Five Tips For Professional Emails

You have a passion, a purpose, and a product to offer. Be brave and connect with others.  I also want to remind you, we need each other. Community is the most important thing in networking, small business life, blogging, or whatever you are pursuing. If you are not connecting with a market, you will never sell your product. If you are not connecting with a readership, your blog will never grow. You cannot do it on your own and that should be a relief. We get to work together to grow, share, network, and shine.

Whether you have a giveaway idea in mind that you want to pitch or you want to ask another blogger to partner with you on a idea, this email outline will help you format a fun and professional email (and you will be able to simply click send at the end!)

 

Introduce yourself and your blog

This is so important, please don’t skip this step. When you meet with someone in real life, you always start by introducing yourself. The same thing goes for sending emails. You need begin building a relationship with the person you are reaching out to. This is a great place for you to link your blog into the email! When they read the email, they can just click on the link and spend as much time as they need learning about you! This should be the first paragraph and should sound a bit like small talk.

Compliment their shop or blog and share with them WHY you personally want to work with them

The second paragraph should jump straight into the why. Share with them why you are reaching out to them and what you love about them. This is a place for authentic flattery. If you are wanting to connect with a shop or a blogger, there is a reason you admire them. Share with them those things that make you love their shop or blog.

Give them a detailed explanation of what you would like them to do

(ex:I would love for you to host this Christmas Exchange with me, be part of a giveaway or review on my blog, provide the items for a DIY post.)The third paragraph is where you place your request. If you jump into this before the first two steps, you might not get the reaction you were hopping for. Now that they know you & know why you are interested in them, they will be more open to hear the plan. It is important in this paragraph to be detailed and organized in your request.

Share how it will help them

It is true, bloggers love helping each other but make sure when you are asking for something, you respect them by explaining what is in it for them. If I email GAP and ask for $100 to spend on clothes because I want to buy more clothes from them they probably wouldn’t do it BUT if I pointed out how I would do a review on the blog which would draw attention, post on social media, etc.. they might be more willing to get behind it.

Be respectful of the time, talent, and product of the person you are emailing. Share with them why it will be worth their time, energy, and/or financial backing. When you ask for a lot but do not mention what they will get out of it, it can come off as disrespectful of the product or service they offer. Also, this  does not always need to be monetary, some things have other benefits like “the joy of sharing this devotion for free with all our readers or the invaluable help you would be able to offer on a product and see it thrive.” Keep all those things in mind as formulate this section.

Follow up

After you sent your initial email, give them a couple weeks to respond. We all know email inboxes are demanding and overwhelming. Your email is most likely not the only email sitting there for them to respond to. I have received emails full of questions about blogging that I was happy to answer but it may take me a couple days to respond because I work full time and blog on the side. I have a 7 day goal of responding but that does not always happen. If that blogger emails back one day later asking me if I got there initial email, it is stressful and makes me feel like they expect me to drop everything and spend an hour answering all their questions which makes me want to respond less. Give them two weeks (to be gracious) and then follow up only once. If they never get back to you, they probably do not have the time or margin to work together at this time. You can reach out again, but give them a couple months.