How I Outreach to Influencers and Obtain Links at ~20% Conversion Rate

After my first post, I started distributing it in a lot of different ways mentioned in our startup pre-launch strategy.

The outreach was a total failure until I refined my strategy and ended up with a ~20% conversion rate cold email to link framework. Here is what happened:

I was hoping to get relevant content links from outreach, that didn’t happen

One thing was for sure after a lot of outreach I noticed right away that my outreach sucks.

Here is one of my responses via Twitter:

The good small lesson there. Thanks, Larry.

I needed an outreach framework that would work for many influencers

After reading a lot of posts on outreach it seems it was clear that great outreach was unclear. A lot of people just create random templates based on past experiences and each one is just hit or miss.

So I decided to make a framework to work with because then I have a solid base to build off of with every outreach email I send.

Value On Open Framework

The core idea is to make sure that people got some value JUST by opening your email.

Even if it’s just a sincere compliment that brightens their day. Deliver some type of value on open.

Here are some responses I received doing successful outreach influencer link building:
outreach email template

(he didn’t read the post I sent originally but after this he gave me the link)

(this was from a really high-quality blog)

More important than the successful outreach link building, I can start building relationships.

The 4 step framework structure is:

• Pre-Engage
• Personalize your email (Ego boost)
• Show that you appreciate their post (Ego boost) & how your post is going to make theirs even better. (Value boost)
• Offer or give something for free (Value / Ego boost)
• Make almost every sentence in your outreach email giving something.

I also use “Quick question” as all of my subject lines. Nothing special going on there.

1. Pre-Engage (Do one of these before emailing them)

• Find their Twitter and look for something interesting you can reply to. If they said something kind of funny, it’s hilarious to you!
• Comment on a recent blog post unrelated to the one you’re trying to obtain a link from. Make this comment something thoughtful based on their post. At the very least just agree with their main point they were making.
• Follow them via social networks (Extra brownie points for this)
• If you find something they feel proud of via social congratulate them and then remember it for the email you’re about to send them

2. Personalize your email (I’m not talking about their name)

• Find information via social networks that you can include into your email
• Mention something you enjoyed about their post in your email to them, don’t even link it. They’ll know what you’re talking about. Something they can reply to because it’s sincere and not just “Hey I really enjoyed X post… Now let me continue with my ask because the blog post I read on outreach told me to copy and paste a link of yours in my outreach emails.”

3. Deliver your “ask” disguised in value

• Tell them what they did right on their post. What points of their post are awesome?
• Next, make it clear that by adding a link to you it’s going to make their post even more epic.

*It’s important to identify where your post should be for them. They don’t want to think about this, when you identify the place for them it’s either going to legitamently add value that they can see or it won’t.

4. Offer something / Give something at the end (Use this part in a PS. Statement)

• Offer to share one of their newer posts in your next newsletter if you have a decent size audience.
• And/or offer a link to them. Even if my link isn’t valuable in its current state they can see that I’m sincerely doing as much as I can.
• Offer to share one of their posts… Even better just share it via social and let them know you shared it.

And you end up with something like this:

You can use this same framework for basic link requests, broken links, guest posting and anything else you could think of.

Shout out to Sparring Mind who also wrote a good outreach email and had a huge influence over creating this framework.

Remember: This framework works. And it works extremely well… Neil Patel’s outreach letters work at 6%, who is an amazing internet marketer. This one works at 20%+ on average.

It all comes down to you putting in the work.