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One effective way to promote your brand as a UGC creator is by cold emailing. Cold emails are a way to start reaching out to brands you’d like to work with and introduce yourself and your services. It can be intimidating to message contacts at brands through email or direct messages, but with the right approach, you can craft a perfect cold email that will increase your chances of a reply, and potentially land long-term collaborations. In this blog post, we’ll provide tips and tricks for sending effective cold emails and to who is usually the right contact at a company to message.
Define Your Niche and Brand
Before you start contacting brands, it’s important to define your niche and brand. What do you stand for? What’s your specialty? What kind of content do they like? You must have a clear understanding of who you are and what you can offer before approaching any brand. Brands are looking to collaborate with partners who align with their vision, mission, and values. If you don't have a huge following or portfolio yet, finding smaller companies is typically better for conversions when you’re starting out.
Research and Choose Your Target Brands
Once you’ve established your niche and brand, it’s time to research and choose the brands you’d like to collaborate with. Choose brands that share your passion and vision and ones that you like and are a customer of. Follow them on social media, visit their website, and engage with their content. Look for brands that have already worked with influencers or bloggers in your niche before and see what kind of content they’re sharing. Who are the UGC creators they’ve collaborated with? Learn how they have worked with these content creators, what their content strategy is so you can get a clear idea of what they aim to achieve for their audience. This information can help you tailor your message since you can see the kind of content they want creators to make and who those creators are. For example, you can reference a recent project, a blog post, or a story that was shared on social media. Another good thing to do is look at their Instagram vs. TikTok. If they have a good Instagram presence, but not much on TikTok, then it could be a good opportunity to pitch them about how you can help with their TikTok content.
Find Who to Contact at a Company
You can use LinkedIn to find people at the company that you’d want to email or DM (Direct Message) the brand and ask. This could be someone on the PR team. You could send them a message on LinkedIn, or use tools that find company email addresses like hunter.io, Snov.io, or Skrapp.io.
Personalize Your Message
One of the most important things that gets overlooked when sending a cold email is that the message isn’t personalized for the recipient. Avoid using generic templates or spamming people with the same message. Instead, personalize your outreach by using their name, mentioning a personal connection or shared interest (if possible), and express what you like about the brand, how it aligns with your values, and what you can bring to them as a partner. This shows that you took the time to research them and aren’t just sending a generic message that they know is most likely sent to many others. Here are more tips on how to pitch to brands.
Keep it Concise and Direct
Your cold email should be short and to the point. Avoid lengthy paragraphs or vague language. State the purpose of your outreach in the first few sentences and make it clear what you are asking for. Are you looking to secure a partnership or explore new collaboration opportunities? Having a clear ask to the person will help them understand what you are offering and inquiring about, so you get a higher chance of a response.
Provide Value
Your unique value proposition sets you apart from other UGC creators, so highlight that in your cold email. Explain not just what you can do but how you can help them achieve their goals. Do you have a portfolio you can show? Be sure to show content you have posted and what kind of engagement you’ve gotten. Some engaging content posts could be unboxing videos, tutorials, countdown to a release, save-the-date, etc.
Craft a Catchy Subject Line
Your subject line should be catchy and intriguing, but still brief and straight to the point. Try to use words and phrases likely to catch the recipient’s attention. Here are tips on crafting a subject line.
Follow-Up
Don't get discouraged if you don't receive a reply to your cold email. Most people are busy and receive dozens of emails a day. However, you can follow up politely after a few days or a week. This shows that you are interested in establishing a relationship, rather than just seeking a one-time collaboration. Be sure to reiterate the value you can bring and mention any updates you can highlight that might be beneficial. Keep following up, but make sure to always be respectful, concise, and timely in your emails. What’s great with our platform is that you can track your follow-ups and get reminders so you can stay on track.
Cold emailing may seem like a waste of time because it could never get read. However, it’s free to do and can be a great tool for UGC creators to reach out to brands they want to partner with, and you just never know what could happen.
Keep in mind that each cold email should be tailored to the person you’re emailing. With these tips, you can craft compelling messages and establish connections to help you grow your portfolio.
Learn how to start and scale your creator business here, and be sure to set up a demo to see how our tool can help you.
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