All influencers are familiar with influencer marketing and email marketing. Even the newbies know that these are the hottest trends in the market right now.
So how awesome will it be to combine the best of both worlds? Influencer collaborations that incorporate email marketing are a match made in digital heaven.
Fresh new influencers get discovered while the existing ones gain followers rapidly. Together they can skyrocket traffic and engagement.
What makes email and influencer marketing a power couple
Building trust with email audiences takes time and effort. But there’s a shortcut, partner with social influencers.
They’ve already cultivated loyal communities who hang on their every word, making them powerful allies in attracting clicks and opens for your email campaigns.
Have a diverse clientele
Influencer partnerships help you gain access to fresh pools of potential subscribers who already have an interest in what you offer.
By delivering valuable content right off the bat, you can convert some of these individuals into engaged members of your email list, effectively expanding your reach.
Gain customer trust
When you get together with any popular influencer, you get the love of their loyal fans. The bonds that they have cultivated with their integrity and diligence benefit you too now.
So now you get a hold of their alliances and become eligible for appreciation from more people.
Increase engagement
Joining hands with an influencer exposes you to their target audience as well. This makes more people engage with your posts.
They will check out your products and services, you will earn more clicks, comments and even purchases. This skyrockets your brand’s popularity and attracts a whole new bunch of customers and boosts your ROI.
Promote the collaborated posts
While working with an influencer, cross promotion should also be discussed. If they are working with you to popularize your brand, you need to be promoting their posts or blogs about you, too.
Your email list should be getting notified about your collaboration results. This way both you and the influencer would be getting the spotlight.
Hence, this will help both of you to make a mark on a larger audience. Having a professional connection with an influencer is a win-win situation for you.
You get to enjoy a surge in your audience for email campaigns. You also experience an increase in vital metrics like opens, clicks and conversions.
How to identify the right influencers for your brand
Finding influencers that best complement your brand is key to creating an effective influencer marketing campaign. When searching for potential influencers, keep these factors in mind:
Reach and engagement
Look for influencers with an engaged following in your target audience. Check their follower count, likes and comments to determine how much interaction and engagement influencer is creating.
Micro-influencers with between 5,000-100k highly engaged followers can often have more genuine reach than larger influencers.
Content and voice
Study the influencer’s content and style. Do they post high-quality, authentic content in a voice and tone that matches your brand?
Influencers who seem genuinely passionate about topics related to your industry or product will produce the most compelling promotions.
Values and mission
Seek out influencers whose values and mission align with your brand. If you sell eco-friendly products, partner with influencers focused on sustainability and social impact.
For a B2B software company, tech influencers may be a great match. Values-aligned influencers will connect more authentically with your audience.
Previous campaigns
Review influencers’ previous sponsored content and campaigns. Look for those with experience promoting products and services similar to yours.
Check that their previous promotions were clearly disclosed as ads, and seemed genuinely enthusiastic. Experienced influencers will understand how to create compelling content for your brand.
Responsiveness
Reach out to potential influencers to start a conversation. Do they respond promptly and professionally? Are they open to negotiating the specifics of a campaign? Responsiveness and flexibility are good signs the influencer will be easy to work with.
Tips for reaching out and securing influencer partnerships
You need to have a keen eye to connect with the right influencer. These tips can help you secure meaningful partnerships:
Do your research
Get to know the influencer through their target audience and content before reaching out to them. Check out their work history and experience, along with the charges. The more you research about them, the more targeted your pitch can be.
Customize your pitch
Send a direct message or email introducing yourself and your company. Explain why you’re interested in working together and how it can benefit their audience.
Mention some of their recent content that you genuinely enjoyed. Influencers get many canned requests, so personalizing your message will make you stand out.
Focus on value for their audience
Shift your mindset from focusing on your needs alone to having a look at what you are going to offer. Explain how your product or service can help their audience.
Give examples of the helpful content they could create. Influencers care most about producing quality content for their followers. Show how you can support that.
Suggest a trial campaign
Propose doing a trial campaign together to start. Trials help you find any bottlenecks you two might face. It also helps you to realize how compatible your brands and working style would be.
This builds the foundation for a long-term commitment. Or at the very least helps you save time by highlighting any inconsistencies of work ethics.
Be flexible and responsive
Influencers’ priorities and schedules change frequently. Always consider how you impact the influencers working with you. And compromise or adjust whenever needed.
