How to Write the Perfect Brand Pitch Email with Templates

Let’s face it - if there has ever been a time when everyone had equal chances to make the most out of their social media presence, it is definitely now. The Internet, the great equalizer, provides us with an array of opportunities and platforms to abandon any ‘backward’ ways of thinking and living and to reach out to brands and score lucrative deals.

‘But how should I reach out to brands? What should I write?’—you ask. Don’t worry, most influencers and bloggers have been equally bewildered in the beginning, as beginnings themselves are inherently daunting. The key is to do your research and create brand pitch emails that will allow you to score lucrative collaborations with the brands that you are most interested in. On our part, we will provide you with easy to follow guidelines and insider intel on the subject of effective email pitching to brands. 

What you should know before you initiate your first brand pitch email campaign

You have seen it a thousand times—influencers, most often those that cater to niche markets, regularly collaborate with diverse brands. This allows them not only to profit from their marketing skills and social networking profiles but also to garner a certain air of prestige that is inseparable from having that ‘sponsored content’ label on their profiles. Remember, endorsements are accumulative. Where one pops out, another one is soon to follow.

For that reason, new players in the brand pitching game often strive to associate themselves with respectable brands. Ultimately, there is no reason why you shouldn’t put your popularity and your skillset to good use.

Brands, influencers and the audience should form a symbiosis, one which they all benefit. In this symbiosis, potential customers will be in direct contact with brands offering quality products and services represented by trusted role models, that is, influencers and bloggers. That is what product placement is at its best.

However, this style of advertising has caught some flak recently because some influencers go to extreme lengths in order to attract brands, so much so that they try to commodify anything they possibly can. For instance, an Instagram influencer was censured for organizing a wedding which was, in actuality, devised solely for the purpose of pitching her pitch deck to brands in exchange for free accommodation, products, and services. Here’s another recent publicity stunt disguised as a wedding. 

Image Source: theatlatic.com

As much as such elaborate pitching schemes may be admirable in terms of their complexity and exploration of ingenious and novel influencer marketing practices, they are nevertheless bound to fail miserably in the long run. The simple truth is that nobody likes to be tricked and manipulated into purchasing a product, let alone a useless product, fake content, or service specifically devised to rob you of your money. 

With this in mind, take a look at the following advice you should take heed of before you start writing your brand pitch emails:

1. Be honest to all stakeholders—You should strive towards building a base of business associates and followers that trust you and your judgment. To do this, you should pitch to brands that your online persona has something in common with—a target demographic, the same aesthetic, the same business objectives, and so on.

Likewise, endorse products that are genuinely useful to your audience. Above, we likened the relationship between you, the brand and your followers to a symbiosis. All involved should benefit from it. That’s the golden rule.

2. Be useful to the brand—This advice is a natural continuation of that above. In order to score partnerships with brands, your social media profile or blog should offer something the brand can make use of. However, this statement is sometimes interpreted erroneously. This does not mean you invariably have to have hundreds of thousands of followers to be eligible to communicate with and expect brand collaboration, as will be illustrated later on.

3. Be resourceful. This means that it is not enough to write a simple brand pitch email in which your call to action boils down to ‘I think we have a lot in common and believe we should be partners. What would you like to do?’ Or even worse, ‘I have been using your products for years. Can I get free samples?’

Writing brand pitch emails is not that simple. You need to be clear, concise, and above all, creative. Ideally, you should be the one who will define the following guided by the ‘three Cs’, that is, the three staples of writing a great brand pitch email:

In summary, you are the one who will need to think of an idea, believe in it and then sell it. Not the brands you are contacting.

The basics of writing effective brand pitch emails

As with any type of marketing, or other professional task for that matter, the key to success lies in skillful planning. We suggest you follow these steps. Of course, feel free to tweak them according to your particular professional circumstances and preferences.

1. Research

2. Organization

3. Action

Research

The essence of your brand pitch email campaign comes before writing, sending and following up. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, research is your key to success. Irrespective of the size of your enterprise, your engagement rates, your previous brand collaborations, or whether you are a newcomer or a veteran - you should always do your research.

You could do it the old fashioned way if you’ve figured out which brands you want to target. Go to each brand’s website, click on “contact” and, more often than not, you will find the email address for their PR manager, digital marketing manager, brand collaboration manager, or other relevant contact information. 

In this way, you can learn from the experience of other companies in your field how they are building communication. Also, you can find out if they use strategic communication assignment help or other sources to attract and call to action customers.

