How to Get Influencers To Respond to a Brand Partnership Pitch

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I came across a Reddit thread that highlights a key challenge most influencer marketers face.

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Regardless of whether you’re running campaigns on LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, or any other social platform, getting influencers to respond is difficult.

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Even though the majority of an influencer’s income comes from brand deals, realize that their DMs are already flooded by their audience as well as other brands. 

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Therefore, many pass by your message simply because they’re overwhelmed.

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I collected tips from leading influencer marketers and compiled them into this post to help you get more responses from influencers.   

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Select The Right Influencers To Contact 

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First, not every influencer is interested in brand deals.

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Many influencers simply want to promote their own products. 

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This is particularly true on LinkedIn. Most senior executives or thought leaders earn more money by promoting their own personal brand and products. 

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Rand Fishkin is an excellent example of this. 

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He has built an impressive personal brand with nearly 200,000 followers on LinkedIn, over 450,000 followers on X, and earns about 427 engagements per post on LinkedIn.

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However, he’s never done a sponsored post, likely because he only uses his personal brand to promote his own product, SparkToro. 

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It’s probably a waste of time for an influencer marketer to reach out to him because he simply doesn’t do sponsored content. 

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To discover if an influencer has done sponsorships in the past, you can use Favikon to look at an influencer's tagged brands. Then, look through some of the posts to see if any of them are sponsored.

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For example, I can see here that Brendan Hufford did several sponsored posts with Riverside:

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Therefore, Brendan is likely open to brand partnerships with the right companies. 

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If you want to find more creators at scale, start by searching for a parallel brand on Favikon. For example, let’s say you’re in the career coaching niche. 

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In this case, you could look at a brand like Kickresume and see all of the creators they’ve sponsored. Keep in mind that some of the creators may have organically tagged the brand, and some of the people who tagged the brand may work at the company.

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However, if you click into this post, you’ll see that Elvi Caperonis did two sponsored posts with Kickresume.

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Therefore, Elvi might be a great person to reach out to regarding a brand deal:

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You’ll ultimately see a much better response rate if you only reach out to creators who have already collaborated with other brands. 

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Contacting The Influencer

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Once you have a list of influencers who have done brand partnerships with parallel brands, here are some tips for actually reaching out to these influencers. 

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Tip #1: Contact via Their Preferred Channel, Then Everywhere

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I realize this tip sounds vague, so I’ll clarify which outreach platform you should use, depending on the scenario.

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First, check if the creator has a preferred outreach channel (e.g., email, DM, etc.).

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For example, if they specifically state in their profile to email them for collabs, email them. 

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If nothing is stated in their profile, you have a few different options. 

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First, comment on their content. This is a tip from Alex Llull at Perspective, and he says it has helped him earn an 80% response rate. This also helps you weed out creators who don’t engage with their audience.

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Gretta Van Riel, who used influencer marketing to grow her ecommerce brands SkinnyMe Tea, The 5th, The Drop Bottle, shared similar advice.

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In her influencer marketing template, she recommends liking and commenting on several of the influencer posts from the brand account. Then she sends a DM and an email about a collaboration. 

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However, most influencers’ DMs are flooded. 

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This is why Jeremy of doola recommends starting with email. 

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Jeremy shared that there are plenty of AI tools to find an influencer’s email address. However, we realize that it’s annoying to use a separate tool to find their email and then track it in a different spreadsheet. 

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That’s why we offer the influencer’s emails directly inside Favikon, along with a DM option. This way, you can email and DM all of your influencers in one place. Best of all, their responses are consolidated in a single CRM in Favikon:

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Regardless of whether you choose to email or DM first, the key is to contact them via both email and DM before giving up on that influencer. 

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Another tip is to always follow up with influencers. 

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And, even if they don’t respond to your request for one campaign, that doesn’t mean they’ll never work with your brand. Don’t be afraid to reach out again in a few months for a future campaign.

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Perhaps the most persistent story I heard came from Adelė of Omnisend. 

She was struggling to get a response from a large creator and donated to his charity in an attempt to get his attention. Then, on the invoice, she found a phone number and called him. 

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Tip #2: Offer Unique Value to Their Audience (Not Just Monetary Compensation)

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An influencer’s livelihood is often brand deals and affiliate sales. 

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If an audience stops trusting an influencer and no longer buys what they recommend, the influencer will lose their income. 

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This is why effective influencers are usually very picky about the brands they promote, and most will only work with brands that can offer genuine value to their audience. 

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Therefore, brand and audience alignment is table stakes, and there are plenty of other quality brands competing for a sponsorship spot with that creator.

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Offering more money or better terms can help you win the deal. 

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However, if you really want to stand out in an influencer’s inbox, craft a unique campaign concept. 

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For example, this LinkedIn influencer said she received 36 generic brand sponsorship offers and rejected all of them because they lacked unique value.

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Then, she accepted Hootsuite’s offer because it offered a unique concept (and, I’m sure Hootsuite’s brand name and budget made the offer compelling):

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Another excellent example of how a brand creatively added value to a creator’s audience was Lectric Bike’s collaboration with Ryan Trahan. 

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They offered to donate $10,000 to St. Jude’s for every day he rode the bike in his video. During the campaign, Lectric further increased its donation and ultimately donated over $600,000.

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Here’s a full video explaining the partnership:

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This collaboration created a positive brand image for both Ryan Trahan and Lectric Bikes.

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Consider how you can make your campaign beneficial to either a cause the creator cares about or how it can directly benefit their audience. 

