Email outreach is the process of sending targeted emails to prospects (individuals or organizations) aiming to build relationships, promote a product or service, or achieve a specific goal. In SEO specifically, email outreach is a link-building method where you reach out to webmasters, authors, and journalists to request or negotiate, in one form or another, a link to your website.
Email outreach generally serves the following purposes:
It is worth noting that there are different types of email outreach; the two main ones are cold and warm emails:
Cold email outreach, where you are using emails to reach out to your prospects for the first time and have no prior relationship with them.
Warm email outreach, where you’ve had prior contact with the prospect you’re reaching out to or have been introduced to them by someone else.
Moreover, there are two ways to approach email outreach - known as the “shotgun” and “sniper” methods:
The mass-send, quantity-over-quality, “shotgun” approach is less time-consuming, the downside being that these emails often look like spam and have a much lower response rate.
On the other hand, the “sniper” approach involves thorough research of each individual prospect and hyper-personalized emails, which builds long-lasting relationships and gets higher response rates.
Email outreach is important because it is among the most effective ways to develop your online presence, obtain high-quality backlinks, and generate quality leads.
A properly executed email outreach campaign typically has a high ROI, which makes it a very important part of a marketing campaigns.
As noted earlier, email outreach can help you achieve a number of different goals - ranging from establishing important connections within the industry to pursuing collaborations.
And in the context of SEO, specifically, it’s a very efficient way to promote your content and earn backlinks, which, in turn, boosts your website authority in Google’s eyes and helps your page rank higher in SERPs.
At the outset, the concept of sending emails to specific targets - asking them to check out a new post and link to it in their content - seems simple enough.
However, there’s a right and wrong way to go about email outreach - and if you get it wrong, you run the risk of the emails you send out being labeled as “spam.”
With that said, let’s go over some email outreach best practices:
One of the main aspects of a successful email outreach campaign is ensuring that you send emails to the right people - those likely to be interested in your offer and take action.
The more effort you put into crafting a list of potential prospects and researching them, including their personal information and business, the higher your chances of getting a response once the emails are sent out.
As you start putting together your list of potential outreach targets, you should:
The subject line will be the first thing the recipient sees. It’s what captures their attention among all the other emails in their inbox and, ideally, persuades them to open your message and check what it’s about.
In fact, as much as 64% of emails are opened - or ignored - based solely on their subject line.
Here are the basics of writing a good subject line:
There’s nothing wrong with using a template. However, there is a big difference between generic templates and “blueprints” that still leave plenty of room for personalization.
The former has no personal touch whatsoever and seems like it could’ve been sent to 100 other people; the latter shows that your email was intended specifically for them.
That said, email personalization goes beyond just using the prospect’s name.
You can address their specific pain points or interests, mention a mutual connection, or let them know you enjoyed a piece of content they published recently, for example. Details like that show that you’ve taken the time to do your research - which builds trust and establishes an immediate sense of connection.
Keep in mind that you’re probably not the only one trying to contact the person and yours email is just one of many. If you convinced the recipient to give time and attention to your email, the last thing you want is to waste it by beating around the bush.
In other words:
Be concise, clear, and straight to the point about your intentions - the reason you’re reaching out to them and the action you want them to take.
But most importantly, remember that it’s not about you; it’s about them and what they are getting out of the email. So, be clear about how your proposal would benefit the recipient.