But why stop there? Search on LinkedIn, find out more about their professional accomplishments and experience, their previous collaborations with influencers and bloggers, the products they are developing, or projects you think you could participate in. Essentially, once you show initiative, the sky is the limit, as they say. Of course, it won’t hurt if you write to them displaying:

• that you meticulously researched their products and vision, 

• that you use or admire the brand’s product,

• that you share their vision,

• that you have amazing ideas on how to advertise their products.

Contrary to popular opinion, some industry experts suggest that contacting emails like info@abcbrand.com can, in fact, be a gateway to scoring an endorsement. Although they look like ‘do not respond’ email addresses, your email brand pitch will find its way to the right person if you play your cards right and write a good email brand pitch.

If you want to go a step further, a great way to reach every single person of importance in your sector is to use an email finder. Software products such as these are perfect for those influencers that want to reach out to a great number of retailers and their employees as they enable you to search the web and locate all email addresses with a particular domain. Nifty, right?

Organization

Once you find the companies and contacts you wish to get in touch with, be sure to organize your brand pitch email campaign neatly. This entails noting down who you contacted and at what time. Although it may seem obvious, it is advisable to structure your email outreach as it will allow you to determine a timeline for following up.

Some marketing experts swear that influencer marketing rests on the power of a good follow-up. Sending follow-up emails at regular intervals (no less than 7 days) will raise your chances of getting noticed. But we digress. The content of your first email is what matters as well.

Therefore, when it comes to the organization and structure of your email, there are several key points which we will discuss:

• The subject line - mention the contact’s name!

• Keep it short and sweet - it’s an email, not a novel

• Briefly list previous brand collaborations or showcase your skillset

• Include the most relevant data from your media kit in the body of your email.

• Highlight the most relevant information

• State the price of your engagement. 

However, some of these points are subject to debate, so be sure to adapt these suggestions according to your circumstances and personal preference. 

The crucial thing is to customize your brand pitch. Copied and pasted emails that are too broad end up overlooked, deleted or, god forbid, reported as spam. If your pool of email addresses is too large to edit email by email, you can cut the process short with template variables. By creating custom variables and adjusting your emails to automatically add the contact’s information, such as their name, job title, company name, and the like, you speed up the writing process considerably.

Also, it is important to check the engagement rates in order to ascertain how your emails perform in terms of average open rates, click-through rates, and other relevant stats. Not only will that give you an overview of how good your brand pitch is, but it will also provide you a basis to work with to devise and improve your future email outreach.

Source Image: thegingerwanderlust.com

As for your media kit, on one hand, some experts suggest that it is important to present comprehensive and clearcut stats about your blog or social media profile engagement rates in the email attachment. On the other hand, this presupposes that all headhunters and PR managers carefully dissect every single email that shows up in their inbox. Unfortunately, this is hardly the case. 

For that reason, rather than expecting them to open your media kit and sift through all the data, it is best to mention the most relevant stats in the body of the email. For example, if you are new to the business and do not have many collaborations to boast about, compensate by reporting your rising monthly follower growth rate. 

Or, if you have a loyal fan base and you want to score a partnership with a sought-after brand in a certain line of business, be sure to compensate for your perhaps modest number of followers by putting the spotlight on, say, your Instagram story views or average likes. 

The bottom line is to take those stats and turn them to your advantage by highlighting your best performance figures, and we mean literally highlight them. Since there are slim chances your brand pitch email will be carefully read, make sure the most important information is clearly presented, phrased, bolded, listed, and so on. When the text is skimmed, it should be fairly easy to get the gist of what you are offering to the brand.  

Action

Once you have devised your perfect brand pitch email by including all relevant information, you are ready to make your move and contact potential business partners. You can find email marketing tools to help you with that. Of course, there are a few factors that will influence your success, some of which are not entirely under your control.

If you really mean business, you always have the option of streamlining your pitching. Sending automated emails has become common practice in the world of cold email campaigns, as they allow you to quickly and easily reach as many contacts as you wish. Such software products can also automatize your follow-up timetable and sort email addresses based on which action the recipient takes. The program will categorize which brand representatives opened the email and which clicked on the links and thus enable you to act accordingly to speed up your online correspondence. 

Once you have all of this covered, it all comes down to good luck. So, good luck!

Pro tips on how to approach writing your brand pitch email

1. Don’t be afraid to reach out to brands

2. A great subject line is your key to success

3. Associate the brand’s vision with your vision

4. Include visuals to make up for your lack of previous partnerships

5. Put a price on your services, or not?

6. An appropriate call to action is crucial

7. Be in control of your progress

Don’t be afraid to reach out to brands

The main idea to keep in mind is that brands and their PR teams cannot wait for you to approach them. As hard as it is to believe it, keep this in mind—You are making their job easier. 

