How to contact an influencer?

Have you ever wanted to work with an influencer but gave up because you were unsure how to do it properly? Or perhaps, you did contact an influencer, but it didn’t work out? If you recognise yourself in these situations, don’t worry! We will tell you everything you need to know to contact an influencer. 

Trust us, it is simple, but you need to know a few things beforehand. Be ready to get hundreds of answers from influencers after reading our guide! Understanding the incredible impacts Influencer Marketing can have on businesses, you should launch influencer campaigns. 

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Find the right influencers to contact

Searching for influencers

The first step to start an Influencer campaign is, of course, to find the right influencers for your brand. It is one of the most crucial aspects of your strategy because if your influencer isn’t a great match, your campaign won’t work, and you will lose money. 

So to avoid that, it is time to find the perfect influencer that matches your needs and goals. Luckily, nothing is easier! On Favikon, you can search millions of influencers from all over the world. You can choose to search from YouTubers, TikTokers, or Instagram Influencers. 

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To sharpen your research and save you some time, you can use different filters like the location, the number of followers, keywords, hashtags, ect. You can also search the influencers by their Favikon score. This score rates influencers from 0 to 5 based on different criteria such as their engagement rate, account activity, saturation rate, etc. 

Once you are on the influencer’s profile, it is time to analyze their audit. The most important thing to check is probably their score details. Do they have a great engagement rate? If so, it means their audience interacts a lot with their content. This is especially great if you are looking to boost your sales. Have a look at their saturation rate. If they collaborate with many brands, it might not be judicious to work with them as your collab will be lost between much commercial content. You can also check their account growth, hashtag quality, or even content diversity. 

Looking at their audience is also extremely important. It will tell you if their community is mainly composed of women or men, their age range, and location. These are precious information to choose the influencers that are the best fit for your campaign. And more importantly, you can also check the audience quality. Did they buy any followers? Do their followers count bots? Or is their audience legitimate? With Favikon, you’ll know exactly the percentage of suspicious audience, which above 20% starts getting risky for a partnership. 

Have a look at the type of publication they do. Do they post a lot of videos, or do they prefer pictures? Depending on the campaign you have planned, it can be interesting to check that. For instance, if you are planning a beauty campaign on Instagram and would like your influencer to create a short video showing their audience how to use them. Then the best option is to contact an influencer who’s already experienced with the video format. Some influencers are comfortable working on various content formats (pictures, carousels, videos, stories…), yet others have a consistent feed based on a few formats only.

Finally, you should check their partnerships background and cost. Have they done collaborations before? If so, with what type of brands? Look at their advertising performance. This will help you decide if it is worth working with them. If an influencer has already done a few partnerships, it does not necessarily mean they are good at promoting commercial content. That is why it is beneficial for your brand to check their ad efficiency and cost per engagement. And let’s not forget the price! A collab with a mega- or maco-influencer will surely involve a huge budget, which isn’t an issue for big groups, luxury brands, popular labels, or just brands with significant financial resources. However, a nano- to middle-range influencer would be more suitable for smaller brands with limited budgets. Thus checking the influencer’s cost per post, story and giveaways will give you an idea of what budget to expect for planning a campaign with them.

Is this influencer a match for my brand? 

Great, you found an influencer with a perfect Favikon score who matches your expectations but don’t rush into contacting them just yet. Go on their social media profiles and analyze their content. Does it correspond to your brand image and values? Do you like the way they communicate and their tone of voice? Do you think the campaign you planned goes well with the rest of their content? And most importantly, can you picture them as your brand ambassador? These are some of the questions you should ask yourself before contacting an influencer. 

Partnerships can be a one-time thing, just as they can last in the long term. No matter the duration of a partnership, you need to remember that influencers represent your brand. They are your ambassadors. This means that these influencers, as well as their reputation, will be associated with your brand. This is why you need to be careful when choosing influencers. 

Need an example? Lounge Underwear launched one of the biggest recent campaigns for Valentine’s Day. The brand created a massive movement by collaborating with more than a hundred female influencers worldwide. Most of these influencers create lifestyle and fitness content. Their profiles match their brand image, which revolves around “sexy” and “seduction.” Yet another campaign was also launched by a Lingerie brand, Intimissimi. When comparing the two influencer campaigns, we can notice a difference in the message and the image. Intimissimi’s collabs also promoted lingerie, yet the campaign's image differs from Lounge underwear. The brand contacted lifestyle influencers as well, but instead of targeting content creators known for their fitness content, they contacted fashion influencers. This slight difference changes the whole image of a campaign, which for Intimissimi revolves around attractiveness and chic.

Choose your influencers depending on your objectives

Collaborating with influencers isn’t about working with the biggest or most famous ones. It is about working with someone who will help you reach your objectives. It is not always necessary to work with mega influencers to have a great impact. 

Working with macro, micro, and mid-range influencers can be beneficial, especially if you want to boost your sales. Since they have a smaller community, they often answer their followers more regularly, increasing their engagement rate. Because their audience feels closer to them, trusts their content, judgments and is more likely to interact with their content (like, comment, share…), they are also more likely to follow these influencers’ recommendations. So if your goal is to boost your sales on a limited budget, it is advisable to partner with smaller influencers. 

