You’ve chosen the influencers you want to work with. But now, you need to send them your brand’s pitch to get the ball rolling. You need to nail the subject line for an influencer to see your pitch.
Why? Because up to 64% of people decide to open emails based on their subject lines. What use is a fantastic pitch if it never gets opened by your chosen influencer?
Why is your influencer pitch subject line critical?
There are two main reasons why your email subject line is essential. The first is to get your email read. The second is to increase the chances of your chosen influencer responding to your email.
Some influencers get a flood of emails every day, and email overload is real (the inability to keep on top of emails).
The subject line is the first thing an influencer will see when opening their email. You need to stand out to get your message read. You’re competing with everyone else in their inbox to get noticed.
By focusing your efforts on creating a great subject line, you’ll increase your chances of working with the influencers you want because they will read your email.
Tip: When writing an email, the subject line should come first, then your email copy.
*Image source: beautifullyseaside/Instagram*
Different types of email subject lines for influencers
There are three different types of email subject lines you can use for influencers, and choosing which you will use depends on a few other things, and it hangs on whether you have conceptualized a campaign or not and what specifically you want to focus on with your influencer.
Generic
Generic subject lines are reserved for when you don’t have a specific campaign that you want to run with the influencer. These email subject lines work well if you want your influencer to have more freedom and creativity in coming up with ideas and concepts that will work well with their audience. Additionally, using an email verifier can help ensure that your influencer outreach is targeted and reaches the right audience.
Campaign-based
Campaign-based email subject lines are for when you have a specific campaign in mind for the influencer. Of course, they would still have creative control, but there is a theme in mind for them to play around with.
Product-based
A product-based subject line is best reserved for when you want to highlight a product with your chosen influencer’s audience. The influencer will still have the freedom to create something that will gel with their audience, but you want them to highlight a specific product.
Once you have decided on your subject line type, it’s time to write your subject line. But how can you best do that?
What makes a good subject line for an influencer pitch?
How can you stand out in the crowd and ensure that your pitch gets read by your chosen influencer? There are several things you can do to confirm your email gets opened, including:
- Personalization
- Proofreading and checking the spelling of names
- Keeping it short, simple, and direct
- Use a call to action
- Play on the influencer’s interests
- Avoid all caps
- Use emojis (or not)
- Avoid generic copy/pasted subject lines
- Use a subject line generator for inspiration
- Test everything
Personalization
For influencers, relationships are critical. It is essential to create good relationships with them from your first contact with them. If it feels like you made an effort to get to know who they are (in place of not including their name at all), they will be more likely to open the email.
Only 34% of marketers use subject line personalization in the US and the UK. Still, If you include the recipient’s name on an email subject line, it has an 18.30% open rate. Which is not a small number and will drastically improve your chances of being read.
*Image source: Reallygoodemails*
Tip: You can easily find an influencer’s name on their social channels or blog about pages. Including their name will help them see you have made an effort to find out who they are.
Proofread and check name spellings
Proofreading your subject lines and checking name spellings are essential as mistakes reflect on your credibility and intelligence as a business. You want to ensure that people understand and interpret your email correctly and show that as a business, you care.
Imagine you’re an influencer. You are going through your inbox, and someone has misspelled your name (or got it completely wrong). Would you open the email? Maybe, but it shows a lack of attention to detail, and as an influencer, you would likely prefer to focus on those companies that do pay attention.
If you know there are multiple spellings of a name, check which one they use. Some examples of these are Sarah, Ashley, Megan, Catherine, and John.
Keep it short, direct, and straightforward
Ensuring that your subject line is short, to the point, and in simple English will get the point across more effectively. If it’s hard to read or too long, your influencer might lose interest and move on to the following message.
Be conscious of how many words you use in your subject lines. Short and sweet seems to be the magic formula. A study by Marketo shows that seven words are best for maximum open rates, which you are aiming for.
*Image source: Marketo*
Plus, then you guarantee that your subject line won’t get cut off, and the influencer will be able to read the whole title.
Mailchimp puts a maximum of 60 characters to avoid your email getting cut off, so it will show up properly on any screen. They also say to ensure that you have a maximum of three punctuation marks in a subject line. Avoid adding full stops at the end of your email subject line as it adds to the character count.
It’s also a good idea to think about where the influencer will be checking their emails and on what device, as this impacts the character count and when it gets cut off, and how it looks on their screen. Currently, Gmail has the most significant market share, followed by Apple.
Use a call to action in the subject line
Calls to action encourage people to do something specific. While this is a common technique for marketers looking to get people to open their emails, it can also be effective for sending a pitch to an influencer. Think about using this marketing strategy to encourage influencers to open your emails.
