really appreciable. Not only in effective email outreach, it will work in every case i.e. with family or friends as well. Well, another valuable post I must say.
Thank you, Pratibha.
RS
Glad to see your response Ronell.
Your daughter's notes say most of thing about outreach. As you have mentioned that Relationship is one of the keys for sucess full outreach we strongly believe on that So before contacting them we prepare a sheet work on it that includes,
1)Blogger Name (Clare Hoang)
2) Twitter Handle (@clare_hoang),
3) Twitter Bio(Internet Believer, Digital Marketing Professional, Yahoo Alum, True Yogi, Music Addict, Hallyu Fan...& the list goes on),
4) Website (about.me/clare.hoang),
5) Notes(Contact at Ahrefs.com)
6) Personal Information - Contact point ([email protected])
Once we have that kind of data then we start following him and build our relationship. It works great.
Hi Faisal,
Building a rapport with the people you hope to outreach to is essential. It's much, much easier to say no to someone you don't know and who has not been in your orbit previously.
RS
Hi Ronell,
Great Article, you write down all the elements which should be present in an effective Outreach Email.
Thanks Again
Thank you. There are many more elements we must consider. But these are invaluable and are often easily missed.
Thank you for sharing this, Ronell. Your daughter’s letter is beautiful! :-) This article is quite useful for bloggers and SEO beginners looking to expand their outreach.
Often I find it somehow difficult to enter a relation with a people through email. Have you any experience dialing people instead, or is that too pushy?
After reading this article, most of new link builders like me will re-read my outreach email, and talk to myself "Damn, I need to step up my game!".
Btw, thanks for the great article Ronell!
Ps: Please take your daughter to the store! ;)
Andrew,
She did get her wish. We're all inundated with work and things we have to get done on a day-to-day basis. These little nuggets are on the cusp of what we all know. We simply need to be reminded from time to time.
RS
Hi Ronell,
Great article!!! These are really valuable tips for doing quality outreach, especially because I'm quite new to SEO and link building.
Cheers
Amie Botes
Hi Amie,
There's so much more we could/should all be doing. I trust your making great use of all the tactics at your disposal.
RS
Great post Ronell !!
We must all use email marketing to enhance our goals. What I think is one of the most important things to create our mails is that they are short, clear and concise. Nobody likes to receive an email in which they appear long paragraphs, surely these we erase them directly. So the main premise, in my opinion, for a good mail marketing campaign is that ... brevity, clarify and straight to the point.
Thank you, Javier. It was fun to write.
Also, I totally agree regarding the benefits of email being short, clear and concise. No matter how great your message is, if people find it imposing they'll never take the time to read it.
RS
Hello Ronell,
Good article, the thing is what you wrote that article is very important tips to do that quality outreach
Great post Ronell. This is so obvious but clearly many of us are not getting the hints.
Personally, I struggle to reach out with the sole purpose of building relationships, rather than having anything to offer, but I think that's just a hurdle I need to overcome. I still feel slightly 'rude' just popping up out of nowhere to say "Hi, love your stuff. Bye!" as I'm aware they know what I'm up to.
But again, I think this is something I need to get over in order to do outreach right.
Thank you for this post, Ronell!
The topic is perpetual... The more we outreach, the more we understand that it's not all that simple. I wrote about blogger outreach in my articles for Ninja Outreach and Income Diary, described many tactics to hook influences, followed advice from Tim Soulo and Brian Dean on the topic...
And the #1 trick I use when outreaching a person today is taking the place of my email's receiver. Would I open this email if anyone has sent it to me? Would I believe that person? Would I agree to do what they ask? It helps me better than counting words in email bodies and deciding on language patterns to use for hooking them (though words matter, of course :))
Cheers,
Lesley
Great article. The best example that we tend to over analyze our outreach. Your daughter kept it simple, straight to the point and was able to use emotions in a short intervention. This text made me realize so many details that I have to work with my customers.
Thank you for this eye openeing post.
I actually noticed a similar strategy being used in an automation slow drip email campaign the other day. Depending on the yes or no, they'll segment you within a different bucket. Pretty cool stuff!
Great title, its was impossible not to click: "Why You Should Steal My Daughter's Playbook for Effective Email Outreach"
This is a really insightful and useful article :) I will be applying a lot more of these tactics in my own outreach strategies! Thanks :)
Such refreshingly down-to-earth way of putting a complicated topic.
Thank you for this Ron and keep it up!
Haha - I used to bring my mother picked flowers from the garden (it may even have been flowers from weeds), each time I wanted to ask for something 'big'. It worked more often and not, weed flowers and all. This was a early lesson learnt and remembered. - so I can relate to your Daughters building of rapport.
Nice humanising post Ronell! Have a great week.
Really loved the article! I think as digital marketers we get a bit caught up in our busy day to days that we forget to keep the human courtesy into our outreach emails. Mike King also talks about how you should think of outreach as relationship building. This article is the perfect compliment to that idea. I think this is where platforms like Twitter become a great companion to outreach campaigns.
You are so correct about Twitter. It's another point of contact, one that is worth the investment for brands choosing to use it wisely.
RS
Great post and tips. This may be tagged link building but all salespeople should be following this advice.
Thank you, Robert.
RS
Great article!!!
Thank you, Melissa.
RS
Interestong post, Ronell! I really like the idea of such personalized content outreach like you recommend. It does come at a cost, though. TIME. It certainly takes quite a bit of time to put a plan like this together. I'm sure it's worth it, because the conversion rate will of course be much higher.
Another Great post.
Your daughters outreach is a great example of how an outreach should be.
i.e. you should praise the work of the person you want to contact after duly researching his/her work and find common ground.
Ask for permission to send the link to the article/post that you wish to promote
In case the person replies you can then pitch your post
Well explained! I really enjoyed reading this post and I have immensely got a lot of ideas from it. Putting character and your own personality in the email will not only attract attention but will build some sort of personal attraction. So they say, the more personalized your content is, the higher the chances for conversion.
Hi Ronell,
I enjoyed really with this post, thanks for writing it.
I think this lesson is really good not only for mailing, just for real life, what do you think?
Ronell, these are all extremely good points. The one that stands out the most to me is "#1: Build rapport: Be there in a personal way before you need them". I think that is so important prior to reaching out. In conjunction with email, I also utilize social selling to blog, post articles, and provide useful insight without asking for anything in return. It's a great way to build trust and rapport.
Hi Ronell,
Thank you for this. Your article certainly gives some perspective.
Few thoughts:
We have been finding outreach challenging especially since we work will small organizations that need the person we are reaching out to much more than they need us. Hence, it's difficult to state whats 'obviously' in it for them. Since what's in it for them is that the product/service offered is niche and unique. But as unique has become a common word, it's hard to make a person passionate about what you do in a mail.
Do you have advice or could direct me to some resources that would guide us for an outreach for small business.
Thank you.