Five Reasons why nobody responds to your outreach emails

I suppose I am right in assuming that all of us have been at this stage at some point – you have sent out no small number of outreach emails but your response rate has been pretty disappointing. If this keeps happening to you, it is quite likely that your outreach emails are not quite as they should be and you should rethink the way you do your email outreach and perhaps pursue a different tactic.

Here are five reasons why you don’t get responses from your outreach emails:

#1 Your grammar and spelling leave a lot to be desired

This sounds quite obvious, and actually it should be. Just imagine yourself opening an email that is full of mistakes at first glance – would you even be bothered to read it? Probably not. The same goes for bloggers. Many of them receive hundreds of emails a day and why would they waste their time reading incomprehensible emails?

#2 No or boring subject line

Your subject line should be a summary of what you want from the blogger in a few words. It’s important to get it right, so make sure it catches the recipient’s attention straight away. In my experience, I have found that the response rate tends to be higher if the subject line is nice and personal, maybe even less formal than your usual email header. Why not mention the blogger’s forename and directly address him or her?

Speaking of names, it always makes sense to go the extra step and actually find the right person to talk to; it is always better to speak to the organ grinder than the monkey.

#3 “Hi there, can I get a link from you?”

Many bloggers have a good idea of what SEO is all about, some have even worked in SEO before, so they know what you want. The worst possible thing you can do is take a blogger for a fool.

Directly asking for a link is just unimaginative, boring and a waste of time. And let’s be honest – would you provide someone with a link for free if you owned a blog and someone directly asked you?

A recent survey found out that 43% of bloggers make money from their blog by selling text links/accepting guest articles for money, however, they still expect you to provide them with quality content and something of value to their readers.

#4 Don’t write a novel

The secret of the perfect outreach email is to keep it short and crisp while still bringing your point across. Don’t get lost in details - the blogger does not want to know in your first attempt to make contact. Yet make sure you throw in your idea to make the blogger curious about what you have to offer.

To put it bluntly: Your outreach emails should be just as creative as your content you want to provide them with.

#5 You have not checked their website before outreaching to them

It does not take a lot of time to go through a site to see what it has not covered yet and could be of interest. So don’t waste your time suggesting a topic for a contribution that has been covered a hundred times already. Why not offer websites something different, something they can’t produce themselves? This could be anything, a little graphic, a guide, the list is endless and the more value it adds to them, the more likely you can get it out there.

Although these reasons seem pretty obvious, you still find people that do their best to get their contribution request thrown in the trash instantly. So you should make the effort and get those right and needless to say, don’t do this.