According to an estimate, there are about 6.5 billion Internet users worldwide, a mind-boggling number. Without sufficient digital promotion, you can’t expect growth and exposure of your business. Although there are several ways of doing that, perhaps none yields better results than blogger outreach, where you reach out to a blogger or influencer to promote your business online. Apart from its other benefits, this method has strong credibility because the blogger has a pre-existing user following. However, manually finding the influencers can be time-consuming, whereas an outreach platform simplifies the process for you, making it quicker, easier, and efficient.

What is a blogger outreach platform?

Blogger outreach tools or platforms are indispensable for getting the best results from influencer marketing. They enable you to find the relevant bloggers, create email templates, and scale your outreach campaign with a personalized touch. You can track your campaign’s success with the help of such tools. Technically, if you do not have the time and expertise to perform the aforementioned tasks, it would take up a lot of your resources, and money, with results that might not satisfy you.

Situations when you need an outreach tool

Although you will need an outreach tool to achieve all of the objectives mentioned above, like sending a large number of emails, there are situations where you will require them more than others. Here are some of those.

Decreased email open rate

Even though emails are one of the best ways of reaching out to bloggers, they won’t produce the desired results if the blogger, influencer, or recipient doesn’t open them. The rate at which bloggers open emails vary from one industry to another. For instance, leisure and hobbies enjoy the highest rate, while sales deals and e-coupons are the lowest. The average rate at which emails are opened is approximately just 21%, which does not produce the desired results in outreaching. The two primary reasons mails don’t receive the desired response are sending the mails to the wrong person and not having the required customization. A proper outreach platform will ensure that your emails are received and read and have significantly higher chances of receiving a reply.

Engaging the influencers

Relationship building is the foundation upon which the entire edifice of outreaching rests and a weak one will inevitably cause deterioration of both. Building a strong, healthy, and long relationship with a blogger takes a lot of time. Many marketers tend to ignore a blogger when they fail to respond to the first or second submissions, a practice that wastes your time and resources. Rather than looking for another influencer, it’s a great idea to follow up and engage them on the third or fourth attempt. You can use outreaching tools with conversion tracking features and automated touching base responses to enhance your communication and relationship building with the influencers.

Finding new opportunities

Not all bloggers enjoy the same level of popularity. Marketers find that those with a significant number of followers can be more challenging to reach than a lesser-known blogger. You could choose to contact a less famous influencer, but that wouldn’t deliver the expected results in the long run. Higher accessibility doesn’t always translate into higher visibility. You can use outreach platforms to contact famous influencers as they contain vital statistics like traffic data within a blogger list.

How to select an outreach tool?

It is essential to select the proper outreach tool to get the best results for your business, and these are some factors you might consider while doing so.

What are their features?

As explained earlier, not all platforms will offer the same or standard features, and you should carefully browse through them before making your choice. Some will allow you to track brand mentions, identify opportunities, and discover influencers based on solid metrics. You could also discover the trending topics in your industry and check who’s produced the best content. Other tools will enable you to find bloggers’ email addresses, organize your contacts based on tags and notes, and measure your outreach campaigns’ return on investment or ROI.

How much do they cost?

Some outreach platforms come with three plans, while others have four. It is wise to choose one according to the plans you need. The pricing of these tools is usually decided monthly, with an annual billing system. However, you might have to book a personalized demo to know the pricing plans for some of them. You might want to remember that higher prices do not necessarily mean better results.

Are they user-friendly?

Whether you use the tools to send personalized emails, track their open rates, or discover the trending topics in your industry, they should have an easy-to-use interface. You shouldn’t have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out their working mechanism.

An outreach platform will enable you to connect with the proper blogger and make the most of your influencer marketing campaigns. But it is vital that you find the best one that will deliver the results you need to expand your online business presence.