Email outreach is one of the best content marketing strategies to promote content to your specific audience or increase your brand awareness. So, it makes sense that lots of bloggers are trying their hand at this tactic.

But the unfortunate truth is that most of those emails go unread, deleted, or ignored.

Why do so many bloggers fail at this simple task?

This article will outline the most common mistakes that bloggers and marketers make with their outreach strategy and what you can do about it.

#1 – Your Email Goes Straight to Spam

The first step you must take is to prevent your emails from going to spam.

This issue is prevalent among marketers who have been using email outreach as part of their marketing strategy but with little or no success.

Initially, the lack of response rates will trigger email clients to send your email straight to spam.

Also, your previous recipients may have flagged your messages as spam. 

Both may have a profound effect on your deliverability rate. Therefore, all the hard work you put into your outreach strategy simply goes to waste!

Fix: Here are ways you can prevent your blogger outreach emails from landing in your recipients’ spam folder:

• Optimize your open rates by crafting better subject lines.
• Decrease the use of images and increase text in your email copy.
• Stop sending too many emails at the same time.
• Avoid using trigger words or phrases that are flagging your emails as spam, e.g., “make $,” “home based business,” “Eliminate debt,” etc.

#2 – Your Outreach Campaign Lacks Personalization

When launching blogger outreach campaigns, remember that there are no previous touchpoints between you and the recipient.

These aren’t “inbox leads” or prospects you found in your inbox or those who filled out any of the lead capture forms on your site. With them, you can refer to your previous conversation in your inbox to personalize your campaign.

But since they’re not, most bloggers and marketers send very impersonal subject lines and “Dear Sir/Madam” as the opener in their email content.

Fix: Send a cold outreach campaign explaining where you got their details. You need to give them a reason to listen to what you have to say.

It all starts by knowing the recipients’ names and more details about each one that you can use to personalize your digital marketing strategy.

You can find this information using Pitchbox. It’s an outreach software that allows you to plan, implement, measure your outreach campaigns at scale.

But for this purpose, Pitchbox lets you research and profile your prospects so you can plan for campaigns that are primed to succeed.

Finally, always observe email etiquette. Know why you’re writing the email in the first place and how you plan on communicating that to your outreach prospect.

#3 – You’re Promoting Irrelevant Content to Recipients

While promoting your content via blogger outreach is powerful, the principle is also different from other tactics. 

For instance, when promoting your content on social media channels, you’re sharing your content with people who voluntarily followed you on these social media platforms. That means they’re interested in what you have to say, at the very least.

And though you may have had success with growth marketing on LinkedIn or other social media platforms where you have some connection (even if it’s third-degree), the same thing can’t be said about cold email. 

With email, there’s a good chance recipients aren’t interested in what you have to say because they don’t know who you are and you don’t appear to be connected to anyone they know.

And you will only make things worse if your content isn’t in line with their interests.

Therefore, no matter how great your blog article is, the recipient will neither read nor promote it because it has nothing to do with his/her niche or interest!

This mistake is about not finding the right people to receive your emails. Maybe you just scraped an email list of people and blasted them with your email without taking into consideration if they are interested in your blog post or not.

To illustrate, remember your new product launch or initial blog launch? You took time to think carefully about your potential customers, their interests, and how to position what you do as valuable to them. That’s the same point of view you want to bring to your email outreach campaign.

Fix:  To increase the response rate to your blogger outreach campaign, you must know how to write effective emails. That means focusing on email content that’s relevant to recipients or their target audience. 

For example, if they’re in the affiliate marketing space, ask them to promote well-written content about the best affiliate marketing software or similar.

Using Pitchbox, you can unearth more information about the prospects than just their names, so you can send compelling emails they’ll open and read.

If you’re implementing a guest blogger outreach strategy, propose topics relevant to their niche and industry. This way, you add value to their content, and they’ll be more receptive to your email.

#4 – The Content You’re Promoting in Your Blogger Outreach Strategy Sucks

If you’re promoting content that’s thin, has lots of grammatical errors, is poorly formatted, and has a blog layout that hurts the eye, then people will just ignore your content.

Poor content is a sign that you’re not serious about your blog. And you don’t want to convey that message because you want to get into the good graces of your prospects.

