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Email outreach is one of the best content marketing strategies to promote content to your specific audience or increase your brand awareness. So, it makes sense that lots of bloggers are trying their hand at this tactic.
But the unfortunate truth is that most of those emails go unread, deleted, or ignored.
Why do so many bloggers fail at this simple task?
This article will outline the most common mistakes that bloggers and marketers make with their outreach strategy and what you can do about it.
#1 – Your Email Goes Straight to Spam
The first step you must do is to prevent your emails from going to spam.
This issue is prevalent among marketers who have been using email outreach as part of their marketing strategy but with little or no success.
Initially, the lack of response rates will trigger email clients to drop your email straight to spam.
Also, your previous recipients may have flagged your messages as spam.
Both may have a profound effect on your deliverability rate. Therefore, all the hard work you put into your outreach strategy simply goes to waste!
Fix: Below is ways you can prevent your blogger outreach emails from landing on your recipients’ spam folder:
- Optimize your open rates by crafting better subject lines.
- Decrease the use of images and increase text in your email copy.
- Stop sending too many emails at the same time.
- Avoid using trigger words or phrases that are flagging your emails as spam, ex. “make $,” “home based business,” “Eliminate debt,” etc.
#2 – Your Outreach Campaign Lacks Personalization
When launching blogger outreach campaigns, you must understand that they’re no previous touchpoints with you and the recipient.
These aren’t “inbox leads” or prospects whom you found in your inbox or those who filled out any of the lead capture forms on your site. With them, you can refer to your previous conversation in your inbox to personalize your campaign.
But since they’re not, most bloggers and marketers send very impersonal subject lines and “Dear Sir/Madam” as the opener in their email content.
Fix: By sending out a cold outreach campaign where you got their details. You need to give them a reason to listen to what you have to say.
It all starts by knowing the recipients’ names and more details about each one you can use to personalize your digital marketing strategy.
You can find this information using Pitchbox. It’s an outreach software that allows you to plan, implement, measure your outreach campaigns at scale.
But for this purpose, Pitchbox lets you research and profile your prospects so you can plan for campaigns that are primed to succeed.
Finally, always observe email etiquette. Know why you’re writing the email in the first place and how you plan on communicating that to them.
#3 – You’re Promoting Irrelevant Content to Recipients
While promoting your content via blogger outreach is powerful, the principle is also different from other tactics.
For instance, when promoting your content on social media channels, you’re sharing your content to people who voluntarily followed you on these social media platforms. That means they’re interested in what you have to say, at the very least.
The same thing can’t be said about cold email. There’s a chance recipients aren’t interested in what you have to say because they don’t know who you are.
And you will only make things worse if your content isn’t in line with their interests.
Therefore, no matter how great your blog article is, the recipient will neither read nor promote it because it has nothing to do with his/her niche or interest!
This mistake has something to do with not finding the right people to send out your emails to. Maybe you just scraped an email list of people and just blasted them with your email without taking into consideration if they are interested in your blog post or not.
Fix: To increase the response rate to your blogger outreach campaign, you must share content that’s relevant to them or their target audience.
For example, if they’re in the affiliate marketing space, asking them to promote well-written content about the best affiliate marketing software or similar.
Using Pitchbox, aside from the name you’ll use in the subject line, you can also unearth more information about the prospects so you can send compelling emails they’ll open and read.
If you’re implementing a guest blogger outreach strategy, you must propose topics relevant to their niche and industry. This way, you add value to their content, and they’ll be more receptive to your email.
#4 – The Content You’re Promoting in Your Blogger Outreach Strategy Sucks
If you’re promoting content that’s thin, has lots of grammatical errors, is formatted poorly, and has a blog layout that hurts the eye, then people will just ignore your content.
Poor content is a sign that you’re not serious with your blog. And you don’t want to convey that message because you want to get into the good graces of your prospects.
Fix: Creating good content is at the heart of every successful blog, especially if you’re still learning how to start a blog.