This helps them feel welcome and they will be doing the same for you. Simplifying things helps them trust you more and enjoy working with you.
Always remember partnerships are based on patience and understanding. Put in the work to find good partners, focus on value, start small, and maintain open communication.
That’s the key to influencer marketing success.
Creative ways influencers can promote your email campaigns
Getting influencers to promote your email campaigns is a creative way to amplify your reach. Also its important that you are using the best email marketing tools for your campaigns.
Here are some tips to get influencers excited about collaborating with you:
Offer an exclusive sneak peek
Give influencers an exclusive first look at your upcoming email campaign. Let them see the designs, content, and messaging before anyone else.
This makes them feel like VIPs and gives them something exciting to share with their followers.
Create a custom promo code
Develop a unique promo code influencers can share with their audiences. This could offer a discount, free trial, or other special offer.
Sweeten the deal by giving influencers a commission on any sales from their promo code. This incentivizes them to promote it to their followers.
Highlight key benefits
Explain the key benefits of your email campaign and product to influencers. Help them understand who your target customers are and the solutions or value you provide.
The more they know about what you offer, the more authentic and compelling their promotion will be.
Don’t make influencers start from scratch. Offer pre-written social media posts, tweets, and email newsletters they can customize for their followers.
Give a few options with different styles, lengths, and calls-to-action they can pick and choose from. This makes it easy for them to spread the word in their own voice.
Cross-promote on other channels
Ask influencers to promote your email campaign across their social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and blogs. Cross-channel promotion leads to the biggest impact.
Offer to reciprocate by promoting their channels and content to your email subscribers in return. This mutual exchange of value and exposure benefits you both.
Catchy subject lines
Craft catchy yet descriptive subject lines that will grab attention and prompt opens. Mention the influencer by name or hint at an exciting reveal or announcement.
Subject lines with questions or numbers also tend to get good open rates.
Compelling preheaders
The preheader is the short text snippet after the subject line. Use it to give a taste of what’s inside the email to persuade people to open it.
Mention the influencer and highlight an interesting stat or fact from the content.
Visually appealing design
Use eye-catching images, graphics, logos, and color schemes that match your brand and the influencer’s aesthetic. Include photos of the influencer if possible.
An attractive, cohesive design will make your content more shareable.
Valuable, sharable content
Provide useful tips, how-tos, statistics, or other content that the influencer’s followers will genuinely appreciate and want to share with others.
Giveaways, discounts, and exclusive previews are also great for encouraging shares. The content should highlight the value of your product or service.
Place large social share buttons for major networks prominently at the top and bottom of your email. This makes it as easy as possible for recipients to share your content with their followers.
Give credit and tag generously
Be overly generous with crediting and tagging the influencer in your email. Mention them by name in your subject line, preheader, and at least 2-3 times in your email content.
Tag their social media profiles and include @mentions where possible. This will make them more inclined to share since their followers will see them promoted prominently.
Executing a seamless influencer email campaign
Collaborating with influencers is a great way to amplify your email marketing campaigns. Reach out to influencers in your niche and see if they’d be interested in promoting your emails to their followers.
Offer to feature them in your emails or provide exclusive discounts and deals for their audiences. Once you’ve found willing influencers, make it easy for them to share your campaign.
Send them pre-made social media posts, images, and email copy they can distribute to their followers. Provide multiple options so they can choose what resonates most with their audience.
Also, be sure to include their discount codes or affiliate links so they benefit from sharing. Time your influencer outreach around the launch of your email campaign.
Ask influencers to promote 2-3 days before your campaign sends, the day it launches, and a few days after. This multi-touch approach will maximize exposure and drive more traffic and opens.
You should also engage with anyone who uses an influencer’s promo code or link. Thank them for their business and share exclusive offers to build goodwill.
Once your campaign concludes, send an email thanking influencers for supporting it and informing them of its overall success.
Also convey how much appreciation you have for their role in amplifying your message – maintaining these relationships will make future collaboration much simpler!
Conclusion
Combining influencers and email campaigns can be like creating a digital dream team. Both parties benefit; influencers bring their followers while you get to expand your audience. The key to making it work successfully is finding influencers that fit with your brand, reaching out smartly, and making it easy for them to promote your emails. By developing genuine connections you not only enhance email campaigns but also establish the basis for future successful partnerships.