On the contrary, if your goal is to gain visibility, it makes sense to work with macro or mega influencers. However, it could cost almost the same amount to work with a few mega-influencers with a massive following and partner with numerous micro to middle-range influencers. This choice depends on the niche audience you are trying to reach. The mega influencers community can be huge, yet your target audience can represent a small part of it. On the contrary, when collaborating with smaller influencers with specific niche audiences, you are sure to target the right users (and by working with many small content creators, you can also target different niche audiences).

All in all, choosing your influencers will depend on your objectives (visibility, sales, engagement…), and the target audience defines these goals. 

P.S.: If you choose to collaborate with bigger creators, check their audience quality. Some influencers might have millions of followers, but it would be useless if half of them are bots to work with them. 

Where to contact influencers? 

Contacting influencers on social media

If you want to work with Instagram influencers, it is very simple. You can contact them by sending them a D.M. The advantage of Instagram is that you can send a message to anyone. You don’t need to follow them and vice versa. However, your message might end up in their message requests.

Moreover, influencers can receive hundreds of messages per day from their followers and brands. Thus make sure to personalize and make it appealing to catch their attention. Another advantage of Instagram is that they will directly go on your brand’s account and check what type of content you are doing and what you are selling. They will decide more quickly and easily if they wish to collaborate with you. 

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Contacting a TikToker can be trickier because you can only send messages to people who follow you back. However, TikTok gives you the possibility to link your account with your other social media. Therefore, you might be able to contact a TikToker on their Instagram. Make sure to state that you are contacting them regarding their TikTok account in your message. 

Finally, how do you contact a YouTuber? For YouTube, you have no other choice than to contact them on another platform. Just like TikTok, content creators can link their YouTube channel to their other social media accounts, or they might have mentioned them in the description of their videos. So you can send them a message on these platforms. It is also very common for YouTubers to indicate their email address. 

Contacting influencers by Emails

Although you can most certainly contact them on their social media, influencers often have a dedicated email address for partnership and collaboration requests. In that case, it means they would rather be contacted there than on their social media. Again, they can receive hundreds of emails per day, so try to have a catchy subject.

You might also choose to contact them by email for a more professional approach. Convincing someone to work with you could be more manageable by email since you don’t have any word limits and can easily add attached documents if needed to illustrate your point. 

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How to contact an influencer?

Present your brand, be convincing!

You found the perfect influencer and the right communication channel to contact them, so it is now time to take the big step. This is the first impression the influencer will have of your brand, so it must be memorable.

First things first, you should start by presenting your brand. 

When was your brand created? What do you sell? In which country are your products made? What differentiates you from your competitors? Think of any relevant information that you want the influencer to know.

And most importantly, don’t forget to mention the added value of your brand and what makes it unique. You should also highlight the aspects that you think are more important to the influencer. For instance, if you want to work with an influencer who talks a lot about sustainability on their social media, you could mention that your brand is eco-friendly (If it is, of course, no greenwashing!). 

Why work with this influencer?

Next step: you should explain why you are interested in working with them. Why did their account catch your eye? Tell them what you like about their posts and why you think they are the best match for your influencer campaign. Don’t hesitate to be precise! Tell them how you discovered their account, which posts you liked the most, etc. 

Personalizing your messages is the most important part if you want to get answers from content creators. It is essential that the influencer feels that you want to work with them for their content, not their followers. So, by all means, avoid copy-pasting your collaboration requests. They will probably be able to tell, and they won’t answer your message. You should put as much energy when convincing them your brand is special as to let them know you believe their content is unique and perfect for your campaign.

Moreover, you should explain the advantages of working with your brand to them. This is a partnership, so both parties should win something from this. To do that, you can highlight different things: an original partnership proposition, special discounts for them or/and their community, or the remuneration if you feel that it is relevant. Your competitors could be asking the same influencer for a collab, so ask yourself: what is so special about your offer that it would make the influencer choose your brand over others? 

Explain your influencer campaign

Even though not all brands have a precise idea of their campaign structure, you must always present a concept to the influencer. Remember that you will probably make some changes to your campaign when discussing it with content creators, but it will be easier for them to agree to work with you if they know what you expect from them. Be as precise as you can! Tell them what types of publications you would like, how many posts, the duration of the partnership, the kind of content, etc. 

Suggest an original idea! Influencers get a lot of partnership inquiries. If you suggest an exciting and original concept, you will stand out from other brands and catch their attention. They might be willing to work with you if you tell them about a unique partnership, which they have never done before. This is why it is interesting to research the type of collaborations they have already done, so you are sure not to suggest the same experience and, on the contrary, offer a unique collab.

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Discuss remuneration with the influencer

This part is optional, but you might want to discuss prices directly when contacting an influencer. If you know you have tight budgets and won’t be able to negotiate the budget, it is probably better to tell them straight away what your prices are.

However, talking about prices in your first message isn’t always necessary. You are trying to convince the influencer to work with you because you sell great products and have original partnership ideas. Therefore your message should principally focus on that. If a content creator likes your company or your concept, they will agree to collaborate with you, no matter how much they gain. Partnerships aren’t always about money. The proof is that some influencers collaborate with non-profit organizations for free simply because they support the cause the organization is defending. 

Contacting an influencer can be easy if you follow these few steps. Once you have found your perfect match, analyze their social media to write a message that will be personalized and relevant. One thing to remember is that your collaboration should be original. You should find the correct arguments to convince the influencers to work with you.