Email Outreach – How (And How NOT) To Do It [Episode 131]

Who would you REALLY love to connect with and get in front of?

Maybe it’s the CEO or HR manager of a company you’d love to work at. Maybe it’s an influential person or thought leader you’d be keen to have as a mentor. Maybe it’s a potential client who you know would love your work if ONLY you got to sit down with them for coffee.

Now, if I asked you to reach out to them, how would you do it? My guess is you’d send them an email, right? And perhaps you’ve already tried emailing them — maybe you sent a resume, or you asked to meet up for coffee, or asked to collaborate on a project…and heard nothing.

It’s ok, it’s happened to all of us.

And it’s no surprise really. Think about it: how many emails do you receive a day? 50? 100? And add to that your text messages, Facebook messages, LinkedIn messages, WhatsApp chats…that’s a LOT of messages vying for your attention.

According to this Lifewire article, 205 billion email messages are sent per day, which means almost 2.4 million emails are sent every second. If you receive a lot of emails every day, you know it’s almost impossible to keep up with them.

Imagine if you’re an influential person who gets hundreds of requests a day. Getting their attention is really really hard!

So how do you stop your messages from getting lost in the swamp of other messages? How do you make sure they SEE YOUR email, open it, and RESPOND?

That’s what this episode is all about. I’m going to share with you examples of poor and effective emails, and how you can write your own outreach email to get the attention of that person you really want to connect with.

I was inspired to do this episode based on one particularly terrible email I received a few months ago. But it prompted me to revisit a fantastic outreach email I received from Cat Rose, with whom I DID record an episode, which you can listen to here.

Christina’s tips for effective email outreach:

1. Start with the end in mind

What do you want? What are you pitching for? Is it to start a dialogue? Is it to have a phone call? Is it to get an interview? Have a coffee? Decide what you want! This will help you to craft the email.

2. Do your research

What do they like? What are their hobbies? Do you have any similarities? Stalk them on social media and see what they’re posting about. Have they done any interviews recently? What’s grabbing their interest right now? Find out something personal about them and include that in your email (make sure it’s relevant, of course).

3. Use their name

Whenever I receive an email that begins with “Hi there”, I delete it. This is a demonstration of how lazy you are. If you can’t take the time to find out someone’s name, how can you expect them to take the time to write back or agree to your request? (Another example – NEVER write “Dear sir/madam” on a resume cover letter. It will be deleted, I can promise you that.)

4. Write an intriguing subject line

Put their name in it, or ask a question, or both. You can make it conversational, ie “Hi Mike, a quick question?” or “Hey Mike, your vlog has inspired me to do this!” There are plenty of articles that give ideas on great subject lines, such as this one.

5. Think about your reciever

The body of the email will be different depending on who you’re reaching out to. Very busy people need short, sharp, direct communication. They don’t want any fluff. You will need to cut to the chase. For example:

“Hi (influential person),

Can I interview you for my podcast on November 12, 2017, at 3pm EST? It will be a 30 minute audio call via Skype.

My podcast is called (name of show) and aims to help (your audience) achieve (result). You can see an example of my work where I interviewed (insert other influential person’s name) here: (specific URL).

Thanks (influential person), I look forward to hearing from you.”

If you want to build rapport with them, you can include a specific compliment, what you admire about them, or a quick story about how they’ve helped you, or what they’ve taught you. Make sure it’s genuine and specific to them — you don’t want it to come across as a copy/paste job!

6. Make it easy for them

What’s your call to action? Don’t just end your email with “Let’s meet up some time! Let me know!” because then they have to do the work to suggest a time. So, suggest a time for them, or give them a few options.

Or if you’re asking for advice, present them with 3 options you’ve considered, and ask which one they think is best. That way, they can literally respond with “Option 2”, without needing any further explanation.

And you never know, they may write back with more detail than you expect!

Bonus tip!