Play on the influencer’s interests
If you know the influencer loves your brand because you’ve seen a bunch of their content already incorporating your company, you can use that to help you. How? By including your brand name in there. If you know they are obsessed with one of your products, you can include something about it in the title (though don’t go too overboard with this as you have a limited amount of space.)
Avoid all caps
You might think that all caps would help you to stand out. However, ALL CAPS IS SPAMMY. And it looks like you are shouting. If the whole subject line is in caps, you are much more likely to go into the spam folder. However, there are always some exceptions to the rule. The word FREE seems to work pretty well, according to Invesp – an email is 10% more likely to be opened if it gets included.
Image source: Reallygoodemails
Use Emojis (or not) ????
Emojis can help you stand out in a busy inbox. People’s eyes get drawn to them ???? and this has become more popular over the past couple of years. The jury is out on whether or not this helps open rates in general, but it will get people to read your subject line, which is the end goal for your brand.
Avoid spam trigger words
The last thing you want to happen is that your email ends up in your influencer’s spam folder. Several different triggers can cause an email to end up there (and it’s not solely focused on the words in the subject line.)
There are lists of email spam words that you can avoid including in your email. The words sample, open, free, and free sample are included in that list, so it’s something to keep in mind when writing your influencer subject line. If you use them sparingly and if it is highly relevant to your email, then you should not trigger the spam filter.
Use a subject line tool to help you with inspiration
Several tools can help you write an email subject line for marketing purposes. However, if you use these tools correctly, they can help you develop great ideas for your influencer pitch subject line.
ActiveCampaign and Sharethrough are two great examples of tools to use in combination. You can use what ActiveCampaign comes up with and tweak it to improve it. Then use Sharethrough to analyze your subject line. You can use what they come up with to tweak and improve. Bear in mind that these tools are designed specifically for marketing campaigns and not outreach, so you will need to do some work on these.
*Image source: ActiveCampaign*
Avoid generic copy/pasted subject lines
A pet peeve of many influencers is receiving a copy/pasted pitch. If you are using the same subject line with all of the influencers you pitch (and it is not personalized or there’s a mistake), it’s unlikely you will get read. No one subject line should be exactly the same.
Test what works best for your brand
You can test what works best for your business by trying different approaches with different influencers. Which emails get responses? Are there any emails you didn’t receive a reply from after a couple of weeks? These are all things you can use to improve your subject lines for future influencer campaigns.
Tip: Be sure that you use your email address (in place of a no-reply) to send out your pitches. It’s essential to make it simple to reply to you. Then it’s only one click to get in touch with you.
Examples of excellent email pitch subject lines
Here are some great ideas for influencer pitch subject lines so that you can use them for inspiration to write yours. Some use different mixes of personalization, calls to action, and emojis to get the point across.
Some are more simple and direct than others, and some play on the influencer’s interests. It’s all about choosing what works best for your business. These are split into different categories of email subject lines.
Generic email subject line examples:
- Melissa, reply to this email to collab with Sephora
- Matt, DJI wants to work with you.
- Nike x Sarah: Collaboration opportunity – reply for info
- Isabelle – your chance to collab with Showpo
- Sophie, LuluLemon wants to collab with you
Campaign-based
- Disney princess makeup challenge for Sarah: collab ????????
- Collab with Nordstrom: Wedding looks for less
- Caraway collab with Tara: Vegan cookie recipes
- Thomas x Expedia: Visit Canada collab
- Witchy fashion looks collab: ASOS x Simone
Product-based subject line examples
- Sam, your followers will ❤️ this Fenty foundation
- Want new Starbucks coffee? Collab opportunity
- Collab: New Sephora glow serum for you, Toni
- Your followers will love this new DJI drone, Steve
- New twisted denim jeans: Levi x Thomas collab ????
Start writing influencer pitches that get opened today
The end goal of all this is to get your chosen influencer to open your email so you have a higher chance of getting a positive response to your pitch.
Decide upfront what type of subject line you will write. Think about if you want to give your influencer the freedom to develop their own campaign idea for their audience or if you already have a campaign idea in mind.
When writing your influencer pitch, it’s vital that you don’t overthink it too much. Your email should get read as long as it is a maximum of 7 words long and up to 60 characters long, including personalization plus your brand name.
Ensure you check your subject line for typos and grammatical errors before sending it, and avoid spam words and all caps.
Test what works best for your brand with emojis, calls to action, and playing on the influencer’s interests, and use that data to optimize future subject lines.