What may be even harder to believe is the fact that you do have a lot to offer them, especially if you are a new face in town. The world of digital marketing is constantly evolving and talent hunters are always on the lookout for new, promising influencers and bloggers that will endorse their product. Therefore, if you thought you were a nuisance and you could not possibly score a deal with industry leaders, you need a change of perspective.

A great subject line is your key to success.

Writing an outstanding subject line is, in fact, paramount. It won’t matter how enticing your email brand pitch is if it is never read. Therefore, try to create interest by addressing their recent product or project, by alluding to a recent industry innovation or event, or use plain old humor if that is your forte.

Associate the brand’s vision with your vision

It is best to introduce your brand pitch by associating your blog or social media profile characteristics with their vision or with one of their projects, products or services. In this way, you will make it easier for the PR team to get a clear picture of how you fit into their vision.

This has other ramifications as well, as mentioning their specific achievements will be a clear indicator that your brand pitch is custom-made and not just another copy/paste job. Some industry experts note that it is vital to personalize your brand pitch emails, however, if this is too time-consuming for the intended volume of your email outreach, then at least customize the company’s name via the aforementioned custom variables.

Include visuals to make up for your lack of previous partnerships

At some point, influencers and bloggers will be advised to showcase their previous professional affiliations, but if you are new to this, then, this strategy obviously is not applicable to you. Instead of listing the brands that you worked with, you can approach this by including a visual representation of your marketing pitch, which is known in the industry as a marketing deck. Visuals allow you to cover several key points all at once:

• A step by step description of your marketing pitch

• Relevant data on financial and sales figures (graphs, stats, etc.)

• A nice design that will showcase your aesthetic or your photography skills

However, it is advisable not to go overboard with images and other media as they may be overwhelming and off-putting for the recipient, and may even trigger spam protection. Also, if you want to attach your media kit, it may be more efficient to do so once you get a reply from the brand. This may seem counter-intuitive, but in practice, it is better to go in detail once you have caught their interest. 

Put a price on your services. Or not?

When it comes to pricing, it is up to you to decide whether you want to put a figure on your services at the outset or not. This has been a contentious issue in the field for some time since some people are of the opinion that clearly stating how much something costs makes it hard to negotiate down the road. However, it is ultimately up to you. We suggest you try both approaches and then track which template variables enabled your emails to have better engagement rates, click-through rates, reply rates, and so on. 

An appropriate call to action is crucial.

So, you have checked off all of the aforementioned ingredients that make up a good brand pitch and provided your contact info. However, you could spice things up by referring them to a project you were involved in, an article that paints you in a positive light, testimonials of satisfied customers or business associates, or something similar. By finishing off in this manner, you are bound to leave a lasting impression.

Be in control of your progress

If everything goes well and you get a reply from a brand, the first step is to evaluate whether their offer suits you. If you have been in the influencer marketing business for some time, you have probably already been approached by different brands with various offers. If you are just starting out, it is important for you to know your worth, and abstain from accepting any partnership offer that comes your way. 

That is why reaching out to brands yourself is advantageous. By choosing which brands you want to associate your image with, you are in control of your progress. This is why you want to write each reply to brand pitch email responses perfectly. 

Brand pitch email templates for your reference

1. Brand pitch email template for new influencers and bloggers 

2. Brand pitch email template for experienced influencers and bloggers

3. Brand pitch email template for pitching to brands in a casual manner

Brand pitch email template for new influencers and bloggers 

This template focuses on particular products and mentions specific data that informs the brand’s PR team of how they may benefit from establishing a partnership. Notice how there is no mention of the media kit here. There is no reason to attach it if you listed specific figures, so it is better to send the media kit once they reply to your email.

Source Image: ladybossblogger.com

Brand pitch email template for experienced influencers and bloggers

This template is similar to the previous one in terms of structure and content, however, it is more focused on previous collaborations with brands. If you have such partnerships under your belt, then be sure to mention them in combination with the relevant stats. Alternatively, you could even provide links to your latest blog post or Instagram post to illustrate how you can contribute to the company. 

Source Image: ladybossblogger.com

Brand pitch email template for pitching to brands in a casual manner

The following template is an example of how to write a casual brand pitch template. Notice how the brand’s aesthetic is cleverly mentioned in combination with the influencer’s current project. This is a good example of how you can simultaneously integrate all relevant information in a concise and approachable way. 
Source Image: torinucci.com