A lot has been said about how to create great content, but below are just rules of thumb you must follow:
- Always keep the topic’s search intent in mind when you create the article. If the subject deals with how to increase web traffic, you don’t have to discuss what web traffic is, what constitutes a website visitor, and the like. The readers clicked on your article from search engines or social media because they already know all these things – they just want to get straight to the tips and advice.
- Make sure that it’s written expertly. Reduce grammatical errors by using tools like Grammarly, ProWritingAid, or even free tools like Hemingway.
- Format your posts to present a clear hierarchy of ideas. For example, subheadings should be in H2, topics under each H2 should be H3, and so on.
- Use images. Feature statistics and infographics as they help flesh out your thoughts more effectively than others. Just make sure to link back to your sources.
- Speaking of links, don’t be afraid to link out to other sites, provided they help make your content even more helpful to readers.
#5 – You Use the Same Email Templates for All Your Blogger Outreach Campaigns
Too often, bloggers send out worn-out and overused email outreach templates.
But let’s get a few things straight. Outreach templates have a place in your digital marketing strategy. If the email template is driving the results you’re looking for, then, by all means, keep using it in your blogger outreach emails.
The problem begins when the templates stop working because everybody else uses them in their campaigns. Maybe you just grabbed the templates from a blog post they’ve read or a digital marketing course they’ve taken.
As a result, recipients have been receiving the same type of template from everyone else. So, no matter how good the template is, they eventually will stop working!
Fix: At some point, you have to stop blindly relying on templates to get the job done. And to help you with these, use the analytics and data provided by your email marketing or outreach tool.
They will tell you if something isn’t working anymore and why. From here, you need to retool the templates you’re using and come up with something fresh.
#6 – There’s No Incentive for People to Reply
Arguably the biggest mistake that most bloggers commit in their blogger outreach strategy is making it all about them.
For instance, bloggers ask recipients to share their posts with their followers or link to their article on their site from their email. But they don’t do anything in exchange for that person.
Again, this is a cold blogger outreach campaign wherein you don’t have any existing relationship with any of the recipients. Hence, there is no reason for them to do whatever you’re asking because they have no reason to trust you.
In other words, your cold emails are already dead in the water even before they arrive!
Fix: Respecting people’s time with your email is of utmost importance. Therefore, if you want them to do something for you, you must do something for them in return.
One of the best examples I’ve seen is from Pixelied:
Pixelied wants me to edit an article and place a backlink to their website. In return, they’ll give me lifetime access to their tool for doing them a solid.
This gives me the motivation to do their bidding because I’ll be getting something in return from them.
Even if you’re not a SaaS, you can take a cue from Pixelied by doing something for recipients that will compel them to do what you want them to do. Examples are as follows:
- Share one of their posts on social media to hike up their social media shares and drive more traffic to their site.
- Create a backlink to one of their posts on your site to hopefully increase their Google search rankings.
- Write a guest post for them to provide valuable content to their readers.
- Offer them your products and services for free (or at discounted rates).
#7 – You Don’t Follow Up
Just because recipients didn’t reply to your initial email doesn’t mean they’re not interested in your message.
They probably forgot to reply or are currently busy with their priorities.
In this case, it’s best to send a follow-up email to get a response from them.
Fix: To be fair, sending a follow-up email can be cumbersome because you’ll have to keep track of the emails you’ve sent in your campaign and email them one by one.
With Pitchbox, however, you can set up follow-ups from the software, so you don’t have to worry about logging in and out again.
Once the campaign is launched with the follow-up emails, all you must do is monitor the results and see which one replied and which ones didn’t.
Know the Reasons Above to Launch a Successful Blogger Outreach Campaign!
As bloggers, you need to learn how to get the most out of your outreach emails to find success with your website. And that starts with correcting the mistakes you or a digital marketer has been making with their campaigns.
Hopefully, this post has shed light on how to correct the course of your campaign to help you hike up your response rates and meet your goals.
Related Posts:
3 Cold Email Outreach Tools Every Blogger Must Use
Blogger Outreach Processes That Can Scale Links
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