Fix: Creating good content is at the heart of every successful blog, especially if you’re still learning how to start a blog.

A lot has been said about how to create great content, but here are some rules of thumb that a successful blogger must follow:

• Always keep the topic’s search intent in mind when you create the article. If the subject deals with how to increase web traffic, you don’t have to discuss what web traffic is, what constitutes a website visitor, and the like. The readers clicked on your article from search engines or social media because they already know all these things — they just want to get straight to the tips and advice.
• Make sure that it’s written expertly. Reduce grammatical errors by using tools like Grammarly, ProWritingAid, or even free tools like Hemingway. Or if you have the budget, hire a professional writer or editor to help you. 
• Format your posts to present a clear hierarchy of ideas. For example, subheadings should be in H2, topics under each H2 should be H3, and so on.
• Use images. Feature statistics and infographics as they help flesh out your thoughts more effectively than others. Just make sure to link back to your sources.
• Speaking of links, don’t be afraid to link to other sites, provided they help make your content even more helpful to readers.

#5 – You Use the Same Email Templates for All Your Blogger Outreach Campaigns

Too often, bloggers send worn-out and overused email outreach templates.

But let’s get a few things straight. Outreach templates can have a place in your digital marketing strategy. If the email template is driving the results you’re looking for, then, by all means, keep using it in your blogger outreach emails. 

The problem begins when the templates stop working because everybody else uses them in their campaigns. Maybe you just grabbed the templates from a blog post you’ve read or a digital marketing course you’ve taken. Unfortunately, lots of other people have read the same post and taken the same course, so they’re using the same templates.

As a result, recipients have been receiving the same type of template from everyone else. So, no matter how good the template is, it will eventually stop working!

Fix: At some point, you have to stop blindly relying on templates to get the job done. And to help you know which templates to rely on and which to stop using, use the analytics and data provided by your email marketing or outreach tool. 

Analytics will tell you if something isn’t working anymore and why. From there, you can retool the templates you’re using and come up with something fresh.

#6 – There’s No Incentive for People to Reply

Arguably the biggest mistake most bloggers commit in their blogger outreach strategy is making it all about themselves.

For instance, a blogger’s email might ask recipients to share the blogger’s posts with their followers or link to the blogger’s article on their sites. But they don’t do anything in exchange for that person.

Again, this is a cold blogger outreach campaign where you don’t have an existing relationship with any of the recipients. Hence, there is no reason for them to do what you’re asking because they have no reason to trust you and nothing to gain.

In other words, your cold emails are already dead in the water even before they arrive!

Fix: Respecting people’s time with your email is of utmost importance. Therefore, if you want them to do something for you, you must offer to do something for them in return.

One of the best examples I’ve seen is from Pixelied:

Pixelied wants me to edit an article and place a backlink to their website. In return, they’ll give me lifetime access to their tool for doing them a solid.

This gives me the motivation to do their bidding because I’ll be getting something worthwhile in return from them.

Even if you’re not a SaaS company, you can take a cue from Pixelied by doing something for recipients that will compel them to do what you want them to do. Examples are as follows:

• Share one of their posts on social media to hike up their social media shares and drive more traffic to their site.
• Create a backlink to one of their posts on your site, hopefully to increase their Google search rankings.
• Write a guest post for them that provides valuable content to their readers.
• Offer them your products and services for free (or at discounted rates).

#7 – You Don’t Follow Up

Just because recipients didn’t reply to your initial email doesn’t mean they’re not interested in your message.

They probably forgot to reply or are currently busy with other priorities.

That’s why it’s always best to send a follow-up email to get a response from them.

Fix: To be fair, sending a follow-up email can be cumbersome because you’ll have to keep track of the emails you’ve sent in your campaign and email them one by one.

With Pitchbox, however, you can set up follow-ups from the software, so you don’t have to worry about logging in and out again. 

Once the campaign is launched with follow-up emails, all you do is monitor the results and see who replied and who didn’t.

Launch a Successful Blogger Outreach Campaign!

As a blogger, learn how to get the most out of your outreach emails to build success for your website. And that starts with correcting the mistakes you (or a digital marketer) has been making with your campaigns.

Hopefully, this post has shed light on how to correct the course of your campaign to help you hike up your email outreach response rates and meet your goals.