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That said, not every campaign must be unique and creative. 

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However, if you’re having trouble cutting through the noise and reaching creators, consider developing a more creative campaign concept to land the creator. 

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After you’ve built a relationship with the creator, you can do more traditional promotional campaigns. 

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Tip #3: Keep The Pitch Short 

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Keeping the initial pitch short was probably the most commonly mentioned tip across all influencer marketers. 

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Jeremy Barbara of doola shared this exact tip, as well as the outreach email he always uses:

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The biggest takeaways from Jeremy’s post are:

1. Keep it short enough it’s too easy not to answer.
2. Avoid giving context that could disqualify you (e.g. budget, idea, product)

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Once you’ve received an initial response, you can provide more detailed information.

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Igor Gorbenko of Ahrefs has a similar approach to creator outreach. 

He simply asks if they are open to doing sponsorships and for the best way to learn more:

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Of course, both Jeremy and Igor are working with established companies (Ahrefs and doola). 

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If you’re a smaller startup, you could test adding a little more context to your outreach message.

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Lester Chen, the Head of Creators at a16z, recommends keeping the pitch short, but he adds a little more context:

1. Mention your title (founder or influencer marketer)
2. Include a link to your company  
3. Mention 1-2 “things” that you do

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I add all of these approaches to outreach, because what works for one company might not work for another. Don’t be afraid to test different outreach strategies.

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Tip #4: Avoid Asking For Rates

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To build on the last tip, you can ask to learn more about an influencer’s sponsorship details, but avoid asking for rates directly. 

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A study of over 5,000 email pitches to creators by Saad Sarwar (co-founder of a talent management agency) showed that emails asking creators for rates in the initial pitch had a 50% lower close rate. 

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In fact, when the management agency sees emails asking for rates, those emails are labeled as “likely less valuable.”

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This comment was in response to the earlier post by Lester Chen, which outlined the key mistakes brands make when performing creator outreach. 

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And while it’s best to avoid asking for rates directly in your initial outreach message, Lester says that it’s still important to make it clear that it’s a paid opportunity: 

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Tip #5: Attend Industry Events

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It’s much easier to cut through noise and prove that you’re serious if you meet someone in person at an industry event. 

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Many influencers will post if they’re attending an event beforehand. If they do, send them a message in advance that you’ll also be there and hope to connect with them. 

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For example, if you wanted to get in touch with Enara Roy, you can see that she’ll be attending Creator Economy Live. Therefore, send an outreach message and mention that you’re looking forward to hearing her talk:

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Tips For Long-Term Success

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It’s very hard to cut through the noise of an influencer’s inbox. 

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Tip #1: Look For a Warm Intro (Or Build Relationships Through a Personal Brand)

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Influencers are much more likely to respond to someone they already know and trust. 

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This is where working with agencies or freelancers who already have established relationships with influencers can help. 

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However, the most effective long-term strategy is to establish your personal brand as an influencer marketer. 

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If you have a strong personal brand, you’ll not only find it easier to get a positive response from creators to whom you reach out, but you can also do an open call for creators. 

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For example, this is a post Sarah Adam recently published to find creators for Wix:

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You’ll see in the comments section that she received some very qualified creators:

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Tip #2: Leverage Past Creator Partnerships

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Creators are used to getting low quality pitches from brands that:

1. Don’t match their audience’s interests.
2. Don’t have the budget to work with them. 
3. Are overly demanding and undervalue the creator’s influence.

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Therefore, it’s much easier to land creator partnerships after you’ve worked with some well-known creators. 

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In fact, when I spoke with Ash Turner of Synthesia, he said that it’s now much easier for Synthesia to land deals with creators simply because the new creators they’re pitching are friends with other creators who have already worked with Synthesia.

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Therefore, they already trust that Synthesia has realistic expectations and is a great brand to work with. 

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“And now it has paid dividends,” says Ash. “It's been a lot easier to have those conversations, because when I speak to some creators, they're like, oh, I've seen this creator work with you guys already. I'd be open to a chat.” 

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Tip #3: Build Your Brand

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Finally, perhaps the easiest way to cut through the noise is to build a known brand.

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For example, if you reach out from Anonymous Startup, you’ll have a much harder time getting an influencer’s attention than if you reach out from a well-known brand, like Lululemon or Starbucks. 

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In the case study Ahrefs wrote about spending $1 million on influencer marketing, they mentioned that brand image is particularly critical when it comes to pitching larger influencers:

Of course, building a strong brand takes years, and building partnerships with creators will help you build that brand image. 

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However, you might not be able to get the biggest influencers immediately, and that’s okay. 

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You’re probably better off starting with smaller creators, testing what works, and then scaling up to larger creators. 

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Take Your Influencer Marketing Efforts to The Next Level

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Most influencer marketers spend so much time finding the right influencers that they don’t have the time to write a thoughtful message when it comes time to actually reach out to these influencers. 

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However, if you had a list of ideal influencers at your fingertips, you could spend more time crafting better outreach messages and building a relationship.

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This is where Favikon can help. You can find influencers on all of the major social media platforms, including LinkedIn, X, YouTube, Instagram, and more. 

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And, you can filter by not just follower count, but also niche, average engagement rate, posting frequency, and more. 

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When it’s time to reach out to influencers, you can send them an email or a DM directly inside the platform as there’s an entire CRM in Favikon. 

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Learn more about how Favikon can improve the efficiency of your influencer marketing efforts today.

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